How to Master the Art of YouTube Storytelling

kind of story applies to never hard like important to surprise your audience there is a lost art to YouTube storytelling we all know that feeling of being sucked into a video so invested that nothing could take us away well that feeling is not created by accident it looks like this and whether you make talking head videos challenges or cinematic masterpieces you cannot ignore it because when you understand story it will allow you to make a real impact on the viewer building a relationship between you that is hard to break and this relationship is your most

powerful tool on YouTube it's what will allow you to start a channel so good that your viewers will literally share it with their friends and in today's video I'm going to show you exactly how story works so that you can make better videos that not only go viral but make people feel something now everyone props up the word story on some pedestal like it's some magic thing that you need to put in your videos but story is not just this diagram that they teach you in high school English class it's not a fill-in-the blank process

and there are a million ways to tell them check out this 15-second sequence by Mr Beast the video shows that they're on the first hour of the challenge and then the story starts they first need to build a shelter then he reveals how he will build the shelter then he sets the stakes of the building because it will be dark soon and therefore it makes you so much more invested because they're on a time crunch but it gets even more intense because it's about to storm so they quickly build a shelter and then show you

the entire process of doing it this is extremely simple but it's storytelling Mastery Jimmy understands that story is a flow of information that makes a viewer feel or understand something he shows them both what is happening in real time and makes them feel unsure about the future teasing that it will rain and I'm about to show you how this key YouTube principle actually works so you can copy it and have viewers glued to your videos this is a river and imagine there is someone right here right now he is drowning but if we add Stepping

Stones then he'll be able to walk down the river without a problem now these stepping stones are exact L what you say and what you show in your videos for example this one could be you talking about the concept or what you're currently doing this could be you showing a b-roll shot of yourself going to another location this one could be you at that location sharing a piece about your life this could be another shot of you going to another location and then so on and so on when this happens the viewer will be able

to seamlessly jump from stepping stone to Stepping Stone without falling in the river however if you forget a piece of your video If You Forget to show how you got to a certain location if you forget to film at a certain location that you said you were going to the viewer is going to get lost and they are going to fall in the river this is your viewer drowning and that's exactly what you don't want now these Stepping Stones could be a lot of things they could be b-roll they could be talking head they could

even be the music in your videos text animations really any element that you can add that helps the view or understand what's going on because the human brain processes things like one one one one 1 one the human brain does not go 1 to five you have to take it step by step or else it's going to get extremely lost and when a viewer becomes lost they no longer want to stay on the video because that feeling makes them unsatisfied and anxious and no one wants to feel like that especially while watching a YouTube video

so as the viewer is jumping from Stone to Stone your job as the Storyteller is to make them not fall in give them a clear path that they can follow to get to the end of the river so if you don't keep this in mind the viewer will get swept down the river and get lost because all the information wasn't in order but if you can create your story in a way where the fewer understands what's going on they clearly know exactly what the feeling is they know exactly what scene they're in they know where

the next scene could be and they see the process of getting to that next scene your viewer is going to be way more satisfied and your retention is going to go way up now everything is working against your story think of it like gravity pulling it down it's our job as creators to push it back up and keep it there by using the three storytelling elements because once you understand what they are and how they work you'll be able to make your viewers so much more invested in your videos which will lead to you making

a real impact on them and then they'll turn into a loyal subscriber for Life the first of these storytelling elements is just words I mean what you say is the backbone of your video so just like Mr Beast if you need to build a shelter then say that or if you're teaching someone about the latest iPhone then talk about each new future the next element of an engaging story is your visuals Mr P doesn't say oh I'm going to go build a shelter and then it cuts to him being done with the shelter he shows

him actually building it and that comes back to one of the most important YouTube principles show don't tell you shouldn't just talk about the new iPhone future show it in use the third is sound during and after you film if you're making a travel film recording the train audio saying next stop shabuya station is a great way to advance the story through audio not to mention adding sound effects on your videos to make them more engaging now none of these elements on their own are special but when you put them together you create a mosaic

of elements that bring the viewer into your world creating a simple linear path for your viewers to follow and not get swept down the river but like I said having words visuals and sounds alone does not make a good story you need to learn how to put them together to create some sort of Journey and once you understand how to take your viewer from beginning to end or from seeking information to understanding information you will never have to worry about views on YouTube again because your content will be so good that people can't help but

watch and the way to do this is called Forward Motion the information that you present pushes the story to its next step now I want you to listen to the story I got up at 6:00 a.m. and I did one last check in my bag to make sure I hadn't forgotten anything for my big Argentina trip I hopped in the car arrived at the airport and then hugged my parents goodbye I thought to myself this is my first big trip outside of the country I am so excited we boarded the plane and took off without

any problems but all of a sudden I heard a gigantic boom and the plane started shaking everyone around me was dead silent frantically looking around at each other I raised up my window shade and looked out in Terror as I saw an orange glow coming from the plane engine if you're anything like me you want to know what happens next in that story The reason why you feel that way is due to forward motion so the first thing we did in that story is just get up right that's the first step that's initiating the Forward

Motion in the story so you got up you packed your stuff you're giving them a step-by-step explanation of what is happening and again it doesn't just come down to what you're doing like for example when I said I'm so excited like we went to the airport and I hugged my parents goodbye and I thought oh my God I'm so excited for my first Argentina trip that is also a piece of Forward Motion because you're helping the viewer understand what thoughts are in that person's head what they're feeling and that's part of the entire experience right

next we do very textbook Forward Motion where the plane takes off that's the next step and then we hear that everything's going good but suddenly something happens right it's still Forward Motion it's forward motion and then we're introducing something called tension which we'll talk about later but again as I raise the window shade just forward motion I'm just moving the story forward one step at a time now let's take a look at this story without any Forward Motion I got up at 6:00 a.m. I went in the car I went in the airport and hugged

my parents I'm excited the plane took off the plane caught on fire I was scared the story is so much more boring there's no Forward Motion we're not putting any and then this happened but I was feeling this way and then I did this thing you know it it's just like I took off I went to the airport the plane caught on fire right there's there's no tension there's no Stakes there's nothing in there the only thing in there is just like what you're doing and forward motion counteracts that because you're basically laying out how

you got to that place like I hopped in the car you know I was really excited you're you're there's a lot of elements to it it's not just oh I went to the airport it's I hopped in the car I'm feeling super excited my parents are nervous I'm feeling anxious but excited for my first ever international trip right there's just a lot more detail in there and once you understand this concept it's going to help you so so much because it'll allow you to make your videos actually entertaining cuz a lot of people when they're

doing like tech reviews or informational videos they're just like the iPhone has this future and then it has this future whereas if you say you know the iPhone has this future and I'm getting so excited about it because this thing was not around last year but now we can do this thing because of this thing and guess what it even has a crazier future right so it just is it has more emotion it has more excitement has more forward motion has a bit of everything but let me show you how this actually looks on a

YouTube video because it is one of the most important parts of telling a story when a story moves forward people become interested and once you understand how everyday people are using forward motion to make their stories more engaging it'll be much easier for you to replicate it and blow up let's look at one of the best storytellers on YouTube life of Frieza her video all you have to do is start is a master class on Forward Motion butting my time away living like a recluse I at least managed to document a few things I read

a few books I turned another year older made time for some hobbies and went out into the world for a bit this is all Forward Motion she is progressing the story by showing what she's been doing over the last few months and she doesn't only say it but she shows it this keeps the viewer engaged as they are getting context for the rest of the video Simply adding in words shots b-roll and music showing a forward progression is the basic fundamental to any story but this alone can get boring what you need is to catch

a plane engine on fire the reason why my first story was engaging was because I added tension and if you can properly add this in your videos it will keep your viewers hooked and your retention graphs looking like this and now we are going to look at one of the most powerful Concepts on YouTube called tension and without this your videos are nothing I use this all the time in my own stuff and on all my client stuff and it essentially makes the viewers addicted to your videos it keeps them watching and it's just a

Powerhouse for retention so what is tension let's go over it so tension is essentially the feeling that you create when you create uncertainty and add Stakes so what is a stake a stake is the cost of not achieving something so if I don't achieve this then I'll have to do this if I don't win the challenge then I have to lose 100K so Mr Beast does this extremely well for example in all of his videos he'll be like you either have to do this Challenge and if you don't do it you're going to lose hundreds

of thousands if not millions of dollars for example if you look at Mac in the most recent series he lost $800,000 two times and those were some of Mr BEAST's best videos because the tension was so high if he didn't complete the challenge which he didn't he was going to lose 800k and that actually happened twice but it made for the third video where he won the $800,000 so much better because Mack had been working for it the tension was high because the stakes were so so high he was on his last chance Mr Beast

gave him three chances if he didn't do it in three he was not going to get to try again so that is what a stake is that could also be if you do a fitness video losing 20 lbs in 100 days if I don't do it I'll have to you know pay my sister $10,000 another example is going without social media for 30 days and every time you go on social media you would have to take an ice bath right so that's creating stakes and it's super important for you guys to think about how you

can add this into your videos because without it the viewer has less of a reason to stick around because whether you win or lose especially in challenge formats if there's no stake it doesn't mean anything but how can you incorporate this in educational videos well when I tell you guys about certain Concepts on YouTube for example tension if you don't use it in your videos it's going to be a lot harder for you to get views that is a stake that is me adding a stake into this video you know if you guys don't use

this it's true you're not going to get as many views as if you do what that does when I say that is it puts it in your mind that okay I need to pay attention and I need to listen to this because there is a big stake at hand you know when I talk about title and thumbnails if you don't have a good title and thumbnail you're not going to get views you're not going to get the views that you really deserve you put all this hard work into a YouTube video and then you don't

really have anything to show for it if your simple title and thumbnail doesn't work right so that's a stake that I create or if we were talking about an investing Channel you know if you don't understand this concept about investing it's going to literally lose you hundreds of thousands of dollars right if a YouTuber said that you would probably listen cuz $100,000 is a lot of money for example in that airplane story it was just way more interesting because there was a stake at hand because there was tension we added that the plane caught on

fire and obviously with that there's a big stake of you dying right that's not good so you want to know what happens you want to know if that person survives because naturally we want to resolve tension so once you create tension it has to be resolved down the line but what you do is you resolve that tension at the end of your video and that allows you to keep the viewer watching throughout the whole thing another really good example tension is iPhone versus Android now people have tied their identities to these things so that means

if the Android is better than the iPhone then iPhone people are going to lose it they're going to be like damn that sucks and Android people are going to be like let's go that's what I want right and if it's the other way around then the iPhone people would be like dang that's sick I knew I was right and the Android people are going to be like dang and that creates tension and that's why we like to watch sports by the way for example we have one team that we love that we're like dang let's

win it let's do it and then when you win it's great like you're super happy for your team but when you lose you're like dang we watch it either way though and the reason for that is because it creates tension we don't know the outcome and we want to know the outcome and because tension means that Stakes are high and people are engaged what you can do is when you resolve that tension you can put in what you're really trying to say for example this is exactly what yes Theory does they have a really positive

message about saying yes to strangers but what they do how they get that message across is they go skydiving with strangers now for one there's that tension when they're asking the stranger being like hey like you know do you want to come skydiving that creates tension because you know most people are not confident enough to go out and ask a stranger right it's just a weird thing to do and they're like okay are these guys going to be okay like is is going to be like super cringe I don't know but once they get that

person and then the stakes become on the stranger itself he's like no he's scared they're building up to this big jump and finally at the climax when the tension is resolved when they jump out of the plane and they land on the ground they insert that message of like if you didn't say yes to this you would not have lived this crazy and fulfilling experience and that's where they hide their message right after that tension right in the maximum climax of that tension and that's where you should put your message as well that's a way

to hide your vegetables hide what you really want to say to people and tell it to them when they're most engaged an example with that airplane story that we were talking about if that person sprung into action saved a lot of people you could insert the lesson to be brave be a brave person right and once they've saved everyone that's the perfect time to slip that in there because obviously we want more brave people in this world right and that's where you can essentially get your message across and one of the most famous YouTubers does

this perfectly you see Casey never directly talks about the bike Lanes if it was a simple sit down talking head video complaining about the bike Lanes in New York City it probably would have only gotten a couple hundred views but because he showed the problem by crashing into all these different obstacles blocking his way the point was made much stronger this is the whole idea of of Ernest Hemingway's Iceberg Theory and he used it to write some of the best stories of the last 100 years here's how it works this is your story this is

what you say and this is what you don't say this is a concept by one of the greatest writers of all time Ernest Hemingway and all of the best YouTubers use it the reason why they do this is because viewer attention spans are so low so to get a big message across you only have a little bit of time and a lot of the big YouTubers that I am close with do this on every single video for example Mr Beast he has multiple terabytes of footage for every single video that he makes he has thousands

of hours of content for each video but you only see 20 minutes of it why is that it's because viewer attention spans are so low how much can you cut out of your video and still have it make sense that is exactly what you need to focus on if you want people to stay for example on a lot of my videos I film for way longer than you actually see all these whiteboard sections obviously I script out my stuff too but in my script I'll go through and I'll cut out like 5 minutes before I

even start recording and then I'll tell my editor I'll be like hey if you see any points that need to be cut out just cut them don't ask me if you think that it needs to be cut just cut it and if the video still works without that section in there then that means that you have made a positive change to the video now obviously there's Nuance this you should definitely add more stuff than just the bare minimum but really be very picky about what you add in your videos and try to cut it down

by a ton if you look at Joe faser a fitness YouTuber his videos he'll go to an entire country he'll film hundreds of hours of content where he you know tries like the world's best gem cheapest gym all of that stuff and then he'll cut that down to like 3 or 4 minutes if you look at David DOI back in the day he would cut down all of his Vlogs to 4 minutes even though he was traveling with friends for like weeks had so much good content that a lot of people would have watched but

he cut so much of it out because he just wanted the best of the best in there and that's exactly why he did so well so if you have any section in your video that you can cut it and still have the video make sense and still have the video get your point across then do it but how does this actually apply to your YouTube scripts and how can you implement this to get a ton more views Let's do an example from an education Channel talking about the newest Tech Marquez brownley does this beautifully if

you look closely Marcus doesn't say that everyday drivers are being careless by taking videos of the Cyber truck he also doesn't mention that if people are recording with their phones they're much more likely to crash he simply shows that happening and then lets the viewer make his own conclusion it all goes back to the principal show don't tell and it really helps him not repeat himself which is one of the biggest mistakes that I see beginners making he just shows it and then moves on and this is just one of the principles that you need

to make viral videos and tell amazing stories but I can't fit all of them into this 10 to 20 minute YouTube video so that's why I made a free YouTube course with over 12 hours of content showing you everything that you need to know to grow from 0 to 100,000 subscribers in 2024 we give away everything that you need to know to grow a massive YouTube channel for free and we even have a whole module on storytelling where we give you the stepbystep process to hook retain and convert your viewers into subscribers so watch this

video right here where I'll show you what you'll learn how to get access and how you can use it to blow up on YouTube in 2024 thanks and have a great day