How to Write a Script for a Video

How to Write a Script for a Video

• Start with a brief.

• Use your brief to write an outline.

• Present yourself and the topic at the beginning of your script.

• Begin writing your script, section by section.

• Support all B-rolls with the appropriate notes in your main narrative.

• Be as brief as possible.

• Use this script template for videos.

• Go through the script orally on camera.

1. Start With a Briefing

Although this action may seem trivial, it is essential to the final script.

Starting with a briefing will allow you and your team to document the answers to crucial Task questions so that everyone involved in creating the video is on the same page. If you’re three-quarters done editing and your boss or colleague wants to completely reshoot the entire shot of you showing how your product solves a problem, that’s a big problem for you.

When pesky difficulties like this get in the way of progress, you can refer back to the quick that documents the goals and project plan your team collectively agreed on and say, “This isn’t what we agreed on.” Then you can move on. When crafting your brief, focus on your goals, topic, and the deliverables you want to take away.

A brief doesn’t have to be fancy or follow a specific formula, but it should include some key questions to create a compelling video script.

• What is the objective of this video? 
• Why are we making the video clip in the first place?
• Who is the target audience for the video?
• What is the topic of our video? 

(The more specific, the better. For example, if you’re in the painting business, you might choose a topic like “buying the right paintbrush.”)

• What are the key messages of the video?

•  What should viewers learn from watching the video?

• What is our call to action?

•  What should viewers do after viewing the video clip?

You can quickly develop a brief in Google Docs to use as a living. 

The template that you can revise over time and collaborate on your team.

2. Use Your Briefing To Write an Outline

Once you’ve chosen a topic and written a brief, it’s time to start writing your video script. This way, you can damage your video into subtopics and determine how you want your dialogue (or monologue) to play out. We recommend starting with an outline before moving on to the entire script.

Contrary to what I thought before, you can’t just rewrite a blog post and be done with it. There is a particular way to write a script to shape a compelling video clip. Are you basing your video manuscript on an article post?

Alicia Collins can tell you more about that in the video below (and yes, we wrote a script for it!). As Alicia states in the video above, a video script shouldn’t just regurgitate the blog post verbatim. Even though blog posts are ideally written to be conversational, you need to build pauses and verbal explanations into the speech patterns you wouldn’t have on paper.

You can still create a well-structured outline if you don’t base your video script on a blog post. However, using the subsections of the blog post is a helpful starting point to figure out how your script will advance from one section to the next. Consider the individual best practices of the topic you want to cover in your video. Where are the natural transitions when explaining this topic to your target market?

For instance, if the topic of your video is “How to Start a Business,” you could organize your script by each of the tasks a budding entrepreneur must tackle when starting a business, such as

• Conduct market research.

• Create an allocation for research and development.

• Consult with potential investors.

• Establish a marketing strategy.

• Create a sales strategy.

• Determine your office space.

3. Introduce Yourself and/or the Subject at the Starting of Your Script

ALthough video clips are the channel of choice for many people who want to learn something new, they need to captivate their audience in the first few seconds, just like composing content. Besides, you have just as much competition on YouTube as you perform in the blogosphere, and your audience can abandon your video just as quickly as they can an article if they don’t feel engaged.

To engage your audience in a video script, you should introduce the speaker (the person on screen) in the first few lines and explain what the audience will learn at the end of the video clip.

For instance, if you’re teaching viewers how to optimize their blog for SEO, your introduction might read like this:

“Hello, hello! I’m [speaker name] from [company], and in the next [length of video] minutes, I’m going to show you how to rank your blog on Google.”

4. Start Creating Your Script, Section By Section

Just like the brief, the script for the video doesn’t have to be particularly fancy. A good script makes it easy for cinematographers to get their message throughout while sounding and acting naturally. You don’t want to submit the script for any awards; it’s purely for function.

Create conversationally

Creating a script is not the same as writing a term paper or a market research report. You should create the script the way you want the person in the video to speak. If you say on camera, “I’m going to create a video after I read this blog post,” it reads much better than, “I’m going to create a video after I read this blog post.” Keep sentences concise – I recommend avoiding compound sentences if possible.

Make it thorough

A script doesn’t just contain dialogue. Include those details if your video requires multiple shots, characters, or scenes. Make sure you include any necessary information about the set or stage actions, such as a wardrobe change.

The script ought to be detailed enough that you can hand it to another person to shoot who will understand it.

Write for the audience and the platform

Does your audience consist of young teens, middle-aged professionals, or older retirees? Will your video be live on Instagram, YouTube, or your website? Make sure you’re appealing to the people you want to target with humor, tone, and inflection. If you’re writing a short video for Facebook, you can shorten your script with sentence fragments. However, if you’re producing a long explainer video for your website, be as thorough as possible.

Write every single word

Understandably, you think you can just write down the critical points for a script and then improvise on camera, especially if you know your topic. With this approach, (which is what you should get a message across as clearly and concisely as possible I’ve for in any video you create). It usually results in a lot of repetition.

That’s why we recommend capturing every single word in a script. This way, you’ll keep track of everything during the shoot and save a lot of time later.

5. Support All B-rolls With The Right Callouts in Your Main Narrative

If your video transitions from a person talking on camera to a close-up of your product or a demonstration, make sure you put those cues in your script, so everyone reading it knows to introduce those things for the viewer. These secondary shoots are often called B-roll and occur while the person off-screen continues to speak. This is one of the main differences between a blog post and a video script.

For example, when a blog post says, “Look at the chart below,” it’s referring to a chart embedded below that sentence. That wording won’t work on camera. Instead, your video script might read, “in the graph, you see here” while showing the graph on the screen instead of the speaker.

These written exceptions can also help prompt the speaker to take specific unspoken actions while delivering the script. For example, look at how the folks at Wistia did it in the video script for Wistia’s script tips below. Text overlays are highlighted with a big, bold “TEXT,” audio is highlighted in all caps (REWIND SOUND), and B-rolls or extra details are highlighted in italics (with glasses). (Note: It might be helpful to see the video first so that the excerpt from this script makes sense).

Be as concise as possible

When it concerns marketing, shorter videos tend to be more compelling than longer videos. According to a survey by Wyzowl, 68% of respondents said they would instead learn about new products and services through a “short video.”

To create short videos, you need a short script. Write a script that is no longer than two pages. If you can keep it to one page, all the better. It’s also worth doing two to three rounds of revisions that focus solely on cutting out anything unnecessary from your text. It can be additionally helpful to check out the text aloud to yourself to look for ways to make the language more conversational or the sentences shorter.

The result is concise, engaging, and easy to edit.

7. Use This Script Template For Videos

Writing a script from scratch is more complicated than starting with an example. To give you a head start, take a look at the scripted video we created using Wistia (see below):

The script we used for this video? It can be seen below. Click on the picture to download your duplicate and see how we applied the script elements described in this blog post.

As a refresher, these script elements are:

• An introduction.

• Subsections and natural transitions.

• Thorough descriptions.

• Conversational tone.

• Supportive cues for B-rolls and unspoken actions by the speaker.

Have you finished your script? Wonderful. Now it’s time to check your work with a quick run-through.

8. Do a Verbal Run-Through Off Camera.

Now that you know how to create a script, it’s time for a table read – the part where you practice bringing the script to life on camera.

Why practice? Because some words look great on paper, but when you read them out loud, they just don’t sound right. During table readings, you can refine the tone of voice and cut anything that sounds too correct, out of place, robotic, or otherwise inappropriate for the message you’re trying to convey.

When it’s time to shoot, use a laptop and chair as a teleprompter.

Since you don’t need a fancy script, you don’t need a fancy teleprompter to remember your lines. But you do need help to memorize your text. You can simply use two things you already have a chair and a laptop to keep your text handy during filming.

Enjoy the post? Fast track implementation by purchasing our My Sales Script – Full Blown Email Series now so you can skyrocket conversions.

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