How to script a storytime video for a brand

Why is a storytime a format and not a topic?

A storytime is a format because its shape stays the same whatever the story is about. You drop the viewer into the middle of an event, walk through what happened, reach the moment things changed, and land the point. The story can be about a missed train or a ruined sweater; the structure underneath doesn't move. What a video format is explains why that structure, not the story, is the part that carries over from one brand to the next.

That also tells you what the brand is buying. They aren't buying your anecdote. They are buying a shape viewers already know how to watch, with their product placed where the shape expects a change.

What does a storytime beat map look like?

Every storytime you script for a brand fits the same five rows before a word of dialogue exists. Fill these in first, in one line each.

The setup earns its own row here because storytimes need it more than most formats. A viewer can follow a demo with no context. They can't follow a story without knowing where they are.

Where the story turns into the product

The product belongs at the moment the story needed something and got it. That is the turn, and a storytime has exactly one. Before it, the product doesn't exist in the video. After it, the story is about what changed, not about the product's features.

Find the moment by naming the problem in your story. If the story is about getting caught in a downpour on the way to an interview, the turn is the moment you stayed dry, and the product is whatever kept you dry. If you can't point to a moment where the product changed how the story went, this is the wrong story for this brand. Pick another story rather than bending this one to fit.

Name the product once, at the turn, in a sentence a person would actually say to a friend. “I had that rain jacket stuffed in my bag” sounds like a story. “That's when I discovered…” sounds like an ad that knows it's an ad.

The story also has to be yours. Storytime is the format where an invented event is easiest to spot, because made-up details never quite fit together. It is the first mistake listed in the UGC script template, and in this format it costs the most.

How much backstory should you cut?

Cut all the backstory the turn doesn't depend on. Read your first draft and underline every sentence that happens before the hook's event. Most of it can go. The viewer doesn't need how long you've lived in the city, what the job was, or that you nearly didn't go. They need the one fact that makes the turn land.

A quick way to find that fact: tell the story out loud in three sentences to someone who wasn't there. Whatever you had to explain to make those sentences make sense is your setup. Everything else you wanted to say was for you, not for the viewer.

Why do storytime scripts fall apart?

The failure specific to storytime is a story that stops being a story at the turn. The creator tells a good event for three beats, then the voice changes, the framing changes, and the last stretch is a product description read in a different register. Viewers feel the gear change, because the first half taught them to expect a story all the way through.

Keep the turn inside the story's tense and tone. If the beats are told in the past tense, fast and a little breathless, the turn is too. The close can step out into the present, as in “so now it lives in my bag”, because that is where a story told to a friend naturally ends.

An example storytime script

This script follows the beat map above. Film it only if the story, or one shaped like it, actually happened to you.

1. hooksay: “I walked into a job interview bone dry, and everyone else in that waiting room was soaked.”do: Parked car, still in interview clothes, phone propped on the dashboard.
2. setupsay: “It was raining sideways, and the office was a ten-minute walk from the station.”do: Glance out at the rain on the windscreen, then back at the lens.
3. beat 1say: “Everyone off my train just ran for it with their bags over their heads.”do: Hold your bag over your head for a second, deadpan.
4. beat 2say: “I was standing under the station roof trying to decide if I was running too.”do: Lean in closer to the camera.
5. turnsay: “Then I remembered the rain jacket I'd shoved in the front pocket of this bag weeks ago.”do: Unzip the pocket and pull the jacket out, still folded into its own pouch.
6. closesay: “Walked in dry. It is never leaving that pocket.”do: Push it back into the pocket, zip it shut, look back at the lens.

Notice that the product is never described. The story shows what it did, once, and the close says where it lives now. That is as much product as a storytime can hold before it turns into a different format.