Storytelling

The same thesis, written for four different audiences, produces four different decks. Don't average — pick a primary audience and calibrate end-to-end. Adversarial campaigns lose when authors try to write for everyone simultaneously.

The single most important slide in the deck — after the cover. The final frame the reader sees before closing the file. It tells them exactly what you want them to do, with a specific verb, by a specific date, with a specific mechanism.

This skill focuses on the adversarial genre — activist campaigns, short theses, contrarian memos. But every adversarial argument rests on a foundation of general narrative craft. This file distills the parts of the Storymakers methodology that are load-bearing for contra…

The bullet-list section in the Answer block where you state — in specific, board-actionable language — what you want the target to do. Sits between the diagnosis (Complication) and the closing ask (the single one-line CTA on the final slide).

Every great contrarian deck follows the same narrative architecture, whether consciously or not. It's a Barbara Minto / McKinsey / consultant staple adapted to the investor-advocacy use case.

A single slide, early in the deck (typically slide 3 — immediately after the thesis headline), that states in three numbered lines why the thesis is true.