How to Write a Video Script: A Handy Guide

This article comes from our writers who has written multiple scripts for video for some of our clients’ most successful products. So you’re about to get a behind-the-scenes look at how Word Philocaly writes a video script for our clients.

We will show you how we put together a script for video for one of our client right now.

Basic Outline of Scripts for Video

So the first thing we want to do is put together a basic outline of the main points we want to make. Each script has three main parts:

The opening
The middle or the meaty part
The wrap-up or call-to-action

Write a Video Script: The Opening

Let’s start with the opening. We usually open up our corporate video scripts one of two ways. The first is super straightforward. It’s basically what we have just done in this article.

The other way is with a cold open. Cold opens are a little more fun, so if we can think of a good story or analogy connected to our topic, we will usually start with that.

Write a Video Script: The Meat

Then we want to get to the meat of the video. So we aim to have no more than three to five major points to make with any video. We need a story or some data to back up each of those points. There’s not a formula here, but once we have more than three to five points, our script can start to get a little out of control and overwhelm our client’s viewers.

So we’ll get down the main points we want to make. We put the major sections in brackets and then filling in the detail with bullets. The bullets help us keep the main points in mind so when we review them, we can quickly scan and see the brackets.

Then, you know what this video is about. And if we look at it and see like ten brackets, we know that this script is getting out of control.

Therefore, it’s time to pull back and keep those main points we want to make with the video.

how do you write a corporate video script how do you write a script for a video how do you write a promotional video script - word philocaly — Writing a Video Script: The other way is with a cold open. Cold opens are a little more fun, so if we can think of a good story or analogy connected to our topic, we will usually start with that.

Write a Video Script: The Call-to-Action

Finally, we want to add a wrap-up and CTA or call to action, in other words. A CTA is what we want people to do at the end of the video. So sometimes we can use a broader CTA like “leave a comment with your biggest insights from watching this video.”

Sometimes, we ask people to do something particular like “write down the first five things you want to improve about your content marketing.”

Either way, we found that we get much better engagement with a more specific and urgent CTA – meaning that our audiences leave comments underneath our articles if we ask them to write something down right away.

So a good CTA would be “write down the first five things you want to improve about your content marketing.” A bad CTA would be “subscribe to our newsletter, then come back here and tell us how it went.” They’ll probably forget to come back to that video and leave a comment.

Recommendation for Improvement

Once we have a basic outline, we will show this around to our team members for some feedback. We want to know if this script makes sense. If you were a potential client, would you be excited to watch this video? Is there anything confusing or boring about it?

If you don’t have a team, we recommend sharing the script with a couple of friends for feedback. You can also give yourself some time to come back to the script –at least two to three times with fresh eyes. So once you get some feedback in suggestions, you can go ahead and flesh this out into a full word-for-word script.

Our full final script may get a lot longer now, but the true essence of the script is still the five significant points or those brackets that you started with. We’ve got the opening, points you want to make, and a CTA.

Review and Approval

Then, we are going to send this over to our copywriting head for review and approval. Once it’s approved, we turn it into a teleprompter-friendly script if a person reads the scripts for video in front of the camera.

Conclusion

So remember:

Start with a basic outline: the opening, the meat, and the CTA. You can have a clear opening or a cold open with a story.
Try to keep the meat to no more than three to five points
Try to make your CTA something that your viewers can go ahead and take action on right away

Let Word Philocaly Write a Video Script for You

Now Word Philocaly wants to hear from you. Do you have your tips on writing scripts that we didn’t mention in this article? Go ahead and leave your suggestions in the comments below.

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