4 Steps to Write a Great Script for Your Video

An explainer video is a short and concise video created using a combination of graphics and footage to convey a message to a targeted audience.

Photo by Ilya Pavlov on Unsplash

The message can be about the brand — it can answer questions like who are you, what do you offer, what’s your best product and most importantly what you can do for them.

If a video can convey this message with a good mix of voice-over, background music, special effects and visuals, you have an effective explainer video on your hands.

There is a formula to write an effective script for your video. Scripting is the most basic stage in video production, and generally speaking — the video quality depends on the quality of the script to a very large extent.

1. Ensure you do thorough research. Know what you mean to write about. I generally start by checking my client’s website and social media pages. Then I get into what I want to write about. This should be as detailed research as possible.
   Post this, I work on background research and competitor research. Most of my clients are able to provide this information to me, but if not, it’s very easy to just google it nowadays. Don’t know how people managed before the internet.
2. Write a skeleton — I call this stage layouting the script. Depending on your research you will understand the type of layout your script requires. Is it a problem-solution layout or a day-in-the-life kind of deal? Or it can be something direct — starting with the product or solution or maybe a little on the history side. The most common is the problem-solution layout for a product explainer video.
3. Layouting is followed by questions — You can’t waste space in a script. Every sentence should have a purpose. What I have observed helps is writing a set of questions in your selected layout and then answering them.
   For example — If a company sells an all natural toothpaste for sensitive teeth, and you have selected a problem solution approach your questions would look like — What is the problem faced by the target audience? What are its symptoms in their life? What’s the solution offered? How is it better than any other brand (USP)? Any other features that could be highlighted? And Call to Action. Next step is to simply answer these questions and stitch them together in a single narrative.
4. Edit. Work on it to remove the unnecessary garbage and add special effects to make it more conversational and engaging.

After that I personally like to keep the script aside for a day and take a look at it again to see if I still like it. It should entice the audience to take action, if it’s not doing that there’s no point of the video then.

Then, once the script or voice-over narrative is fully ready — I work on the screenplay. But that’s the four quick steps you follow to write a script.