24. Bookends
Establish Your First and Last Sentences
Novelist John Irving, the author of the bestselling The World According to Garp, The Cider House Rules, and The Hotel New Hampshire, offers two valuable pieces of advice to writers that presenters would do well to follow. On the occasion of the publication of his thirteenth novel, In One Person, he wrote, “I begin with endings, with last sentences—usually more than one sentence, often a last paragraph (or two). I compose an ending and write toward it, as if the ending were a piece of music.”1
By beginning the development of your presentation with the last sentence—the one in which you make your call to action, just before you open the floor to questions—you give your entire narrative a focus and forward thrust.
Mr. Irving also offered advice that addresses the front end of your presentation. The late William Safire, the revered literary critic and author of the long-running “On Language” column in the New York Times, wrote, “There is a tough assignment about openings from John Irving: ‘Whenever possible tell the whole story of the novel in the first sentence.’”2
That’s a rather large challenge for businesspeople who have not published 13 novels, but it sets a higher bar for those presenters (and you know who you are) who start their stories at the Dawn of Civilization and work their way forward to the present, step-by-excruciating step. Take six or seven sentences, if you must, but make sure that you front load your presentation with a succinct progression that achieves the following steps:
• Describes your value proposition
• States your point or call to action
Readers of Presenting to Win will recognize these as the key steps of the Opening Gambit, a sequence of sentences designed to hook your audience at the very beginning of your presentation. You never get a second chance to make a first impression.
Please note that both of Mr. Irving’s practices relate to getting to the point, and these mirror images form bookends for your presentation. Good advice, from a man who knows a thing or two about books.
Mr. Irving’s words about strong openings were echoed by fellow-novelist Jhumpa Lahiri, the winner of the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the author of the bestselling The Namesake. She wrote, “The first sentence of a book is a handshake, perhaps an embrace.”3
Embrace your audience.