Your Scriptwriting Partner

“Be super specific - with everything."

I wrote that feedback to a student yesterday.

In fact, I rewrote six hooks in my scriptwriting community this week…

…and five of them needed the same fix.

Because non-specific language in your hooks is a big problem for both retention and gathering a loyal audience long-term.

Let me show you why:

Examples of non-specific language, and why it matters:

Example 1:

One student sent me a hook about nutrition for fitness. It started like this:

"Everyone is talking about the nutrition pyramid these days. As always, where attention goes, energy flows. If you're a career-driven human over 40..."

But here was my re-write:

"If you're over 40 and trying to [get down to X% body fat], you already know that nutrition is important. But after [X] years [doing relevant thing], I discovered that…"

Notice what changed?

• I cut the generalised opener ("Everyone is talking about...") entirely.
• "Over 40" became “over 40 and trying to [get down to X% body fat]”
• I added a placeholder for their specific credibility, where there had been none.

In this case, the added specificity makes it clear who the exact target audience is, what their goals are, and why this creator is the person to help them.

Without it, I have no reason to watch this fitness channel over any other.

Example 2:

Another student was writing about the dangers of having a fatty liver. One line said:

"If fat builds up on our liver, it can destroy it."

Which is true. But the impact of this is not made clear.

So I suggested adding this line right after:

"And long-term, this can lead to terrible side effects like [X] and [Y]."

(Again, I left placeholders for the YouTuber to add the specifics.)

But the point here?

Being specific helps the viewer truly picture what's at stake.

Yes, I know that a “destroyed liver” is bad. But I can’t really picture it.

But naming specific, day-to-day side effects it can lead to?

Now it feels urgent. Now I have to keep watching.

Example 3:

A third student was writing a video about menopause after breast cancer.

Can you spot the non-specific terminology in here? (It’s not super obvious.)

"So when women are frightened into thinking this is the rest of their life..."

It was only small, but there’s an important change to be made here too. See my re-write:

"So if you've been frightened into thinking this is the rest of your life..."

In this case, being more specific means talking directly to the viewer, as opposed to the general audience.

Your videos should be designed to address just the person watching, not a large crowd.

The Fix

To make sure your hook doesn’t fall into the non-specificity trap, ask yourself these three questions.

1/ Who is this for, specifically? (Target)

• Not "people who want to get fit" → "over 40s trying to build 10lbs of muscle"

(And, where possible, referring to them as “you”, instead of "they".)

2. What's the specific outcome you're promising? (Transformation)

• Not "grow your channel" → "hit 100k subscribers in 6 months"
• Not "write better scripts" → "cut your writing time from 6 hours to 90 minutes"
• Not "improve your fitness" → "get down to 15% body fat"

3. What's the specific consequence if they don't fix this? (Stakes)

• "It can destroy your liver…" → "…which leads to [X] terrible side effects"

This all ties back to my “target, transformation, stakes” hook framework (more info).

That's all for this week!

​Any questions? You can to reply to this email and I'll get back to you.

Speak soon,
George 👋

Sponsored by:
​1of10.com

Since launching my channel in October, the priority has been consistency.

I took a break over Christmas, but otherwise I haven't missed an upload.

But now it's time to get strategic.

Because, even at a glance, I've started to notice some interesting takeaways from my first 10 videos:

1. Listicles have consistently underperformed.
2. Riffing personal stories led to stronger retention and my most-viewed video. Riffing scripting advice led to extreme retention dropoff.
3. Text-only thumbnails (i.e. no fancy design) won the majority of A/B tests.
4. My "whirlpool strategy" for end-screen CTAs was highly effective at launch, but is becoming less effective over time. I have theories, but I'll need a full newsletter to discuss!
5. My most effective lead magnet came from this video where I pushed viewers to download a template I'd been subtly showcasing throughout the video.

I'm yet to do a full analytical breakdown of every single video, but this gives me a clearer direction for how to approach upcoming scripts.

I encourage you to take stock once every few months, too. Spend just an hour looking at your views + retention, and it'll be hard to miss the more obvious patterns.

But there's an even bigger change I'm about to make...

The Plan

Until now, every script has been directly converted from an old newsletter.

This was a useful approach, and I encourage you to repurpose other written material to increase your writing and uploading consistency, if that's something you struggle with.

The downside was - and don't tell anyone shhh - I was committing the cardinal sin of creating my packaging *after* writing the script.

But now it's time to strategically build every video from the packaging first.

To show you how I'm going to do it, I want you to check out this thumbnail:

What if I told you that this thumbnail was made in under 60 seconds entirely using AI.

Specifically, 1of10.com's mindblowing new idea and thumbnail generation tool.

For context, I've been using 1of10 for 2+ years, and their old thumbnail generation tool was... ok.

Good for some light inspiration, but ultimately not really usable:

Now? It's a whole different boardgame.

Not only does their idea generator create some great title inspiration...

...but the thumbnails themselves are, in many cases, 90% ready to use:

Now you probably had the same reaction as me:

An initial "wow, COOL!", followed by "wait, that diagram doesn't quite make sense".

Well, the coolest part is, you can prompt it to make any changes you want.

And let me tell you, if you've ever spent hours wrestling with ChatGPT's image generator and watched an *almost* perfect image slowly descend into dark mush the more you prompt it...

...this is not that.

When you request changes, it *does what you ask* with a high degree of accuracy... and fast.

Notice the small tweaks I asked for from my earlier example - like changing the main heading, removing duplicate words from the diagram, and swapping two boxes for "?" boxes.

Wait, sorry... did I say we'd already covered the coolest part?

Nuh uh. Check this.

Here's a quick thumbnail mockup I drew:

After uploading it to 1of10's thumbnail generator, I got THIS after just 60s 👇

Does this mean I'll stop using my thumbnail designer?

No.

I really care about the little details, and my thumbnail designer is not just an "artist", but also a strategist who I value highly.

But for many, thumbnails are a massive barrier to entry.

It's bloody hard to find someone both affordable and skilled.

That's why 1of10's idea and thumbnail generator will be lifechanging for thousands of YouTubers.

And as my channel strategy pivots from consistency to, well, actual strategy...

...I'll be using 1of10's idea and thumbnail generator to drive things forward.

Thanks to Richard and the team at 1of10 for partnering up with me again!

If you're interested in trying out 1of10 with 20% off, click here:

Try 1of10 [20% OFF]

I'll keep you updated on how these new strategic ideas perform...

...and how starting with the packaging (like a good boy) impacts my scriptwriting.

That's all for this week.

Any questions? You can to reply to this email and I'll get back to you.

Speak soon,
George 👋

If you need to pack a lot of information into one script, how do you structure it?

For example, a script that includes 2-3 main topics, but which also includes several sub-topics within the main topics?

No matter your niche, this will have happened to you at some point, or it will in future.

So let me show you how to structure this properly. Get it wrong, and your video will be so boring even you won’t want to watch it back.

Key Structure:

As you may know, I break every script into segments.

And each segment follows the same structure:

• Setup - where we introduce the segment and what the viewer will gain from it.
• Tension - where we deliver the bulk of the information in an interesting way.
• Payoff - where we fully reveal the information we got the viewer curious about during our setup.

Most scripts between 8-15 minutes tend to have somewhere between 5-7 “segments”.

That’s 5-7 times we repeat the process of “setup, tension, payoff”.

Simple.

But how would you approach a script in the following scenario?

Let’s say you’re making a video teaching how to create and sell digital products using AI.

There are 3 “main” parts of this video.

1. Deciding which digital products to make.
2. Learning which AI tools are needed to create them.
3. Discovering how and where to market them.

But within each of these topics… there is still a lot to cover.

For example, within “Learning which AI tools are needed”, we’re probably going to discuss:

1. What the tools are.
2. How to set them up for this project.
3. How to use them step-by-step.
4. How they integrate with any marketplaces covered in part 3.

So that begs the question - how do we apply setup, tension, payoff?

Do we use it only on the main topics, or for each of the subtopics?

Well, let me show you what I see happen all the time when YouTubers do the former…

The "Bad" Way (avoid this):

Setup:

During the setup, YouTubers often feel compelled to summarise everything that’s going to be covered in the segment.

“This second step can be broken down into 4 simple ideas:

- First, we need to learn what the tools are.

- Second, how we’re gonna set them up for the project.

- Third, how to use them to create your digital product.

- And fourth, how to upload them directly to Gumroad.”

This is bad for retention, because:

1. I’m not going to remember these, so you’ll have to re-introduce them again later. Functionally, this is wasted time.
2. It risks feeling overwhelming.
3. It also doesn’t sell the result of this part of the video, which is what setups are designed to do.

Tension:

This is the biggest problem area.

Because we’re now having to try and list multiple ideas, principles or steps all within the umbrella of a single “setup”.

And the most common outcome of this is that they feel rushed.

For example:

“First, which tools do we need?​

Honestly, ChatGPT is the best bet here because of it’s projects feature. But if you want a bigger context window, go for Claude.

Second, setting them up. Let’s say you’re using ChatGPT. You’re gonna want to make sure you’re uploading a style guide to each custom GPT you create, so if you don’t have one of those, go ahead and create it now.

Third, to create your product using ChatGPT, upload the style guide to a new custom GPT, and explain in natural language the digital product you decided to create earlier. Let’s say you were trying to code a new app, you simply tell ChatGPT to express itself using your preferred coding language.

Fourth, open Gumroad and…”

I cannot tell you how many scripts I’ve read that look like this.

It somehow manages to feel both rushed and bloated at the same time - like I’ve heard a lot of noise, but I couldn’t confidently implement anything I heard.

Payoff:

These end up becoming bloated as well, because now it feels like we need to summarise a huge chunk of information in one place.

The "Good" Way (do this)

As you’ve probably guessed by now, my advice is to treat each subtopic as its own segment.

That means going through the cycle of setup, tension, payoff multiple times within a single main topic.

It might feel a bit weird, but let me show you why this works.

Setup:

Rather than having to waste our setup explaining the structure of the next four sub-topics…

…now we can simply focus on the benefit they’ll receive by watching.

For example:

“Now it’s time to cover exactly which AI tools you’ll need to create your digital product, starting with understanding which tool has a track record of creating the most lucrative products…:

The first clause indicates that we’ve moved onto the second main topic, and the second clause focuses in on what step 1 is and why the viewer should be excited about it.

Tension:

Not much explanation needed here.

In a nutshell, all those details we had to breeze over before…

“Third, to create your product using ChatGPT, upload the style guide to a new custom GPT, and explain in natural language the digital product you decided to create earlier. Let’s say you were trying to code a new app, you simply tell ChatGPT to express itself using your preferred coding language.”

…can now be explored in more detail, leaving the viewer feeling equipped to actually take action:

Step 3 is where we're actually going to build your product using ChatGPT, and as you might have guessed, that means we're going to need our style guide we created earlier. Head into the custom GPT's settings, scroll down to the "knowledge" area, and upload your PDF. Anything you upload to this area will be referred back to by the GPT before it builds anything.

Payoff:

Now we have one of these at the end of each sub-topic, designed to pay off one specific thing.

(Rather than an enormous paragraph trying to tie together all the takeaways of the much larger, main topic.)

That's all for this week!

If you'd like to grab one of the remaining spots inside the YouTube Writer's Room and receive direct feedback on your scripts from me, click here.

Any questions? Reply to this email and I'll get back to you.

Speak soon,
George 👋