Script Writing for Explainer Videos

1. Promo: a good script has the power to grab a potential buyers interest and be informative at the same time, while also being clear and concise. If you are a small business start up company or freelancer, learn how to write your own scripts for animations, commercials and explainer videos. Explainer videos are proven to engage audiences and increase retention. These videos are great for business commercials, startup advertisements present ations and even lessons for students created by teachers. But at the heart of a good explainer, video is a good script. My course script writing for explainer videos features tips on how to keep your writing simple and clear. Discover the four step writing formula and learn how to get key information to help successfully write a script. My name is Mary and I have seven years of experience working as a freelance video producer and designer. I hope my experience, knowledge and advice can help you to create scripts that inform and captivate your audience Is attention 2. Lecture 1: Intro: Hello and welcome to my script writing course. My name is Mary, and I'd like to share a little bit of my background and history with writing. I'm a freelance video producer and designer for over seven years, now working as a top rated seller on Fiverr dot com, creating whiteboard, animations and explainer videos with programs like Pau Tune and Video Scribe. Over the years I've been working as a freelancer. I've been supplied with many scripts to work with and create videos for some good, some not so good with this course. I'll be pointing out some methods formulas do's and do not for you to keep in mind. When you start writing your script, maybe you don't know where to begin. Have no experience writing or just can't seem to get your point across to your audience. Anyone can write a script for an explainer video, and it could be for advertising purposes or educational purposes. Either way, the script is the heart of your production. If the script is confusing too long or boring, the video will, of course, be confusing long and boring. Remember, you want to make the script as engaging and understandable as possible, so you don't lose your viewers attention or confuse them as a writer, I'd say my writing style is straight to the point. I think that meshes well with writing for commercials and advertisements, because the goal for that type of content is to be more direct, since there is usually little time to elaborate or go into great detail, So let's get started. 3. Lecture 2: Explainer Videos : Before you start writing for an explainer video, it's best to understand what they actually are. First, they can be used for teaching or commercial purposes. Companies use explainer videos to attract attention and introduced a product or service in a quick and memorable way. The goal of these videos is to inform a viewer or get them to take further action after watching the video. So after learning the elements that go into writing a script in this course, I highly suggest you check out my pal Tune course to learn how to create your very own explainer videos. In that course, I teach the basics of how to use Pau tune and advanced techniques within the program. I show you where to get valuable royalty free resource is to help your animation come to life and instruct you on how to design explainer videos with a more artistic eye. Video is proven to be more effective than any other form of visual or text content to grab viewers attention, and anyone can get their message animated with PAL Tune. In fact, this entire course was made in power tune. So if you like what you see here and are considering making these types of videos yourself , go ahead and check it out 4. Lecture 3: Keep it Simple, Keep it Clear: a coherent and solid script is the foundation for a clear and interesting video. Rather than bombarding a viewer with a lot of ideas, you can try and tell a story that a viewer can easily follow along with. Stay focused on your message. And don't go off on tangents where you discuss things that aren't related to your topic. Keep it simple. Your script should be direct and to the point in order to give power to your words. Use simple and effective wording. No complicated language, no long winded, flowery or overly wordy explanations. Avoid repetition of words or ideas. Cut out lines that aren't really adding any substance to your script or that are repeating a concept that has already been explained in another sentence. Even this is a great example. I didn't really even need that second line there. Repetition can lead to rambling on and on without getting to the point. The only time I would suggest repeating a concept is in a rewarded way, and you are aiming for a longer script and trying to emphasize a point or explain a concept that you want your viewer to remember. Repeating the name of a company or product is okay a few times within a script because you want people to remember what you are talking about and have the name sink in. So in that case, repetition is a good thing, But don't overdo it. Keep your script as short and sweet as possible. Keep it clear. Make your content easily understandable. Try and ditch any vague wording you're using. Buzzwords can fall into this area, though they are heavily used in commercials. If you have to use some buzz words, make sure your target audience already has an understanding of what they mean, including acronyms. For example, SAS or software. As a service, don't litter your script with big, intelligent sounding words. Your script will sound grandiose or absurdly exaggerated and just plain hard to understand . Summarize if you have to research or edit down a client's already existing script or content. Search for the big ideas. Within that content. Read the first and last sentences of paragraphs, since those tend to hold the most relevant information about the topic. If you can't trim down or reward long sentences, just cut it out completely. Instead, start a new sentence explaining the concept in your own words in a shorter and simpler way . Proof read and read it out loud. I always proof, Read what I write and then go back again once I think I am completely done and actually read the script out loud to myself. It's also a great way to see how your content sounds when spoken. 5. Lecture 4: The 4 Step Writing Formula: I have a very simple formula for writing a commercial script. The four step writing formula. Step one. Start with a question or a problem that addresses your target audience. Step two. Answer the question or problem with your solution, which is your business product service, app or website. Step three outlines some features or benefits to support your claims or explain how it works. This can even be done with bullet points or a checklist to keep things looking organized. Step four Leslie and with a call to action, give your contact information like your website, phone number or email, for example. Use action words like Contact us today or register now. In the next lessons, I will give examples of how to use the formula within different writing style formats. 6. Lecture 5: Story Style Writing: story style writing is a story about your product service or topic. This can be a fictional one or a true story, depending on what purpose and topic you are writing about. I'll give you an example of story style writing while using the four step writing formula. Step one. Start with a question or a problem that addresses your target audience. Meet Jason. He's having trouble bringing his company into the modern digital world. So in this case you're introducing the character Jason. The story will center around him and his journey, but will ultimately end up focusing on the advertisement for a company I made up named Expert Collaborate Step to answer the question or problem with your solution. One day he discovered Expert Collaborate, a forum full of professionals from a variety of fields and technology. Jason realized that networking can help bring his company out of the Stone Age and into the modern digital age. Jason learns about a solution here with a little bit of humor. When I mentioned the Stone Age, humor can be used to lighten things up and tell a story in a more fun and engaging way. Step three outlines some features or benefits or explain how it works. With a subscription to expert Collaborate, Jason gets access to knowledgeable and skilled professionals, digital tools to help his business grow and 24 7 support With Jason subscription, he is able to join a network of people and organizations that work together towards a world with more collaboration and sharing. We believe that by working together, people and organizations can learn from each other and succeed. So here we see some bullet points to outline features of the subscription. Ah, little more elaboration on what the company is and even a line about their philosophy and ideals. Step four. Lastly, wrap up the story and end with a call to action technology professionals taught Jason about search engine optimization, cloud computing and Web design. He has finally involved his business, and you can to contact expert collaborate to learn more about the benefits of a subscription. Today you can also end with your website, phone number and email address. You can mention your social media accounts here is well with story style writing. There is a motion injected into it. In this example script. There was a transition of tone from sad toe happy and also at the same time expert collaborate was at the center of it, while also following the main character, Jason. Next up fact writing style is less emotional and is intended to be more straightforward. 7. Lecture 6: Fact Style Writing: fact style writing is an explanation of features, advantages or benefits of your product or service. This type of writing works well for including statistics and data information. Again, let's start with the four step riding formula. Step one. Start with a question or a problem that addresses your target audience. Are you looking to create awesome explainer videos? Here is a straightforward question. Addressing the target right away. You can almost think about it like a mathematical equation. Are you X X being the target audience in this case, someone looking to create explainer videos? Step to answer the question or problem with your solution. With Pau tune, you can easily create your own animations. Explainer videos are great for all types of businesses and even for teaching, you can have little to no video production or animation knowledge to get started. Also very straightforward here, getting right into what the product is and explaining its purpose. Step three outlines some features or benefits to support your claims or explain how it works. With PAL Tune, you get access to royalty free content like engaging animations and graphics, a variety of characters, colorful backgrounds, music tracks and more. This part of the script becomes a bullet pointed list, explaining specific information that the program includes Step for Leslie and with a call to action captivate your audience is attention and tell your story. Start creating an explainer video right now with the free plan Pau tune. Make it Awesome. This fact style writing ends with a powerful call to action, using words like start and right now and mentioning the free plan to entice people to try it out with no obligations and at the very end is a repeat of the company name and the slogan for emphasis and branding again. Here you can also include any contact information like the website, phone number or email. 8. Lecture 7: Text-Based Storyboard & Marking up a script: a storyboard is a sequence of sketchy drawings that give instructions for the animation scenes of a script. Each frame represents planned out shots for production. However, when you aren't an artist, a text based storyboard can work well. A text based storyboard is a written outline describing the animations and graphics you intend a video to include. These visual ideas are written alongside the actual script organized slide by slide or by timestamp. The storyboard can sometimes be as important as the actual script and serves to give direction to the animator and even the voiceover talent or sound effects department. A storyboard isn't a necessity if you plan on leaving the creativity up to the animator or are doing the animations yourself, but it can help. If you are planning out an in depth, larger scale video with a higher budget production cost. Always consult the animator first to find out their capabilities and limitations, marking up a script When writing a script, it's important to put emphasis on certain words to get your point across and make certain words stand out. That's why when I write a script, I will sometimes bold capitalize or italicize words when I want to give a certain weight or power to them. This can carry through to the voiceover for amore engaging voiceover read and also help the animator pick out certain words that might need to stand out within the actual video production. Just don't go crazy, marking up every single word because doing that will be repetitive and cause all of your emphasised words to lose strength. 9. Lecture 8: Getting KEY information : When writing a script for a client or third party, I find that sometimes they will provide me with too little information or too much information. Getting the right information you need from your client in order to successfully write a script can be a bit of a challenge. What I have done is created a script questionnaire through a Google form that contains the most straightforward and relevant questions I feel need to be asked. In order for me to begin writing, I highly suggest creating a questionnaire of your own. If you are trying to write for a client or third party, here are some of the questions I ask within my own questionnaire. First off, how long do you want the video to bay? Do you need it to fit that exact length? I ask this question because it affects how much content I will write for reference. Every 65 to 75 words will equal about 30 seconds of video. Second, please tell me what you want to write about what you want to be the focus and or key selling point of the script. Provide your website and any other relevant information getting the website or a relevant word document or pdf can help you understand the company or topic that you're going to write about a bit more. Third, what is your target market age, gender, lifestyle? It's important to know who you are writing for or talking to through a script. This can also affect characters that you write about male, female, young, old, even ethnicity. Fourth, how is your company service or product different from others? I like asking this question to try and get the client to think creatively. It helps them think about the best or most interesting aspects of their company, service or product. Fifth pick one writing style, story style or fax style. I've explained these in the previous lesson, so it all comes down to their preference. And finally, please provide any contact details you want included in the call to action at the end of the video. For example, your website phone number, email, fax, etcetera. If you need different information from a client, or think of more questions that help you get to the heart of the message you are trying to convey with your script, edit your questionnaire according to your needs. Remember Once you complete your script, submit what you've written to your client for approval. Before you proceed toe any voiceover or video production you are planning, finalizing and agreeing on the script is a must before you start anything else. 10. Lecture 9: Resources for Script Writing: here are some additional resource is for writing at times when I don't want to repeat the same word but want to convey a similar concept, I need a synonym. So I visit the sorest dot com complex sentence generator is a free online content rewrite er that can potentially rephrase or reward sentences, paragraphs, articles or content into alternative words while delivering the same meaning. Put simply, it will take your sentence and use a thesaurus on some words within your sentence. Sometimes it can help you rewrite a sentence that isn't sounding good, helping you to come up with a better way for it to sound diff. Checker is an online tool that compares text between two files and highlights the differences between them. Just enter the contents of two files and click Fine difference. I use this tool to compare versions of scripts to spot the changes easier. Need help with grammar? Graham Early is a chrome add on that helps you polish your writing and makes suggestions as well. Remember, practice makes perfect. The more you write, the better you will get over time and the faster it will take you to write. Still needing help with a script. Get a second opinion, get a coworker or a friend to read the script for clarity and proof reading. They might be able to help you reward sentences to make sense, help make more of an impact with your words or catch any errors you make. That's it. Thanks so much for taking my course. I hope I was able to help you understand the elements that go into writing a script for an explainer video. I hope you'll check out my other courses. I'll explain a little bit more about them in the next lesson. 11. Lecture 10: Script Samples (Fact & Story Style): Here are some additional script samples, in fact and story style. Jeff's car has been around the block a few times, and it's starting to look pretty dirty, But he doesn't have time to search for a local car cleaning service. Introducing the character Jeff and explaining his problem, Jeff searched online for a mobile car wash and detail ING service in his area and found shiny mobile car wash. Once Jeff scheduled an appointment, the professionals at Shining Mobile Car, Wash. Arrived on time and gave his car a five star quality cleaning, providing the solution to Jeffs problem, which is shiny mobile car wash and a brief explanation about how it works. Now his car looks brand new. Jeff is so thrilled with the fast and friendly service he received, he now has peace of mind that whenever his car is looking messy, shiny mobile car wash congee there in a flash to make it spotless, wrapping up the story positively, emotion went from trouble toe happy within the script. Shiny mobile car wash, Make your car shine, repeating the name of the company for emphasis and mentioning the snappy tagline. Are you traveling and need access to the Internet while on the go quick question addressing the target audience, which is people who are traveling and need Internet access. WiFi Rome offers a four g LTTE pocket WiFi hot spot rental service. Answer to the problem. WiFi Rome. You can seamlessly connect up to 10 devices and keep in contact with your friends and family through the Internet while traveling. Explanation of the service and the benefit With WiFi. Rome You get access to blazing fast speeds, a safe and secure private network, countrywide Internet access, eight hour battery life and no roaming charges. Bullet pointed list of the features included with the product and service. Stay connected everywhere on your travels. 24 7 Whether you need to navigate the city, stay in touch with your friends and family through social networking, check emails or simply just surf the Internet. WiFi. Rome's got you covered. A summary of what you can do with WiFi Rome and why it's great for people traveling. WiFi Rome. Stay connected everywhere. Visit us online or give us a call today stating the company name again for emphasis. The straight to the point tagline and a call to action line 12. Lecture 11: Script Writing for Education/Lessons: Educational videos are excellent for getting complex points across or introducing a new topic to an audience who was unfamiliar with it. If you're an educator, you may know that people tend to learn and absorb information in different ways. Visual, auditory, reading and writing and kinesthetic. And in educational explainer video can accommodate many of these learning styles. Using graphs, charts, diagrams, and arrows helps guide visual learners. Voiceover reinforces concepts for auditory learners. Words being written out or appearing on screen helps people who learn by reading and writing and referencing case studies, giving examples or showing demonstrations can help kinesthetic learners. Remote teaching is getting more and more popular. So when it comes to script writing for an online class, the first thing you'll want to do is write an outline or lesson plan. Start by breaking down each lesson topic that you will include in your class. Each lesson is like a chapter in a book and helps to keep your class organized. When creating your video. You don't have to read from your script word for word. If you want to just write out a bullet-pointed list for your important talking points and talk more freely and naturally during your lesson or recording. That is perfectly fine. Everyone works differently. Personally, I write out everything I want to say for my lessons. I usually don't go off script. This works best for me, so I don't leave any information out and I don't end up with too many pauses. Just like with writing commercial explainer videos. Consider your audience. This will dictate the type of warning you will use. For example, if you're teaching to young students, you will want to stick with more basic and uncomplicated language for teaching, as opposed to shorter commercial style videos. Some repetition is okay across your lessons, since your class will end up being much longer than an advertisement. This can help your students learn and remember. But as I've mentioned before, don't overdo it. Use examples towards the end of a lesson or explanation to reinforce the ideas and concepts you covered. Real life examples or even hypothetical story type examples, very things within a lesson and can be more engaging. While proofreading a lesson, pretend you are the student and anticipate the questions your students would ask. This will help you fine tune your script and add in more detail where necessary. Research your topic and reference other educational materials when necessary. Call upon the expertise of others to enhance your lesson. But remember not to plagiarize. Make your work your own. Bringing in your own personal teaching style provides students with PDF handouts or external reference websites that build upon the topic you're teaching. Consider incorporating activities, create a class project, a quiz, or assign homework. This encourages more independent study to support your class or to allow a student to showcase what they have learned. It can also be very helpful for kinesthetic learners as well. Since they are hands-on learners who learn by doing. 13. Script Writing Tips: Quick Summary: 14. 8 Steps to Creating a Video: 15. Lecture 11: Skillshare: If you've enjoyed this class and want access to other classes on skill share, please visit my referral link to get two free months of skill shares. Premium membership a premium skill share membership unlocks unlimited access to all premium classes. Like my other courses. Create animated explainer videos with Pau tune produce, engaging whiteboard, animations and video scribe and freelancing on Fiverr super seller success tips. You also get access to thousands of classes taught by creators from around the world. No commitments, and you can cancel anytime. I hope you've enjoyed my course. Thanks again and good luck.