learn-visual-storytelling-with-phoebe / Session 6 of 6
Learn Visual Storytelling with Phoebe · Session 6 of 6

Four tellings

The deck you have spent five sessions fixing will reach fewer people than the three-line message summarising it. Tonight the same claim gets told four ways: spoken in two minutes with nothing on screen, as a one-page memo, as a deck nobody narrates, and as a message in a chat window. Each telling drops something different, and choosing which one to write first is a decision most people never make on purpose.

🟠 Hands-on Bring your finished deck Final scorecard tonight 45 min
0-3 · Welcome 3-18 · Four tellings, four failures 18-40 · Build-along: write all four 40-45 · Where to go next
Part 0

Where we are

Five sessions produced one good deck. The uncomfortable fact is that the deck is the least-read of the four artefacts you are about to write, and it is the one everybody starts with.

🎫 Clear all three quiz questions to stamp your passport Live = presented in the 45 minutes Self-study = the full depth, after class

★ What you walk out with tonight. All four tellings of one real claim, written, plus the final scorecard across the whole course and a decision about which telling you write first from now on.

A note on scope. This session is about the story changing shape for each audience. How a chart survives being rendered in a slide, a doc, a phone and a printer is a different problem, and it belongs to learn-dataviz-with-phoebe session 6. Two courses owning one subject would disagree with each other eventually.

Part 1 · covers the four

Four tellings, and what each one drops

8 min live

These are not four formats of the same document. They are four different arguments, because each one loses a different thing and has to compensate somewhere else.

SPOKEN · two minutes, nothing on screen Drops: every visual, and all precision beyond one number. Compensates with: sequence and a single memorable figure. Read by: the person who decides, in a corridor. Hardest to write. Write it first anyway. MEMO · one page, prose Drops: your narration and the meeting's pacing. Compensates with: explicit logic, written out in full. Read by: people who were not invited, weeks later. The only telling that survives being wrong about the room. DECK · read alone, nobody narrating Drops: you. Every slide must stand without a voice. Compensates with: takeaway titles and claims on visuals. Read by: everyone the deck is forwarded to. This is the real deck. The presented one is a subset. MESSAGE · three lines in a chat Drops: all evidence. Nothing but claim and ask survives. Compensates with: a link, and being right about the ask. Read by: more people than all three others combined. The most-read thing you will write, usually written last.
🔍 Click to zoom - readership runs roughly opposite to the effort most people spend
LiveWhy to write the spoken version first4 min▶

It is the hardest of the four and it should still come first, for reasons that have nothing to do with practising your delivery.

  • It cannot hide. No chart to gesture at, no bullet to read aloud. If the argument has a gap, you find it in the second sentence rather than in the meeting.
  • It forces one number. Two minutes of speech holds one figure that people remember. Choosing it is a real decision and the other three tellings inherit it.
  • It is the version that actually happens. Corridors, the first ninety seconds of a call, somebody asking "what did you find?" in the kitchen. You will deliver this telling more often than all the others.
  • Everything else is expansion. Memo, deck and message are all this argument with evidence added back. Going the other way - deck first, then trying to compress - produces a summary rather than an argument.

Write it as prose and say it out loud, timed. Two minutes is roughly 320 words. If you cannot get there, the problem is the argument, not the format.

Part 2 · covers the failures

The four characteristic failures

6 min live

Each telling fails in its own way, and each failure comes from writing it as if it were one of the other three.

Titles are labels. Charts have no annotations. Slide 4 has three bullet fragments. The recommendation is on the last slide, in a sentence beginning "so as discussed".

Presented, this works: you supply the claims out loud, you point at the bar you mean, and "as discussed" refers to something you said four minutes ago. Forwarded to somebody who was not there, it is a folder of charts with a conclusion that references a conversation they did not have.

Every title is a takeaway. Every chart has its claim written on it. Slide 4 has one sentence. The recommendation is slide one and repeated on the last slide with the ask and the owner named.

Presented, this is slightly redundant - you will say things the slide already says. Read alone, it works completely. That asymmetry is the whole argument for writing the read-alone version and presenting from it, rather than the other way round.

Self-studyThe four failures, one at a time5 min▶
  • The spoken version that is a read-aloud deck. Somebody reciting bullets. It fails because speech has no columns: a listener cannot scan back, so anything not in linear order is lost. Write it as sentences, in order, with one number.
  • The memo that is a deck in prose. Headings, fragments, and a bulleted list where the reasoning should be. A memo's advantage is that it can state because, and a bulleted memo throws that away for nothing.
  • The deck that needs you. The most common failure of the four, and invisible to its author because they have only ever seen it narrated. The test is to send it to somebody with no message and ask what it says.
  • The message that is a summary. Three lines describing what the deck covers, rather than stating the claim and the ask. If the message says "sharing our analysis of subscription churn", the most-read artefact you produced this month said nothing.
Self-studyThe three-line message, specifically3 min▶

It gets thirty seconds of thought and it is read by more people than everything else you wrote. Three lines, in this order:

  • Line one: the claim, with its number. Same sentence from session 1. Not "sharing the churn analysis".
  • Line two: the ask, with a name and a date. "Priya, can you approve pausing Guji auto-renew by Thursday?" A message with no ask generates no reply, and then it generates a follow-up message.
  • Line three: the link, and one clause about what is in it. "Full deck here, three slides, appendix has the cohort breakdown."

Nothing else. No "hope this finds you well", no summary of the method, no apology for the length of the deck.

Build-along

Write all four

★ 22 min · everyone writes

One claim, four artefacts, twenty minutes. Order matters: spoken first, message last.

Spoken, timed. Two minutes, roughly 320 words, said out loud to a neighbour with nothing on screen. Time it properly. Going over is information.

Message, three lines. Claim with number, ask with a name and a date, link with one clause. Do it now while the spoken version is fresh, not at the end when you are tired.

Memo, one page. Prose, not bullets. The word because should appear at least twice. This is the telling that survives you being wrong about who is in the room.

Deck, read alone. Take your existing deck and add what your voice was supplying: takeaway titles, claims on visuals, the ask named and dated on the final slide.

Send one to somebody uninvolved, with no covering explanation, and ask them what it says. Whichever telling you are least confident in - send that one.

There is one written sentence with a subject, finding, number and consequence From session 1. It passes the corridor test from memory.
The claim is in the first two slides, with three independent supports, strongest first From session 2. And your own counter-argument is on the cost slide, not in the Q&A.
Every title is a takeaway, and reading the titles alone tells the story From session 3. One idea per visual, and every removed idea has a written home.
Each slide passes the three-second test, achieved by turning things down From session 4. Two colours, one accent and one grey. The logo was checked.
The four sequence numbers were measured, and the point lands on slide one or two From session 5. Any context slide was challenged before it was added.
All four tellings exist, and the deck works with nobody narrating it Tonight. The message states the claim and the ask, not what the deck covers.

If you take one thing from the whole course. Write the two-minute spoken version before you open a deck tool. It is the only telling that cannot hide a weak argument behind a chart, and the other three are that argument with evidence added back.

After the course

Where to go from here

ongoing
  1. Write the spoken version first, for the next three things you produce. Three is enough to notice the difference in the decks.
  2. Run the four sequence numbers on anything before you send it. It takes four minutes and it is the highest-return check in the course.
  3. Send one deck with no covering message each month and ask the recipient what it said. It is the only honest test of the read-alone telling.
  4. If the charts themselves need work, learn-dataviz-with-phoebe is the companion course: which encoding the question needs, and whether the picture is telling the truth.
  5. If the problem is the room rather than the artefact, learn-communication-with-phoebe covers the ask, listening first, and delivering bad news.
Check yourself

Three questions

Clear all three and session 6 gets stamped in your passport, completing the course.

1 · Why write the two-minute spoken version first, when it is the hardest of the four?

C is true and is a reason to write it at all, not a reason to write it first. The ordering argument is about direction: expanding an argument into evidence produces a case, while compressing a deck produces a summary, and a summary of a weak argument is still weak. D has it backwards - the shortest telling is the slowest to write.

2 · What is the characteristic failure of a deck written to be presented, once it is forwarded?

D is a real problem but session 2 already fixed it. The specific failure here is that the presented deck was never a complete artefact: it was half of a performance, and the other half was you. It is invisible to its author because they have only ever seen it with the voice attached, which is why the test is to send it with no covering message.

3 · Your chat message says "Sharing our analysis of subscription churn - deck attached." What is wrong with it?

C is part of the fix but only part: the number without the ask still produces no reply. D is the assumption that makes this so common, and it is wrong on readership grounds - the message reaches more people than the deck does, so treating it as a wrapper wastes the widest-reaching thing you wrote. Three lines: claim with number, ask with a name and a date, link with one clause.

Sources covered

What this session teaches, and where it came from

✓Four tellingsSpoken, memo, read-alone deck, message - what each drops, compensates with, and who reads it
✓Spoken firstCannot hide, forces one number, is the version that actually happens, and expands cleanly
✓The four characteristic failuresEach one caused by writing a telling as if it were one of the other three
✓The three-line messageClaim with number, ask with name and date, link with one clause. Nothing else
✓Read-alone as the real deckPresent from the read-alone version rather than writing the presented one and hoping
◐Rendering across containersDeliberately out of scope. Slide, doc, phone and print rendering belong to learn-dataviz-with-phoebe session 6

Every fact on this page, and its verification tier, is recorded in the course's source map.

Session 6 cheat sheet · pin this

Four tellingsSpoken, memo, read-alone deck, message.
Spoken first320 words, one number, said out loud.
Memo says becauseProse, not a deck with the slides removed.
The deck without youSend it with no message and ask.
Three linesClaim, ask with a name and date, link.
Readership is invertedLeast effort goes to the most-read thing.