Transcription
If you're posting consistently, but you're not getting the results that you're looking for, and you're starting to feel some content fatigue, it is not because you don't care. It's because you don't have a narrative engine yet. So, let's fix that.
Welcome to the first episode of Start Your Story, a series where I break down the foundations of episodic storytelling so you can build a bingeworthy brand. Hi, I'm Darren. I'm a Writer's Guild Award-winning producer and creator who got her start right here on YouTube. And now I want to help you go from feeling stuck and scattered to a strategic storyteller, which I know sounds kind of fancy, but all it really means is learning how to tell a story that people want to watch.
The goal of this series is to help you unlock your core narrative so that you can connect emotionally with your audience and gain clarity on what your content is really about. And now remember, data often drives action. So it'll drive click-through rates. It'll drive people to make purchases. But story is what drives connection. It's what drives your attention. You may actually not have a content problem. What you have is a narrative gap.
So what is the difference? Content is quantitative. It's the components. It's what most YouTube channels talk about, right? They talk about the thumbnail, they talk about the title, they talk about the hook. These are all components. These are quantitative things. That is content. Narrative, on the other hand, is qualitative. It's the overarching story. It's your character. It's your purpose.
Now, people don't binge content because it is so much better than yours. They binge content because it's going somewhere and they want to see where it goes. Or they want to go there, too. That happens a lot. They're watching where you're going and they want to go there, too. You need a story that has conflict, that has emotion and is repeatable because we have to make a lot of content on YouTube, right? That is episodic storytelling.
Now, what is episodic storytelling? Episodic storytelling is a narrative format that people can drop into in any episode and be able to watch it. Each episode is a contained story or they can watch it as a whole. Some examples of episodic storytelling is Law and Order. Anybody that's watched an episode of Law and Order and then 10 hours later realize that they haven't left their couch will understand what I'm talking about. With Law and Order, you can jump in at any episode. There's a mystery every episode that gets solved. You do not need to know anything about the characters and you can still enjoy that episode, but you also can enjoy the whole series. So, you know, something like Law and Order SVU, you become invested in Olivia Benson and you are invested in her story arc across the whole series, right? So, it's a show that invites you to binge it.
Now, this is different than serialized storytelling. Serialized storytelling is meant to be watched in a specific order. So you watch episode one, you need to watch episode one to understand what's happening in episode two. You need to watch episode one and two to understand what's happening in episode three. That's serialized storytelling. Episodic storytelling, you could watch episode 8 and still enjoy it.
So why is episodic storytelling such a great approach for YouTube? Well, because YouTube is kind of crazy. It is a search engine. It is also a social media platform. And it is also a TV streaming service. In fact, it is the number one TV streaming service. It is ahead of Netflix. So, people are watching videos in multiple different ways because it is a search engine and a social media platform. You don't know which video is going to pop up in someone's feed. But it's also a TV streaming service, which means that people are watching content on the YouTube TV app. And there's a very specific viewing experience, viewing behavior for TV. People watch longer. They binge watch. And so you have to figure out a format of content that's going to work for both of those viewing experiences.
This is not about just getting people to click. It's about getting them to step. And if you're someone who never saw yourself as the story, but you do want to help people, I get it. I am a behind-the-scenes person myself. So, I do know what it's like to be more comfortable shaping other people's stories than your own. But here is the thing. The more clearly that you shape your story, the easier it becomes to connect and to grow your audience and to create with purpose.
Also would invite you to join my new free community on school. It's called the storytelling room. You'll find a very active community of other creators that are all there to support one another. And I really wanted to create a place where creators could get feedback on on videos that they're working on, on their thumbnails and their titles. So, it's a great and supportive place to get feedback from not just me, but from your peers. I just started it and the community has been really active. There's been a lot of great conversations on the community already. So, I invite you to join. I will put that link also in my description.
So, what is the foundation for building an episodic story on YouTube? First, you need a compelling leading character. That compelling leading character should have a compelling backstory. There's usually some sort of inciting incident. And what I mean by that is that there's something that happens that causes that character to change, causes them to change their life, to change their thinking. It could be that they lost their job. It could be that they're going through a divorce. It could be that they lost someone important in their life, but something that's causing them to change. Then there's usually some sort of ongoing big conflict, some big overarching conflict that they're going to be battling episode after episode after episode. And then there are repeating problems that can be resolved in a self-contained episode. And then there's usually some kind of special connection or what I'm calling a special connection. Some some sort of special sauce, special quirk, something special and unique about that particular series that makes you want to keep watching.
So for an example, we have Nancy Drew. She's a teen girl who solves mysteries. What is her backstory? Her backstory is that her mom died and her dad is often out of town, so she's left alone on her own. What is the inciting incident? Some sort of mystery happens. Right? That's Nancy Drew. Some mystery happens that she's got to solve. Then what is the ongoing conflict? Well, she's on her own. She's a teenage girl and she's got to be very resourceful to solve it, right? That's the central conflict of the Nancy Drew series. What is the uh repeating problems that are going to happen? Well, this town has a lot of mysteries, so there's going to be mystery after mystery after mystery happening, right? And then the special connection is that she's a teenage girl and there's other teenage girls and pre-teen girls and younger girls that relate to her that also feel very resourceful or interested in mystery and solving things and they connect with her. So that is Nancy Drew.
Let's talk about YouTube. Alexa Saranoa is someone that I use a lot as an example because she has a great story and her story is that she is a mom of three. Her backstory is that she lost her job unexpectedly and then she her inciting incident is that she needed to get monetized on YouTube as soon as possible. Right? She lost her income. She's got three kids. She's got to make money quickly. So that's the inciting incident. Her getting on YouTube and hustling. Then what was her ongoing conflict? Well, her ongoing conflict is that she's got to make a living and she's got to support her family. And she had a lot of determination to do that. a lot of grit and determination. Anyone that's followed her has watched that happen. What is the uh repeating problems on her channel? Well, she has to constantly master YouTube and the changes of YouTube. And what is the special connection on her channel? Well, people relate to her. Even if they're not a mom, um they relate to her. They feel like she's attainable. what her what she went through makes it seem possible that they could have that kind of journey on YouTube as well. Now, I doubt that she went into this saying I am making episodic storytelling, but if you look at her content and the storytelling on her content, you realize that is exactly what she was doing. And I think that was a big piece of why she had so much growth so fast. People really connected to her story.
And then there is me. And I decided to do me. This is very painful. So, we'll see how this goes. Um, who am I? I am a type A content producer. I am usually behind the scenes, right? And what is my backstory? My backstory is actually that I was kind of unhappy in my career and I took a pretty big career risk. where I walked away from a big client of mine and that meant that I really needed to rethink my strategy in order to grow my business and I realized that I had to do probably the one thing that I really did not want to do which was to become a personal brand because that was going to be the the most powerful way for me to build my content business. And so what's my ongoing conflict? The ongoing conflict is that I'm growing a content business as a reluctant personal brand. What is the repeating problems on my channel? Well, we're in a new era of YouTube. We're in a new era of social media. Storytelling has changed and people need to con be rethinking their content in this new era. So, that's a repeating series of problems that I deal with in my content. What's the special connection? I think the special connection is probably story telling maybe the reluctancy to be a personal brand or the awkwardness of being a personal brand. Maybe you're a behind-the-scenes person. Some of those things may come into play. But I I think the core special connection in my case is storytelling.
Okay. But you're not sure what your story is. The truth is you don't have to be a professional screenwriter. I know I am a professional screenwriter and sometimes I talk in, you know, terms that are screenwritery, but the truth is that on YouTube, you do not need to be a professional screenwriter. But what you do need is to think like a showrunner. A showrunner in television is the person running the show. It's pretty straightforward, but they're sometimes they're the headwriter, but sometimes they're not. They're they're the person running the show, and that's you. You're running the show on your channel. So, you need to think like a showrunner with an episodic framework that allows viewers to drop into any video and get a solution to a specific problem in that video. But they also need to be intrigued by the central conflict on your channel and have an emotional connection to you so that they keep watching.
So, I'm popping this back on the screen again. And this is the YouTube channel narrative framework. What I want you to do is I want you to write these things down. Compelling leading character, compelling backstory, inciting incident, ongoing big conflict, repeating problems, and the special connection. And this is your homework. I want you to look at your channel and I want you to figure out each one of those things for your channel. So, how are you a compelling leading character? What is your compelling backstory? And again, I have a video and a template for figuring out your backstory. What is an inciting incident in your life that caused you to make a change? The change should be connected to whatever is the ongoing big conflict on your channel. What are some repeating problems that you can delve into in different videos on your channel? And what is the special connection that you have with your viewer? And in the next video, I'm going to break down four episodic channel narratives that work again and again on YouTube so that you can take the work that you're doing right now and apply it into one of these four channel narratives. So until next time, keep creating and I will see you soon.