You will be able to write scripts that sound natural when spoken and contain nothing the viewer would skip.
Write a script the way you would write an email and then read it aloud. It almost always sounds stiff. The sentences are too long to say in one breath, the words are ones you would never use out loud, and the phrasing makes you trip. That stiffness shows on camera, where viewers can tell when someone is reading, and it puts distance between you and them.
Short video is spoken, even when the words also appear on screen. So the script is written for the ear first. This lesson covers how to do that, and how to cut a script down to the version that keeps people watching.
Start by saying the idea out loud before you write anything. Explain it to an imaginary customer as if they had just asked you about it at your counter. Then write down what you said, as close to word for word as you can.
Spoken language uses short sentences, everyday words and contractions. "It's" instead of "it is". "You'll" instead of "you will". "Most cakes crack because the oven's too hot" instead of "Cracking of the cake surface is usually caused by excessive oven temperature." The second version might be fine in a manual, but you would never say it to a customer standing at your counter.
Then read the script aloud, at the pace you would speak on camera. Every place where you stumble, run out of breath or feel awkward is a place to fix. Shorten the sentence, swap the word, or split the idea in two. Read it again. Keep going until it sounds like you talking.
Most first drafts can lose a lot, and three kinds of words are almost always safe to cut.
Greetings and preambles. "Hi everyone, welcome back, today I want to talk to you about something I get asked a lot." Lesson 3.1 showed why these cost you the deciding moment. Cut them.
Repeated points. First drafts often say the same thing twice in slightly different words, especially when restating the hook in the setup, so keep the version you like best and delete the other.
Anything the picture already shows. If the video shows Mei Ling piping a rose, she does not need to say "now I'm piping a rose". The words should add what the picture cannot: why she pipes it that way, or the mistake most people make. Let the picture do its own work.
Mei Ling's first draft of her hot car video, as an example, took about 60 seconds to read aloud. She cut the greeting, a sentence repeating the hook, two sentences describing what was visible on screen and a long sign-off. The new version took about 40 seconds, a third shorter, and still delivered all three tips. Her figures are an example, and your times will differ.
A short video has room for one idea. When you find yourself writing "and another thing" or "also, while we're on the topic", you have started a second video. Cut it and put it in your backlog.
This is not a loss. A script with two ideas gives each one half the time and makes the hook harder to write, because the hook can only promise one thing. Two videos with one idea each are easier to watch and easier to make, and they double your backlog.
An open loop is a line that raises a question the video will answer later, so the viewer stays to find out. "There are three ways to keep a cream cake cold in the car, and the third one is the one nobody does." The viewer now wants to know the third, so they watch through the first two.
Open loops work when they are honest and paid off. Promise the third tip, then deliver it, and make it worth the wait. An open loop that leads to nothing is the bait hook from Content and copywriting under a different name, and viewers learn to ignore you.
Use one open loop per video at most. Several at once feel like a trick.
The final check is simple. Read your script aloud with a timer running, at the pace you would speak on camera. Note the time. Then cut, using everything above, and read it again.
You are not aiming for a particular length. Platforms change their limits and there is no single length that suits every idea. You are aiming for the shortest version that still delivers the payoff in full. If something can go without the payoff losing anything, it goes.
In the activity you will take one of your scripts, time it as you read it aloud, and keep cutting until it is a third shorter without losing the payoff.
Take one of your scripts, read it aloud with a timer, and cut it until it is a third shorter without losing the payoff.
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