A podcast roundtable where we share our experiences as YouTube producers, writers, thumbnail designers, and strategists working with a bunch of exciting YouTube channels.
Expect honest discussions about getting hired, growing channels, and finding work-life balance in this fast-paced industry.
Ali Abdaal
@aliabdaal
Join 2,200+ scriptwriting nerds reading “Write On Time”. Insights from writing for multi-million subscriber YouTubers sent to your inbox every Friday.
Every video needs “stakes”.
I mean, that goes without saying, right?
Remove the stakes, and your audience has no reason to watch.
Educational content needs to tell the viewer why their life will be worse unless they take your advice.
Entertainment content needs to show the viewer why your characters are motivated to do whatever they’re doing on-screen.
Next time you feel yourself getting bored with a video, you’ll notice you probably can’t identify any stakes.
(Heads up, I’m about to add stakes to this newsletter…)
So unless you learn to add stakes to your content…
…your viewers will always get bored and click away, meaning lower retention, fewer views, and slower channel growth.
This week, a student of mine was working on a video called:
“How To Make 100 YouTube Shorts In 1 Day With AI.”
But they had a problem.
When trying to add “stakes” to this concept… it felt “forced”.
This video wasn’t targeted at businesses that use short-form content as a sales funnel.
If that were the case, the stakes would have been easy to figure out.
“Short-form content is essential to your sales funnel. Therefore, if you don’t make loads of YouTube Shorts, you won’t get in front of your customers and you won’t make sales!”
But my student was targeting “creators” in general - not "business owners" specifically.
Now, on one hand, we could talk “niching down” here… but that isn’t what my student needed.
Because, no matter how much you niche down, certain videos will appeal to a broader audience.
Which means you need to feel confident identifying the stakes when that happens.
But how?
So... my student was struggling to find stakes for a broad-appeal video.
This was my advice:
“This is the #1 problem that comes with having labels like “stakes” - it adds pressure to find something like “your business will collapse”, or “you’ll stop making sales!”… but stakes can be something super low-key. In this example, my brain does this:
Your video is the solution to creators not making shorts and therefore wasting potential channel growth.”
Keep. Asking. Questions.
First, ask yourself what the video will help the viewer achieve.
Next, ask yourself why that matters.
Then, keep asking why, why, why… until you reach a satisfying stake.
In this case, it only took two questions to unearth the stakes.
Sometimes, it might take 3-4.
But the process is always the same… and it’s surprisingly simple.
Then, once you have your stakes, you must include them in your hook.
Remember, stakes are what make the video feel urgent… so if you don’t call them out early, they’re wasted.
Get them in before 00:20 (or earlier, if you can).
That's all for this week.
Any questions, just let me know and I'll get back to you!
Speak soon,
George 👋
I just spent two weeks in France filming a new video about how to write scripts FASTER.
It was pretty fun, I guess 👀
But the biggest revelation I had while filming led to me tweaking my scriptwriting format in a small but powerful way.
Here’s a quick extract from the final script:
Today, I want to explain what’s going on with this format, and why I think you’ll find it incredibly useful when filming your next video.
The best way of explaining why this is so powerful is to break down the purpose of each column:
Additionally, before shooting anything, I colour-coded the script.
Formatting your scripts like this is easy in either Notion or Google Sheets 💻
That's all for this week.
Speak soon,
George 👋
"What does a YouTube script actually cost?"
It's something I'm asked constantly - by writers trying to price themselves, and by YouTubers trying to hire.
I wrote this article showing the spread of what I've charged over the years...
...but today, I want to talk about some of the nuances.
A subscriber recently emailed me asking how pricing changes if:
Check out this 9 min video where I answered these questions (and more) - all related to pricing and client-writer relationships 👇
Or, if you want the answers QUICKLY...
...here are all 5 questions from the video, and my answers summed up in a sentence:
Ideally, yes - but even if they do, the best scriptwriters will assess the framing in relation to the channel's target audience, and challenge the client's choice of framing if necessary.
It makes no difference because I'll think about the framing either way and incorporate this into my pricing.
If trawling through a massive research pack (or doing a tonne of research) adds a non-trivial amount of extra time and effort to the writer's job (i.e. 4-8 hours), they should add ~50% to their pricing (in either case!)
Depends on experience (and the client's price sensitivity), but a fair range (from a Eurocentric economic perspective) is ~$200-$800... although on some bigger scripts, I've been paid as much as $1500, and friends of mine have charged $2000+ in some cases.
Again, somewhere around the $200-$800 mark for a 10-15 minute video is usually reasonable for a writer with 0-2 years' experience.
Pleeeeeease note - take everything with a pinch of salt. Money is a funny topic, and the list of caveats to these opinions is as long as my arm! The more experience you get paying/charging, the easier it gets to figure out your "hell yeah" numbers.
That's all for this week.
Any questions, just let me know!
Speak soon,
George 👋
To make scriptwriting faster…
If you’re a busy bee, that’s all you need to know this week.
Or, read on for more detail…
I talk in detail about these strategies in a video I recently posted in my scriptwriting community:
If you prefer to read the info, here’s an expanded summary of all 7 points:
That's all for this week.
Next week, I'm opening up about pricing, and the nuances of how much to charge/pay in different scenarios.
Any questions, just let me know!
Speak soon,
George 👋
This week's newsletter was made possible by my favourite screen-recording app, Tella* 🥰
Hey,
Let’s talk about the most important retention lesson I’ve ever learned.
To do this, I’ll show you the retention graph I used to test potential scriptwriters when hiring for my agency (90% got it wrong).
By the end, you’ll understand the massive retention problem most YouTubers miss, and how to fix it at the scriptwriting stage.
For my full thoughts, check out this 12-minute video:
If you prefer, here’s the lesson in just a few paragraphs:
Let me tell you something you might not wanna hear:
I love Tella.
There, I said it. I won't take it back. You simply can't make me.
I've tried a couple of different screen recording options over the last two years, and this has ended up being my favourite because of how flipping good the recordings look.
Check out this quick video if you wanna see all the cool stuff Tella can do 👇
The good news? Their affiliate program is offering new users 30% off forever when you sign up through my link.
You'll literally be paying less than I am to use it lol.
Highly recommend trying it out if you do a lot of screen recording 👇
Try Tella (1 week trial, then 30% off forever)
*Because I'm an affiliate, signing up through this link will result in a small kickback for me at no extra cost to you :)
Now, where were we...?
...although you might think the problem lies here…
…it could be a symptom of something you did here:
Any time you're struggling to diagnose a retention dip, go back and study the graph in its entirety.
And, once you've identified the problem, ensure your next script includes clear setups and satisfying payoffs.
That's all for this week.
Next week, I'm dropping my 7 favourite tips for writing scripts faster.
Any questions, just let me know!
Speak soon,
George 👋
Hey!
Yesterday, I drove for an hour to ask a man in his 50s to insult the shape of my feet... on camera.
Because “YouTube”, ok?
Seeing as I’m finally making my own “scriptwriting advice” YouTube videos this year, I want to make sure they’re as fun to make as they will be to watch.
So I’m taking my time and going the extra mile for moments like this (which will probably only be in the video for around 3s).
But in the meantime, as I’m busy scripting and filming my 2025 content…
…it pays to keep an eye on what my scriptwriting peers are making, too 👀
So, in the spirit of making all our scriptwriting better this year, here are 3 videos from other creators whose content I think you’ll enjoy:
Yes, you’ve got to have your own style...
...but it’d be silly not to watch what your friends are doing and identify what’s working really well.
For this, and to find videos like the ones I linked above...
...I use a “channel tracker”:
This channel tracker is one of the most useful features inside 1of10.
In my case, I've created a specific tracker for “YouTube Scriptwriting”.
I add channels like the ones above, so whenever they upload a new video, it'll appear on my tracked list.
(But only if it's an outlier! So I’ll only see videos from those channels that are outperforming their recent channel average.)
This makes it incredibly easy to see the best-performing, new content from channels I admire... in a single place.
Before 1of10:
With 1of10:
You know I’ve been a huge fan of 1of10 for more than a year, so I’m super grateful to Richard and the team for partnering up with me these last few months.
You can get access to 1of10’s suite of tools with 50% off using the code "GEORGE50".
That's all for this week.
For now, I'm practising filming with my new 360⁰ camera for the video I'm working on right now 😆
Speak soon,
George 👋
Here’s a philosophy I want you to take into 2025:
“If you can dream it, you can write it. Once you write it, sh*t happens.”
Last month, I wrote this line in a YouTube script:
“I may as well go the whole hog and paraglide off this mountain.”
The line came as a bit of an afterthought, to be honest. But sometimes it’s fun to ask yourself:
“If there were no barriers, what would be the coolest possible thing I could put in this video?”
Yet three weeks later… I’ve booked it!
And I’m allowed to take my new 360 camera 😆
It's easy to get bogged down by imaginary constraints when you've got a hundred ideas bustling around in your head.
But the moment something goes down on the page, it becomes more real.
Writing is powerful.
Of course, you may not need to do something as OTT as flinging yourself off a mountain.
For example, I once put an incredibly niche joke about UK-based sofa company, DFS, into a Creator Booth video:
I also made Justin Moore film himself hiding behind the bushes in his front yard just because I thought it’d be funny.
I even made Ali Abdaal talk about “owning a bin” in a list of his top productivity hacks. (Joke, that wasn’t me. He just loves talking about bins and nobody has figured out how to stop him yet.)
The point is:
“If you can dream it, you can write it. Once you write it, sh*t happens.”
In that vein, and to leave you on a note of inspiration, huge props to one of my community members who recently wrote a script about a pretty weird anime…
…threw it over to my students for some feedback…
…and it absolutely blew up over the holidays!
He dreamed it. He wrote it. Sh*t happened.
So… wishing you all the best with your channel this year, [FIRST NAME GOES HERE]! Don’t let any imaginary limits get in the way of making the videos you want.
Last thing before you go...
If you didn't know, I co-host a YouTube strategy podcast called "Making It"
This week we sat down to answer a bunch of your questions, including:
That's all for this week.
Any questions, just let me know!
Speak soon,
George 👋
This week, I recorded myself writing an entire YouTube script from start to finish.
And honestly? It was brutal.
It took 2hrs and 39 minutes, including time spent brainstorming the content, packaging it, and structuring + writing the whole thing almost word-for-word.
(Btw, I’m uploading the full recording to the YTSP Bonus Module next week! I'll ping you when it's ready.)
Writing a whole script in one sitting was like a crash course in the biggest scriptwriting lessons I’ve learned over the last 3 years.
So, with that in mind, here’s how to write a killer YouTube script in 2025:
I have been meaning to write my own YouTube content for months.
But it never happened.
Until, this week, I put a two-hour block in my calendar.
I set a timer… and wrote.
Technically, I failed - I had to give myself an extra 30 mins at the end to make edits.
But the time pressure forced a script out of me.
If scriptwriting felt like something you didn’t have time for in 2024…
…it will feel the same in 2025.
That is... until you make time for it.
Writing is hard, but YouTube scriptwriting is even harder.
So much of what you were taught in school is not applicable.
Writing for YouTube means learning entirely new habits.
So, to make the process less overwhelming, use proven structures and frameworks.
The problem is, if you spend time on social media, you’re barraged with endless advice from… well, people like me.
The best advice I can give is to use other people’s frameworks that resonate… but in the meantime, keep studying.
I took a huge amount of inspiration from Ed (Creator Booth / Film Booth) when learning how to write better scripts (and had the privilege of writing a few videos on his CB channel).
But having spent 3 years studying retention graphs, writing for different niches, and meeting hundreds of new creators in my course/community… my own frameworks have developed.
Now, I have frameworks for:
…and many more.
I couldn’t have written a fully word-for-word script in two hours without them.
I’m not an avid AI user, but here’s what I used during my 2.5hr scriptwriting session:
ChatGPT
Good for brainstorming video ideas, script contents and titles.
Let’s take titles:
Feed ChatGPT a bunch of proven title formats, e.g. “What your [XYZ] means for [thing you care about]”.
Then, describe the video you’re working on and ask ChatGPT to brainstorm titles for that video in the style of the proven formats.
You can also use my free GPT “ScriptHook” to make hook writing easier.
1of10
I’ve been using 1of10 for over a year, and am now proud to be partnered up with them.
They have a free Chrome extension to help you spot “outlier” videos on YouTube itself, and a paid tool (see below) where you can search for specific, high-performing videos in your niche.
(It also has AI features that will generate titles and thumbnails for your channel specifically, based on the inspiration you feed it.)
I use 1of10 for literally every idea, every script and every packaging brainstorm… and I highly recommend arming yourself with it in 2025.
Don’t lose momentum trying to find the “perfect word”.
Instead, write “blob scripts”.
Put simply, once you start writing and get into a flow state, allow yourself to skip certain words.
If pausing to think of a "fancy adjective" or the "perfect verb" is going to ruin your flow, then it's not worth it.
If you’ve got momentum, don’t lose it.
Instead, write "X" or "Y" or "[thing]" and keep writing.
Real example from a script I worked on this month:
You can always come back to those tiny gaps later.
After 60 minutes of writing, I took 10 minutes away and made myself a cup of tea.
I won’t bang on about this… you know taking breaks is essential.
Writing is mentally exhausting, so don’t push it.
Break at least once in a 2-hour stint, and come back at least 12 hours later to edit your script further.
The moment my script was written, I threw my hook over to my scriptwriting community.
Ngl… I was apprehensive about opening up the comments this morning.
But that’s the feeling you have to sit with and get used to.
Yes, it’s scary… but feedback is a gift 🎁😆
Whether they’re in your niche (or not); whether they have more subscribers than you (or fewer)… getting feedback is the fastest way to find your blind spots.
Combine a 12-hour break + feedback from peers… and your final draft will improve radically.
[As you know, you’re always welcome to share what you’re working on inside the YTSP community.]
[You can join 160+ YouTubers inside my community here, or simply find a group of peers who are willing to give honest feedback.]
It’s a superpower ✨
This is at the heart of every YouTube script.
Second-guessing every sentence often comes from a lack of clarity about who you’re “speaking to”.
If you haven't already, you can sign up to my free 5-day audience avatar building email course here.
My 2.5 hour scripting session would have taken twice as long had I not known the problems and desires of my audience.
We end with the most important point:
You do not have to write word-for-word scripts.
If doing so will kill your love for YouTube, don’t do it.
There are only three things you ought to write WFW:
Beyond that, you can use bullet points.
Yes, riffing is harder than most people expect.
And, the less written your script is, the harder it might be to film/edit.
But think of it like a dial:
Take this with a pinch of salt... your first time reading from a teleprompter or riffing will be weird and difficult (so don't give up on either approach right away).
But over time, with practice and iteration, you'll find the approach that's right for you.
YouTube is a long game, and if you want to create content consistently in 2025, you must make the process sustainable.
That's all for this... year!
Wishing you a wonderful holiday season (if that's your thing), and I'll see you in 2025 🤩
Any questions, just let me know!
Speak soon,
George 👋
When you write the first segment of your script, templatize it, then re-use the format throughout the script.
Context: check out this newsletter where I explain what I mean by script “segments”.
So, when I say “templatize” a script segment, what does this look like?
Well, I frequently talk about this 3-part segment structure:
Every segment should follow this structure.
But templatizing a segment means identifying more clearly what setup, tension, payoff looks like for the script you’re working on.
Let’s say I’m working on a video about how to build a treehouse.
Each segment of the script would probably cover a different part of the treehouse structure (wood, ropes, bolts, etc).
So let’s imagine that, in segment 1, we’re talking about “bolts”.
Instinctively, I’d think about setup, tension, payoff like this:
*This is written in a “draft” state. Of course, in the full script, this would be expanded.
So, that's segment 1.
But now I’ve put all this mental energy into establishing a segment format I like, it’s easy for me to reverse-engineer what I’ve done and create a template I can re-use throughout the video.
In this case, if I break down the format I just created, it’d look like this:
Now, I can lean on this template for each segment (if I want to).
To be clear, we don’t want the script to be dull.
Pattern interrupt is a huge part of keeping people watching, and it might seem like repeating the same format for every segment is a recipe for boredom.
But there are two reasons why this is not a problem:
Let’s quickly imagine segment 2, where we’re now talking about “ropes”.
While still relying on the templatized version of my setup ("highlight common technique problem and establish stakes"), here’s how I can easily present it in a different way:
We’ve created the same effect...
...except now we’re opening with a direct question, then showing the stakes instead of simply explaining them.
It's the same template, but we've disguised it - and created pattern interrupt in the process!
My old headmaster used to bang on about working "smarter, not harder".
He was a bit of a [REDACTED], but that advice was solid.
Little shortcuts like this will make the scriptwriting process feel way easier over time.
Scriptwriting is intrinsically tied to every other aspect of YouTube - ideation, packaging, editing, etc.
That’s why I’m delving deeper into YouTube strategy at the moment.
(I got some worried emails last time I mentioned this btw - super kind of you, but don’t worry; my focus will always be scriptwriting.)
In any case, I quizzed my strategist friends on the most important tips for growing a channel faster.
Gwilym has been Bryan Johnson's head of YouTube for ~2yrs, and Jamie has produced for Ali Abdaal and Gordon Ramsay.
Check out the conversation:
That's all for this week.
Any questions, just let me know!
Speak soon,
George 👋
Join 4,000+ scriptwriting nerds reading “Write On Time”. Insights from writing for multi-million subscriber YouTubers sent to your inbox every Friday.