Top Five Tips for Writing Effective Video Scripts
Video scripts bring any web video produced to life. Its absence may result in your viewers not knowing exactly your message. While they may resemble TV or movie commercial scripts in some ways, they are totally different from either.
The process of writing these pieces is also different from academic or technical writing. Although the writer won’t need a lot of academic skills, he definitely needs to be creative in coming up with witty lines that can appeal to a wider audience.
Here are some ideas that you can incorporate into building a simple yet effective pitch for your web video production.
have a definite length
The length of your video will determine how many words your script should have. This includes all titles, the body of the script, and call-to-action frames. Most video scripts come in voiceover form. In this case, it is standard to allocate three words per second in your script. Maybe you have a minute long video. So that would mean 180 words for your script. Even if you are not doing a type of voiceover, you should remember this guide.
draft
Write down on a sheet of paper the key words and phrases that you should work on. Think of a good story using this information. The structure is not your goal at this stage; concept is.
Read your draft aloud
Read around what you have written. Your audience will hear it and not read it. Make sure that your masterpiece is attractive to your ears. Whether you or someone else is doing the voiceover, it helps to have text that is easy to read, pronounce, and understand. Avoid using hiphalooting words. As long as the video scripts make sense when heard, that would suffice.
Revise your draft to a final script
Now that you have read your draft, evaluate it. If you find ideas or words repeated many times, delete them and replace them with new and related ones. Count the number of words you have used and see if it fits the desired length of the video. Make the necessary adjustments.
Once this is done, have another clean sheet of paper. Number it from one to sixty from top to bottom. Use the left side of the paper to number. Fill each line with three words from your script. Read it out loud one more time. Check if you get your message across clearly. Again, make adjustments when necessary.
Make room for pictures
Designate the right side of your paper for some visual ideas. Read your draft one more time and imagine the clips or images you’d like to include. Along with these, also list any transitions, special visual effects, and sound effects that you will be using. Assign exact time for these things to happen in your video as well.
For a smooth production flow, video scripts should be revised whenever necessary. It is better to make mistakes in the draft than in the production itself.