The most natural use of language takes place in a conversation. Conversation is a set of responses. So, how can a script or a talking head video become natural without becoming a conversation? You can emulate that by having questions and responses. Whatever script you have or topic you are discussing, generate some questions about it and then answer those questions. The more aligning those questions are to the audience, the better your content fit would be. Questions and answers might be the ultimate way of extracting information and presenting it. Because I might have just a page full of thoughts in my head right now, but give me a few questions that are connected, I can get content worth 10 to 15 pages easily. This might actually solve the bottleneck we have with long-form content.
Like there is an established concept of using prompts when creating videos. But prompts are usually just topics or feelings or quotes as a vague header. They are labels for something vague, and we need some enrichment and extraction process to get it out. Those statements which I previously mentioned are not enough. I think questions targeting it from different angles can do that.
As a person who is trying to be as natural as possible in front of a camera, I think it is way better to have a set of questions and a script, or maybe just a set of questions and stand in front of a camera and talk about it. Because throughout our life we have answered so many questions but we have not given many monologues in front of a camera. So questions can be a better aid.
Scripts have structure and they are choreographed. They are going to be an obstacle when you are trying to be as natural as possible because you have to be within those confines. But with questions, you are way more free. You can use your intuition and your experience to answer them naturally and freely. Plus, you can retrieve way better from your own lived experience. You can remember your own emotions way better when you are answering a question than reading from a script. They can capture “aha” moments on camera when you suddenly link two different points together. More can emerge out of your thoughts than you previously anticipated, and it can all be on camera.
Now you need to figure out the balance of questions. For short-form content, you can spare only 8-13 sentences per video, so how many questions can you even take up to answer? But in terms of long-form content, I say just answer fucking questions. You can have 10-12 questions and you can easily cross the 10-12 minute mark and you are golden. In short-form content, you have to follow the 4-bit structure of:
- Hook
- Introduction
- Value
- Call to Action
It might be a bit harder to fit that into there.