How to Shorten a Presentation [Cut the fluff and keep your audience]
- Ink Narrates | The Presentation Design Agency
- Jun 1
- 6 min read
Our client Anna asked us an interesting question while we were working on her sales pitch deck:
“How do I know what to cut without ruining the presentation?”
Our Creative Director answered,
“Cut everything the audience does not care about.”
As a presentation design agency, we work on many presentation makeovers throughout the year and in the process we’ve observed one common challenge: people overload their decks with content because they fear leaving something out.
So, in this blog we’ll talk about how to shorten a presentation without sacrificing clarity or impact.
In case you didn't know, we specialize in only one thing: making presentations. We can help you by designing your slides and writing your content too.
Why We All Struggle To Cut Down
Let’s be honest: trimming down a presentation feels like cutting off your own arm. You spent hours gathering data, building arguments, crafting that clever little joke on slide 17. Now someone tells you, “It’s too long.”
We’ve seen this play out again and again. The problem is emotional, not technical. You are attached to your material. You want the audience to know how hard you worked, how much you know, how thorough you’ve been. But here’s the harsh truth: they don’t care about all that.
They care about what’s in it for them.
That’s where most presentations go off track. The creator’s brain is focused on “everything I want to say,” while the audience’s brain is tuned to “what matters to me right now.” See the gap? That gap is where attention dies.
We’ve worked on boardroom presentations, investor decks, sales pitches, internal strategy reviews. Different topics, different audiences, same mistake: the deck is packed for the presenter, not the listener.
So, before we even touch the slides, we always step back and help clients ask the real question: What’s the single point your audience must walk away remembering?
If you can’t answer that, no shortening trick will save you. You’ll just be rearranging clutter.
How to Shorten a Presentation [Cut the Fluff and Keep Your Audience]
Alright, now let’s get into it.
You’re here because you want to know how to shorten a presentation without wrecking its value. Not just make it shorter, but make it better. That’s the real point. Anyone can delete random slides or cut a few words from a script. But if you want to cut smart, here’s how we approach it — not based on theory, but based on real work we’ve done with clients like Anna, month after month.
Step 1: Identify Your One Big Idea
Every great presentation has one big idea. Not five. Not three. One.
This is the core takeaway you want burned into your audience’s brain when they leave the room.
For example:
In an investor pitch, it might be “This is a high-growth opportunity you don’t want to miss.”
In a sales deck, it might be “Our product solves your pain faster than anything else on the market.”
In a strategy review, it might be “Here’s the single change we need to win next quarter.”
If you can’t name your one big idea, stop everything and figure that out first. Because if you don’t know it, how can your audience?
Once you lock this in, everything else becomes easier. You can measure every slide, every point, every chart against this idea: does it strengthen it, or distract from it?
Step 2: Ruthlessly Cut Supporting Points
Most presenters cram in too many “supporting” points because they’re scared. Scared they’ll look weak. Scared they’ll get a tough question. Scared they won’t seem prepared.
So they stuff in more charts, more stats, more case studies, more everything.
We get it. But here’s the problem: when you throw ten supporting points at the audience, they won’t remember ten. They’ll remember none.
Real impact comes from three strong supports, max. That’s it. Think about a chair: three legs make it stable. You don’t need ten legs. Ten legs make it clunky and awkward.
So go through your presentation and pick your best three supports. Not the three that feel safest, but the three that hit the hardest.
Ask yourself:
Which proofs hit the audience’s pain points directly?
Which examples are most memorable?
Which stats punch the strongest?
If a point isn’t among your top three, it goes. Yes, even if it’s a really cool chart.
Step 3: Kill Darlings, Not Essentials
Writers use the phrase “kill your darlings” to describe cutting parts of their work they personally love but that don’t serve the larger story. The same applies to your deck.
Maybe you love that origin story slide. Or the deep-dive feature list. Or the extra customer quote you squeezed in at the end.
Ask yourself bluntly: does this serve the one big idea? Or is it there because you like it?
When we work with clients, we often tell them: “This slide is great, but it’s great for you, not the audience.” That’s the difference.
Don’t mistake your personal attachment for audience value. Kill your darlings and keep only what truly earns its place.
Step 4: Trim Down Slide-by-Slide
Now we zoom in. Once you’ve streamlined the structure, it’s time to sharpen each slide.
This is where a lot of people mess up. They try to “shorten” the deck by cramming more text onto fewer slides. Congratulations, you’ve made it shorter but unreadable.
Shortening is not about word count. It’s about clarity.
Here’s what we do slide-by-slide:
Cut text blocks. If you can’t explain the point in one line, rethink the point. Slides are for highlights, not essays.
Simplify visuals. One sharp image beats five cluttered ones. One key chart beats three half-relevant graphs.
Shrink speaker notes. If your notes are overflowing, your spoken explanation is probably too long. Tighten it.
Remember: every extra element on a slide competes for attention. Less clutter equals more focus.
Step 5: Rewrite the Opening and Closing
Most people don’t realize the biggest time wasters are in the opening and closing.
They start with a long introduction: “Thank you for having me here today. I’m so excited to share with you…” Five minutes gone, and you’ve said nothing yet.
They end with a meandering close: “Well, I think that wraps things up, unless anyone has questions, we’re pretty much done…” Weak endings kill strong presentations.
Here’s how we fix it:
Open with impact. Deliver your big idea right away. Why wait? Grab attention immediately.
Close with clarity. End with one sharp summary line, then stop. Leave the audience thinking, not waiting.
You’ll be shocked how much time you save when you cut the fluff at the edges.
Step 6: Rehearse Out Loud, Then Cut More
Here’s the brutal reality: when you rehearse your deck out loud, you’ll realize you still have too much.
We make all our clients rehearse with us. Without slides, just talking it through. And every time, we find sections that drag, slides that feel redundant, moments where even they get bored.
That’s your signal to cut.
Reading silently fools you into thinking it’s shorter than it is. Speaking forces you to face the truth.
Pro tip: record yourself. Watch it back. You’ll instantly hear where you lose momentum or overexplain.
Step 7: Trust the Audience
Finally, and maybe most importantly, you need to trust your audience.
You don’t have to explain everything in the deck. You don’t have to anticipate every question. You don’t have to overstuff every moment.
Your audience is smarter than you think. They will follow you if you give them something worth following.
So cut the fluff. Give them the good stuff. Trust them to come with you.
That’s how you shorten a presentation the right way.
Why Hire Us to Build your Presentation?
If you're reading this, you're probably working on a presentation right now. You could do it all yourself. But the reality is - that’s not going to give you the high-impact presentation you need. It’s a lot of guesswork, a lot of trial and error. And at the end of the day, you’ll be left with a presentation that’s “good enough,” not one that gets results. On the other hand, we’ve spent years crafting thousands of presentations, mastering both storytelling and design. Let us handle this for you, so you can focus on what you do best.