Six Pager Narrative

---
name: six-pager-narrative
description: Write an Amazon six-pager, a narrative memo read in silence at the start of a meeting so a decision rests on reasoning rather than a presenter's charisma. Use when running an operating, strategy, or investment review that must reach a real decision.
---

# Six-pager narrative

Amazon traded slide decks for a six-page prose memo because bullets let a
presenter hide thin logic behind delivery. Full sentences force the connective
reasoning that a bullet lets you skip, and the gaps show. The meeting opens with
everyone reading in silence, so the room reacts to the argument on the page, not
to how confidently it was pitched.

## Method

1. **Hold the line at six pages of narrative.** The cap is the discipline: it
   forces you to decide what matters and cut the rest. Push data, dashboards,
   and detail into appendices that do not count against the six, and never
   shrink the font to smuggle in more.
2. **Write in paragraphs, not bullets.** Each claim becomes a sentence with a
   subject and a verb, so "improved efficiency" has to say what improved, by how
   much, and why. If a section only works as bullets, the connective logic is
   still missing.
3. **Build it as an argument that lands on an ask.** Situation, complication,
   options, recommendation, then the specific thing you want the room to
   approve. A memo that informs without asking has wasted the most expensive
   hour on the calendar.
4. **Move every number to the appendix and cite it inline.** The narrative makes
   the case; the appendix lets a skeptic check it. Charts live there with axes
   labeled and sources named, so a reviewer can trace any figure without
   breaking the flow of the argument.
5. **Start the meeting with ten to twenty minutes of silent reading.** Everyone
   reads the same document at the same time, in the room, so no one bluffs
   through a skim. It also ends the meeting where the author narrates slides
   while the room waits.
6. **Collect comments in the margins, then debate the hard parts.** Reviewers
   mark up the doc as they read; discussion goes to the objections and the
   decision, not a page-by-page recap. The author's job in the room is to defend
   the reasoning, not to perform it.

## Checks

- Does the memo make an ask, or does it stop at description?
- Can every quantitative claim in the narrative be traced to a labeled appendix
  exhibit?
- Would the argument survive being read cold by someone who never heard you talk
  about it?

## Boundaries

The six-pager is for decisions and reviews, not for pitching a brand-new product
to customers: for that, use the prfaq-working-backwards skill. This is Amazon's
format and cadence, and other companies handle pre-reads differently, so match
the local norm on length and on whether reading happens in the room or before
it.