Planning the presentation
The first thing to do is decide what you are going to do with the presentation. For example, putting a group of digital photos together in a presentation requires very little planning. However, using a presentation to increase the knowledge of others about your topic requires much more planning.
You need to ask and answer many questions before you begin creating a presentation. If you are not acquainted with creating presentations, the answers will be more general. Those who have created a variety of presentations in the past will want to have more specific answers.
Who is to see the presentation? How will it be used? What is the subject matter? What should be in its outline? How detailed should the outline be? Will an audio file be played? Is animation desirable? How should the transition between slides be handled? These are some of the many questions that should be asked, answered, and written down before creating the presentation.
Again, it is not always necessary at this point to have specific answers to every question. Making an outline is extremely important. You may already know exactly what some of the slides will contain. You may only have a general idea of what you want on some of the slides. That is alright. You can make some changes as you go. Change your outline to match the changes you make in your slides.
The important part is that you have a general idea of what you want and how to get it. Put that information on paper. That makes it much easier to create the presentation.