How to write a script

- Oh, close. I'm assuming you've not dedicated your lives to folding paper planes like I have, but what if you suddenly needed to? I don't know, you ended up in a tournament or something. Well, you'd need a training video, and of course, that's what we do now. So how are we going to build one? Well, like a builder needs an architect's drawing or a chef needs a recipe, we need a script. And we start with a blank page, which can be rather daunting. Infinite number of possibilities. So what we need to do is concentrate our thinking and we do that by getting in touch with our audience. What's the one thing, the main learning goal that they want to know? Once we write that down well then, we can't really go wrong. Then we employ the old adage of tell them what we're going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what we've told them. And then finally, you know, we need to keep it engaging, we need to keep in touch with our audience and we do that by using different types of video. That resets the attention. So now all we need to do, now we got a template, is flesh it out a bit. So my main learning goal would be, I don't know, tell people how to fold a paper plane really well and really quickly. There, as long as I do that I can't go wrong. Next thing, we need to have an introduction. So what could we employ there? Well, we could tell a story perhaps, ask a question, maybe a relevant statistic. I think I'm just going to highlight the problem. Now we need to keep it chatty as well. I don't want it to sound like an academic thesis, 'cause that could get people scratching their heads and then we could lose them and we definitely don't want that. Second thing then is the main body. Well, you know, what are we going to actually tell them? Well, let me put it this way, if you ever asked to go shopping how many things can you remember before you need to reach for a pencil and paper and write down a list? For me it's three or four if I'm really concentrating. And then if we just stick to those three or four points, write them chattily, then they are going to stick with your audience and that's the important thing. Then we write a conclusion. How do we do that? Well, basically what we're doing here with the training video is telling a story. So with good stories we revisit the start and see how the hero's changed. So for that I'll probably just show you how the plane works. Now how long have they got? In the best one in the world, I think five minutes maybe, is that about right? So what I do is I've written it on a word processor, I'll do a word count. 500 words should be about the right duration. But we're not quite there yet. That's the script, but we need to engage with your audience, remember. So for that we need to use different types of video. So I think I'm going to use graphics, 'cause they help emphasis learning points, and then I've got all the fiddly folds, that's the main thing, how am I going to do that? Well, I'll probably get a camera in to add this sort of shot of texture and extra detail, and that, as we know, is called B-roll. So we're nearly there. We started with a blank page, we turn that into a template and we fleshed it out in a chattier way, and then finally it's turned into this amazing script for a fully fledged fun and engaging training video script for a paper plane, which can't go wrong. Which in my head would look something like this. As it turns out you've somehow ended up in a paper plane throwing tournament and you want to ace it. Here's how. You'll obviously need to find some paper. Printer paper tends to work really well I find. Nine folds should do it, most of those are repeats, so it won't take long. First fold, straight down the middle long ways, making both edges match. Next up, we fold the front corners down, matching them to the base. Repeat that one. And we sort of repeat that again by folding down to the base again. Again, it's a repeat. Over to the other side, over halfway now. Next up we need to the wings, so we fold those, make them quite big wings, horizontal to the base is where the fold goes. And finally, to make sure it flies true we need some little tail fins. So we fold two little tails on the wings and there she is, ready to fly. Throwing, the most important bit, arguably. Hold high, aim down slightly, maybe five degrees, and then push through and release smoothly. Bullseye.