How To Vlog and Be a Better Storyteller

story story story story storytelling is super important to be able to create videos that are engaging so that someone wants to continue watching our attention is divided up between all of these different social media accounts and everything else that's going on in the world so you really don't have a whole lot of time to be able to grab someone's attention and keep them engaged with your content for a long period of time now storytelling will help you actually keep the viewer engaged and keep them watching and in this video i'm going to give you five

ways that you can actually improve your storytelling instead of just giving you a breakdown of what story is and structure of story these techniques will actually help you become a better storyteller so that when you approach a situation you're gonna know okay this is what i need to do to be able to tell the story and create an engaging video now before we get into number one i just wanna mention that this is part of a series that i'm gonna do all around storytelling i'm gonna break down different aspects around storytelling so if you're part

of the 86 percent of you that aren't subscribed to the channel make sure you hit that subscribe button and turn on the bell notifications so that you don't miss when i release the next video in the series so number one is to actually tell more stories now this may seem obvious but to become a good storyteller you have to tell more stories and i mean just in everything that you're doing so if you're talking to your friends or your family about a hike that you did last week put it in the context of a story

and actually apply all the rules of storytelling to be able to make it engaging and more interesting so let me give you a quick example from a hike here's what you shouldn't do so last week i did this awesome hike with my buddy we went up to the top of this mountain and it had like the best view ever that's not really a story it's not that engaging there's not a whole lot of context there's nothing really going on when it comes to what you're talking about you're just giving some facts around something cool that

happened and you're not really diving into the story element so let's let's rephrase that and put it in the context of a story so last week i had a super long shoot up in la it was five days i was in a studio from morning until like five o'clock at night and my buddy jesse was also on the shoot with me every night we'd get done shooting and we'd see this mountain off in the distance like in la there's actually some mountains surrounding the city and in the location that we're at we could see the

peaks off in the distance and after being in a studio for long days both of us just wanted to get outside and just be in nature so on lunch during one of the shoot days we were looking at all trails and just trying to find some good hikes in the area to go explore and we found a trail that was like 10 minutes away from the studio and this is perfect because you know the time of year that we were shooting we only had like an hour of daylight left by the time we were gonna

be wrapped so we had very limited amount of time that we could get out and go hiking before the sun set now this hike wasn't a super easy hike it was about a 1800 foot elevation gain over the course of a couple miles so really we were just going straight up this mountain both of us weren't really prepared we just started the trail and started going up and we were pushing ourselves to try and get to the summit because the sun was setting off in the distance we didn't really have that much time but just

as the sun was dipping towards the horizon we made it to the summit and on the top of that mountain was one of the best views that we've seen of la this mountain was positioned in the perfect place to be able to see downtown off in the distance and all the way down the valley the other direction it was an incredible view and we got to see it right at sunset with all the lights turning on in the city so the next day when we're on set we jumped on all trails and we found a

different hike and every day that i was in la we hiked a different trail to catch sunset from this amazing viewpoint now there was definitely a lot more that went into the second story example here but it's more of an engaging story and that's what you want to create so to be a better storyteller you just need to be telling more stories like this when you have an experience or you're doing something that's really cool and you want to tell your friends or your family try to put it in the context of a story and

see how they respond and see how you can tweak that story tell someone else and see if you can make it more engaging with the way that you tell it [Music] number two is build a structure and outline your stories and it's easy to craft once you just know what beats you need to hit so number one is just giving some history and setup so when you're going to tell a story you want to give some context so the viewer is with you in this moment they you want to put them in the scene you

want them to feel like they know what's going on because if you don't give any context you don't give any history or setup to the story that you're going to tell then someone's not going to be as engaged because they don't really know what's going on so the big key here is you want to set the scene and this could be as simple as just giving a quick context of what's going on or it could be something longer where somebody needs a history and they need to know a bunch of different bits of information to

be able to follow along on the journey now the second thing you need to establish is the challenge so what's your goal and what are you up against to be able to reach that goal that's an easy way to think about it so with my little hiking example we wanted to get to the summit of this mountain but we're up against time because the sun was going to set within an hour so time is a great way to set a challenge if you only have so much time to do something that is a challenge you

only have this amount of time to finish something and you'll see this time and time again in youtube videos challenges are great when it's a 24-hour challenge or a hour challenge there's so much story built into that structure because you have to try and finish what you're doing by the end of the time period and your audience is going to want to know well are you going to be able to finish it in that time period it peaks the curiosity of somebody who's watching your video and they want to see if you actually follow through

or make it to your goal recently i did a video where i was over landing with my buddy on the pony express and one of the things that i was up against was i only had three days to do this trip and instead of just like showing you the trip i set up this time crunch and it became a challenge that was a through line for the entire video every time we ran into a roadblock of some kind it would put us back and we would get further away from our goal which we only had

so much time to achieve the key thing here is you want to set a challenge something that you're up against that's going to make it harder to be able to reach your goal now number three is complications so what are different beats that happen along your journey that push you back away from your goal so this is just the little story beats throughout the video that push you further away or bring you closer so as you're telling a story you want to have things pop up that will pull you away from actually achieving what you're

going out there to get so as the journey of your story goes through your video you want to show challenges you want to show things that are pushing you away from your goal and that's different complications now these can be things that you could set up when you're crafting a story or outlining it but there are also things that naturally will happen and that's the beauty of vlogging or creating youtube videos or adventure films whatever it is that you create is that when you actually go through the process very rarely does everything happen as planned

and when you're telling a story you'll start noticing that these different complications will happen and you'll spend a little bit of time actually filming them so that they can become elements within your story number four when it comes to structure is the payoff did you achieve your goal did you not or is it kind of just somewhere in the middle you want to have a resolution to your story and you want to know what that element is because you set that up at the beginning so stories are very structured in that you set everything up

in the beginning you go through this journey and then you either achieve your goal or you don't and then the fifth part of the structure is how did this change you now when you're watching a film or you're reading a book there's usually a big profound change that happens with the main character when you're creating youtube videos or you're vlogging like there's not going to be these massive changes once in a while maybe but you still want to look for some sort of change after you went on this journey and you reached your goal or

you didn't reach your goal how did it make you feel because your audience is on this journey with you and they want to see how this journey affected you at the end of it or your main character now i know this seems like a lot to think about just for a simple vlog or youtube video but when you watch the big creators on the platform you'll see this story structure time and time again so let's just break down one of mr beast's videos real quick and you can see how he integrates the story structure into

everything that he does and there's a reason that his videos have a ton of engagement and people want to follow along so he did a video titled i got hunted by a real bounty hunter so in this video he starts right at the beginning with the setup so that you know what's about to happen this is a professional bounty hunter and if he successfully hunts me down he gets 100 000 he has until midnight to steal this backpack from me and all i gave them was a knife this is going to be the craziest chase

ever i have a helicopter lined up a dozen cars i have everything he is not hunting me down you in immediately he tells you the goal of the video and he tells you the challenge and this is something with creating youtube videos is you have to make these story beats happen much faster to get someone into your story so that they actually want to be engaged mr beast is a master of this because he does it so quick within the first 30 seconds of a mr beast video he's gonna give you all the setup the

context and the challenge and he does this in such a way where you're up to speed and you're ready to go on this journey with him so right at the beginning he gives you exactly what's going to happen in this video there's a bounty hunter he's chasing him and he has all these different obstacles set up to try and escape this bounty hunter now this hero's journey actually focuses more on the bounty hunter because you want to see mr beast get caught and you want this bounty hunter to win a hundred thousand dollars so the

complications throughout this video are the different obstacles that mr beast has set up to try and trick the bounty hunter from actually capturing mr beast and there's a ton of them in this video and you want to see whether mr beast is going to escape or if this bounty hunter is going to catch him now the payoff at the end of the video the climax the ending scene is that the bounty hunter does capture him and what is the change well watch this clip get to it i got a young child at home and this

money sets him up this is his college fund changes my life thank you so much and mr beast included this clip because this was the change that happened when the bounty hunter was able to capture mr beast so go watch any of mr beast's video and think about story structure when you're watching them you'll see these different beats happen in most of his content go to another channel like yes theory you'll see the same structure happen again story structure is super important to be able to keep your viewer engaged and keep them on the journey

with you number three to become a better storyteller is consume more stories and less tutorials now understanding how your camera works learning how to shoot cinematic b-roll all of these things are great and they're aspects around creating interesting videos to watch but really story is more important so if you spend all your time consuming tutorials and how-to videos and no time-consuming story then you're not really going to be seeing story in action one of the keys to becoming a better storyteller is to watch more stories consume more stories and see how the structure actually works

for that video or that book or that podcast wherever you're engaging with the story stories can come in all forms so you want to consume more of that kind of content and you want to be more observant you don't want to just sit there and be entertained by it you actually want to think through all the elements that we've been talking about in this video and how they apply to that specific story that you're watching and this brings me into step four to be a better storyteller and that is actually go through the process of

writing down structure for the stories that you are consuming so take the five steps that i gave you in step two and actually apply it to the stories that you're watching or reading and write down these different beats now in the description i'll include a pdf that you can download that just gives you these story beats and you could just fill out what each of them is when you're actually watching a video and start doing this more often like when you're watching a video enjoy it watch the video experience it but then take a step

back and look over the sheet and say okay what was the challenge what was the setup how'd this creator get me into the story and make me want to keep watching you also want to look for when stories don't do this and if they actually fall short so if you're watching a video and there is no structure to it are you engaged with that story do you want to keep watching it and if you are still interested in watching that video why is it just because you enjoy the content or is there something else going

on that's keeping you engaged most the time you'll find that the stories that keep you the most engaged and the ones that want to keep you watching longer to the end of a video are ones that have story baked into them and the more that you could see this and the more that you can pick out these different elements the easier it's going to be to start crafting your own stories in your videos now tip 5 for being a better storyteller is actually become a visual storyteller so if you're creating vlogs or you're creating videos

here on youtube it's a visual medium we're creating videos we're not just telling stories so you want to start applying these different elements that we've been talking about setup challenges complications resolution and payoff and you want to start thinking how can i tell this using visuals now in vlogs a lot of times we like to just talk to the camera but a lot of times it's better to actually show what's happening rather than just telling an exercise that i do is try to just tell visual stories and yeah you're not going to have the same

like complications and challenges and things like that that you might have with a bigger vlog but if you're just doing quick visual stories you want to set up the scene you want to take someone on the journey and then you want to have some sort of payoff so for example i'll go to the park with my family and i'll try to tell the story just with some quick visuals so i'll set up what's happening i'll take the viewer on the journey and then try to show some sort of payoff or ending and so like this

quick little video is my wife taking my daughter to the park and just showing how excited my daughter gets when she likes to go on the swing and instead of just filming like one shot you know family style with your iphone actually take your camera and try to tell it visually so try to capture different things that are happening within that moment try to use wide shots close-ups mediums become a storyteller with the way that you shoot and try to take someone on a journey from the beginning to the end to become a good storyteller

it just takes continual practice it's something that is going to be evolving for you and you're going to find different strategies or techniques that work better for the content that you're producing so don't get down on yourself if your story's not super exciting take every opportunity to try and tell more stories and try to infuse this kind of structure into the videos that you're creating if you're just someone who's shooting vlogs of your day try to set up a goal for that try to set up some challenges to be able to get you to that

goal and try to set up complications so instead of just turning on the camera and just shooting whatever happens think through what is the goal what is the objective and what are some things that are going to stand in your way to be able to achieve that goal and even if it's quick and you just do some notes in your notepad putting more emphasis in creating this structure is going to help you make better videos that are more engaging and more people are going to want to watch them now next i highly suggest you check

out this video right here it goes through storytelling structure but also shooting editing and how it all comes together in an edit to tell a story while you're vlogging all right guys i'll see you over there