How to write a good Tik Tok short video script?

Everyone loves short videos. It stimulates the user's eyes and ears with rapidly changing images, which is far more vivid than silent graphic content. However, not all short videos can be called successful short videos. In fact, some short videos are so addictive, while others make people just want to swipe away.

The script is very important for a short video. It is like the "skeleton" that connects various elements such as images, lines, music, etc., and determines the style and direction of the short video. For copywriters, what is the difference between short video scripts and other types of copywriting?

From copywriting to lines and dialogues, from written to oral, from visual to auditory, the writing of short video scripts has many particularities that need to be explored by short video creators. If you want to stand out from the flood of short video traffic and successfully capture the user's attention, you need to know the three golden rules for writing a good script.

1. The Golden Three Seconds Rule

3 seconds is a very important time scale for short videos. On short video platforms such as Tik Tok , users can enjoy an endless "feast" of short videos with just the movement of their fingers, which makes their patience extremely limited. If a short video cannot arouse the user's interest and curiosity within the first three seconds, then the only fate that awaits it is to be swiped away.

Looking at the short video content on Douyin, many creators have put a lot of effort into the content of the "golden three seconds". There are mainly the following forms:

1. Highly attractive pre-information

"Telling the story slowly and clearly" is not the best way to express information in short videos. Many times, we need to tell users "what you can get after watching this video" in the shortest time possible, which can be achieved by placing information in advance. However, not all information can attract users in short videos. Generally speaking, information that is suspenseful, healing, highly relevant to users' daily lives, or conflicting is more likely to attract users' interest in watching.

Many TikTok celebrities will tell users the main content of the video at the beginning of the video. For example, "How good are kittens at making people happy?" is a healing message; "The daily life of foreigners who have stayed in China for a long time after returning home" is a message that contains a certain sense of conflict, making people want to see what it is like.

Douyin's knowledge-based celebrity "Hao Ge's Cold Cheese" often uses highly tempting information in the first three seconds of the video to attract users' attention. For example, "How supermarkets empty your wallet", "Why are flies hard to kill", "Why do people have trypophobia" are all information that is highly relevant to users' daily lives and are likely to attract users' attention; while "Breathtaking beauty is actually a disease" and "Chinese Valentine's Day is actually Women's Day" are conflicting information that are likely to arouse users' curiosity.

"Sichuan Observation", a media account on Douyin with more than 35 million followers and over 1.4 billion likes, covers a wide range of topics, including current affairs, fun entertainment, anecdotes, etc. However, if you analyze its content carefully, you will find that the beginning of many videos will present users with some fresh and interesting pre-information. For example, in addition to growing potatoes, there are two other occupations that are also suitable for Mars, which can easily arouse users' curiosity; for example, the wig industry belt in Xuchang, Henan, produces 80% of the world's wigs, using big data to make users unable to resist finding out.

In short, this type of pre-placed information not only allows users to clearly understand what they can "gain" from watching the video and establish psychological expectations, but also has its own characteristics and can quickly attract users' attention through highly tempting information.

2. Break the “Fourth Wall”

"Fourth wall" is a theatrical term. Generally, a stage has only three walls inside. The "wall" facing the audience that does not exist in the physical sense is called the "fourth wall". Breaking the "fourth wall" is an artistic technique that allows the audience to break away from their original immersive experience, thereby enhancing the dramatic effect of the content. This technique can be seen in stage plays, film and television works, and games. For example, in the American TV series "House of Cards", the male protagonist Frank often "breaks" the screen to talk to the audience, sharing some key information in the play or his inner monologue with the audience.

On short video platforms such as Tik Tok, many creators also attract users' attention by breaking the "fourth wall". For example, at the beginning of the video, the performer says to the screen "Don't swipe away" or "Wait a minute, listen to me finish", which is actually breaking the "fourth wall" technique and "talking" directly to the user, thereby attracting the user's attention by breaking the user's immersive viewing.

3. Earworm sound effects

For short videos, sound effects are also a very important element. The high-traffic works on the Douyin platform are often inseparable from various popular music clips, which are the so-called "divine songs" of Internet celebrities. Because of their high frequency of occurrence, these pieces of music often create an "earworm" effect, causing these music clips to play repeatedly and involuntarily in the user's mind. When users hear these "earworm" sound effects while watching videos, a conditioned reflex will be formed, which will stimulate certain emotions and thus form specific expectations for the content. For example, some background music has comedic effects, while some background music has healing effects. When the music starts playing at the beginning of the video, users will roughly know the style of this short video and can quickly enter the atmosphere of the video.

2. The “Hook” Law

An excellent short video script must contain a "hook". After a short video has initially retained users through the "golden three seconds", the next thing to consider is how to ensure that users do not "slip away" midway.

In the recommendation mechanism of the Douyin platform, the completion rate is a very critical indicator, which largely determines the traffic of a Douyin short video. The completion rate refers to the number of times a user has watched the entire video divided by the total number of views of the video. For example, if a user has watched the video 10 times and the total number of views of the video is 100, then the completion rate is 10%. The recommendation mechanism will consider short videos with low completion rates to be unattractive to users and of poor content quality, and therefore will not make further recommendations. Only short videos with a high completion rate can be given more traffic, so the completion rate becomes particularly important.

Consciously embedding "hooks" in short video scripts can help increase the completion rate of short videos. Reversals, suspense, easter eggs and other techniques can all serve as "hooks" in short video scripts.

Reversal is a common technique used in many popular short videos. Through the reversal of characters and plots, unexpected dramatic effects can often be produced, satisfying users' curiosity and entertainment needs. For example, the "makeup change" reversal that is common on Douyin: a girl with ordinary looks, even a little sloppy, turns into a stunning beauty after the camera cuts. The reversal before and after will give users a visual impact. In addition to the visual reversal, the plot reversal can also bring excitement and happiness to users.

In the initial popular works of "Zhu Yici's Boring Life", a funny blogger with more than 8 million followers on Douyin, most of them used exaggerated plot reversals. For example, in one short video, Zhu Yici was bumped into by a gangster while walking on the road. The gangster was arrogant, but he apologized in a low-key manner, then added the gangster as a WeChat friend and transferred 1,000 yuan to the gangster. "His expression changed from anger to confusion, and then to wanting to kneel down and make friends with me, all in 3 seconds." This video used a reversed plot and satirized the powerful people in life with a black humor tone. In Zhu Yici's works, the technique of reversal is very common. The turning point usually starts with "accidentally revealing my Rolex", and a Rolex becomes a "touchstone" to test the world and people's hearts.

By embedding reversals in the plot, you can create a strong "hook" between users watching the first 3 seconds and completing the entire video, so that users will not swipe away the video after watching ten or ten seconds, thereby increasing the video's completion rate and laying the foundation for the video's traffic.

In addition to "reversals", showing "suspense" at the beginning or having "easter eggs" in the opening trailer video is also a trick to "hook" users. "Suspense" can make users watch the video for as long as possible out of curiosity; and many short videos will tell users at the beginning that "there is an Easter egg at the end of the video", allowing users to watch the video with the expectation of discovering the Easter egg.

3. Line Label Law

A major difference between short video scripts and ordinary copywriting is that short video scripts need to be read out loud, which means that these copywritings will be converted into voice form and enter the user's ears. Therefore, for short video copywriting, "pleasing to the ear" becomes very important.

When writing short video scripts, try to avoid using overly professional or complex vocabulary, and try to communicate with users in colloquial language. In addition, the copy should use more short sentences to reduce the cost of users' understanding of the content. When writing a script, creators can develop the habit of reading the text aloud instead of just reciting it in their heads in order to find the most appropriate sense of script language.

Many excellent Douyin accounts will also embed some of their own unique "golden sentences" in daily short videos, allowing users to form an inherent impression of the account content through such line tags, thereby enhancing users' memory of the content. For example, at the end of almost every video of "Zhu Yici's Boring Life", there will be a sentence like "The life of rich people is often so plain and boring." In the video scripts, representative words such as "He was grateful to me" and "After a heart-to-heart talk" often appear.

The account "Laowai Chris" with more than 10 million followers on Douyin also puts a sentence "Daily life of foreigners who have stayed in China for a long time" at the beginning of many videos to help users deepen their memory of the positioning of this account. The main content of the account's short videos is about a Norwegian who has stayed in China for a long time and returns to Northern Europe. Because he is accustomed to Chinese culture and lifestyle, he has a series of conflicts and dramas with his relatives.

Conclusion

The traffic dividend of short videos is long gone, but at present it is still the most turbulent and vibrant ocean of content. The birth of a hit short video is the result of the combined effect of many factors, and the script plays a connecting role. For content creators, seizing the "golden three seconds" of short videos, embedding "hooks" in the script, and creating distinctive personal dialogue tags are all useful techniques to increase the attractiveness of content and gain their own share in the surging tide of short video traffic.

Author: Uma Xiaoman

Source: Wuma Xiaoman