Develop scripts - Camtasia Tutorial

- [Instructor] Now that we have the plan for our training outlined and our table of contents created, it's time to start scripting out what we'll say in the videos. I found that there are several different ways that people go about scripting. Some people like to script out exactly what they'll say in the video, word for word, and then read through it as they go. Some people prefer to list bullet points that help keep them on track and remind them of what they want to say in the video. And others prefer not to use scripts at all. Let's take a look here at my scripts for this course. And I have them here, and I created a couple different examples. So here I have the one for creating a table of contents, here is my one for developing scripts, you can see here some of the things I said. And then down below I have an example of one where I would use bullet points. I'd have my intro, and then I'd make sure I talked about screen capture software, give examples, and so on. So you'll have to decide on the method that works best for you. I do want to note, however, that I strongly recommend that you have some type of script, even if it's an intro, a few bullet points, and an outro, it can be advantageous to use scripts when recording. So let's take a look at an effective way to turn our table of contents into scripts. I'm going to navigate back here to my table of contents, and this is just one way to do it. This is how I begin creating my scripts, and you can use this format or something similar. So once I have this, I'm going to go ahead and select each of my videos. So I'm going to select the number as well as the video title. And I'm inside of a Google Sheet right now. I'll copy this, and then I wanna go up here and to create a new document. I'm going to go new, document. And again, I'm using Google Sheets here, you could use Word, you could use Excel, and those things. And I'm going to go here and paste that in. I'll go ahead and just leave it unlinked, click on paste, and I get the outline that appears right here. Now what I like to do is just to drag this out, make it a little bit bigger, actually a lot bigger. Then I'm going to go through the different titles here, and I want to make this bigger, so I'll make that bold, make that 12 font, so I know that those are the titles of the videos. Now inside of the box we can begin entering the script. So here, create video-based training, I'll tab down, and then I can start entering in that script. So here I'll type in sample script, et cetera, and I can put that in. Now, you'll break your script down into three main parts. Your intro to the video, the body, then, of the video, and an outro, or a way to wrap it up. Now I'm gonna navigate back over to my page where I've already created my scripts. And this is one that I have that I'm doing verbatim. So it's important to start off a video with a strong intro, which either tells the viewer what the video's about, or gets straight to the point. Writing up your intro ahead of time is a good way to go about this. For the body you'll have to decide what you'd like to do. Some people like to write out exactly what they'll say, and then read along as they go. This is a great way to make sure that you cover and say everything you'd like to in the video, but it does take some work to get used to. It can be difficult reading on a monitor or a printed piece of paper while navigating on the computer. If you choose this method, which is a great method, I recommend you practice reading the script a couple times so that you're familiar with it. The next method is to create an outline. Most video authors that I've worked with use this method, in which they create a quick outline of what they want to cover and then they use that to stay on task. That is the method that I normally use. Now rather than reading the script verbatim, that outline that they create acts as a prompt to keep them on topic. And again, here is an example of that. If I scroll down you'll see that outline format. Others prefer to not use any scripts. Now, I don't recommend this method. I think it's beneficial to at least have an outline of the video that you can refer to, but you can definitely do whatever works best for you. If you decide not to use scripts, I still recommend that you at least consider writing a good intro and an outro, or a way to wrap up your video. So let's take a look at my intro for this video. When it started, this is what I said, right here. Now that we have the plan our training outlined and our table of contents created, it's time to start scripting out what we'll say in the videos. So, nothing special, it definitely wouldn't win me a Pulitzer Prize, but it does help you to quickly recognize what the video will be about, and helps us to get on task right away. Now once you have your script created, you can keep it next to you while you begin recording, whether you print it off or view it on a device, or another laptop. One final thing I wanted to mention about scripts is that you should use them to help you stay focused and on task, and to help point anything out that you need to do. For example, notice in my scripts that I have red text every once in awhile. And these are normally to tell me something. In these cases it was to show the examples of the different types of scripts, but here you could put in things like websites you wanna show, pages you wanna show, things you want to say. So hopefully this got across the point that scripting is important, and finally, here is my outro for this video. Creating scripts for your training videos is a great way to help you stay focused and on point once you start recording. I recommend you start experimenting with different scripting formats and find a method that works best for you.