A path to learning storytelling for YouTube: 1. Watch - the videos that you like. 2. Introspect - what feelings did you like about them? 3. Analyse - what components led you to feel those feelings in the video that you liked? There’s usually at the bare minimum 3 major ones, and anywhere from 10-30 minor ones. You’ll find them scattered all through my previous tweets so I won’t repeat them here. 4. Try - you’ll never know how to implement a technique unless you try it yourself. 5. Reflect - you’ll now have some objective data from retention graphs. Or you can collect it just from asking people IRL to watch it, and seeing their reactions. 6. Feedback - from other YouTubers or people. You absolutely need this. If you don’t have it, you’ll still continue to improve, just slower. 7. Improve - make each video better. 8. Execute - make the video. Some people say you need to make 100 videos, some people say you need much less. Actually, the truth is that the number is arbitrary, because it totally depends on your rate of learning, the quality of the sources from which you’re learning from, and the thoughtfulness with which you’re trying. I’ve helped with multiple 1M+ view videos across several niches now, at least enough to say I can be somewhat helpful to people. Yet, not every video I help on reaches 1M+ views. It’s because it takes a lot of deliberate practice to build up the ability to implement the correct theory. YouTubing in particular is further complicated by the fact that not every improvement you make correlates directly with an improvement in views, meaning that you have to think particularly long term and with real thoughtfulness/purpose into the actions you take. Because if you take actions at random, not only will you get random results, but you will also never know what worked exactly when you do get the occasional hit. I like data, where possible. Data is more objective than other sources of information. Yet, storytelling specifically is often closer to music. Even though data exists, ultimately you’re trying to create subjective feelings for viewers, and so you have to develop a set of first principles for doing so. Creating feelings for viewers means understanding how you yourself, as a viewer, respond to different things - and understanding it, and then experimenting with it to see how it works out in real life. Musicians all listened to music before they could play it: to have good technique, you need a good ear. To become a better YouTuber, it’s like you need to install a bunch of other people’s videos/content inside *and* outside of YouTube. There is an insane amount of depth with YouTube. But every YouTuber you know started with 0 videos. I myself want to grow my own craft too, and continue to become better. In a way, YouTube just feels like it’s getting started, and that’s refreshing. Make the content you want to see, that doesn’t exist yet. I really look forward to seeing what you make. :)
