Long-form and Shorts · the script, and every shot that goes on screen with it
Most videos don't fail at the writing. They fail at the structure underneath. Then they fail again, because nobody told the editor what to show. I write long-form and Shorts for documentary and essay channels. Then I tell your editor what goes on screen, line by line, and build the shots you can't buy anywhere.
Who it's for
For channels where the video makes an argument — documentary, essay, explainer. Faceless or on-camera; the structure is the same either way. Maybe you've plateaued and can't see why. Maybe you're growing and can't hold the quality as you scale. Either way, it's usually decided in the script.
Every channel has a cliff. It's almost never where you think it is. It gets written in before anything is shot, and it can't be fixed in the edit.
Four ways it shows up, depending on how your videos get made now. If none of them land, I'm probably not who you need.
If you write them yourself
Three abandoned openings sit above the real one in the doc. You've read the same study twice to check one number. It goes up Sunday either way, and you won't know whether any of it worked until the graph tells you on Tuesday. I take that week. You keep the channel.
What you'd get →If you've outsourced before
It read fine. It just wasn't your channel. So you fixed the hook, then the next one, and by the fourth video you stopped sending notes because doing it yourself was quicker. You didn't want a writer. You wanted to stop being one.
How that works →If you already have an editor
The brief said “make it,” so he guessed. You named a company and got a generic office. You gave a number and got a skyline at sunset. Nothing is wrong, exactly. Nothing is proving anything either, and you find out on Friday.
What they'd get →If you write for clients
An editor you can hire this week. Someone who can sound like that client and research a subject they'd never heard of last month takes months to find, if you find one at all. So you turn the work down, or you take it and hope. White-labeled, your name on the work.
Agency terms →Three openings, each written twice. On the left, what the same brief normally produces. On the right, what I shipped.
Hey everyone, welcome back to the channel. In today's video we're going to be talking about something that affects millions of investors around the world.
Studies show that people who check their portfolios frequently tend to make emotional decisions, and this can have a big impact on your long-term returns.
So if you've ever felt this way, make sure to stick around, because we're diving deep into the psychology of investing.
Seven words of greeting before the subject appears. Then “millions of investors around the world,” which is everybody and therefore nobody. “Studies show” with no study. In seventy-one words the only concrete noun is portfolios.
Refreshing your portfolio has never once made you money. You already know that. You will still check it four times before lunch.
You are not deciding anything. You are checking a wound.
In March 2020, at the peak of the panic, the app went down and stayed down for a full trading day. Locked out, unable to trade, people refreshed a screen that would not load, over and over, all day.
A flat contradiction about something the viewer did this morning. Then the exit closes: you already know that. No lesson left to offer, so the only reason to stay is why. And the outage isn't colour, it's the proof. Those people couldn't have traded even if they'd wanted to.
71 words before71 words afterSame length. One gestures at a feeling; the other names the thing you did.
Artificial intelligence is transforming the modern workplace at an unprecedented pace. In this video we'll be exploring how AI is revolutionizing performance management across industries.
Recent studies suggest that a growing number of managers are leveraging AI tools to streamline personnel decisions, and the implications for employees could be significant.
Stay tuned as we unpack what all of this really means for the future of work, and for your own career.
A script about AI, written the way AI writes. Transforming, unprecedented, revolutionizing, leveraging, streamline, unpack, the future of work. Eight tells in seventy-one words. It also says “AI” twice before it mentions a single person.
Nobody wrote your last performance review. That is not a figure of speech, and it is not the part that should worry you.
The written warning was never protecting the company. It was protecting you.
It only worked because it was expensive. A manager who had to document three real failures needed three real failures to have actually happened. Producing one now takes seconds, and the page does not say which.
Six words that sound false, then a refusal to soften them. The reversal lands on the viewer's side: the document they resented was the one protecting them. And note what never appears. No tool named, no technology explained, the word AI never used. That's why it holds someone who doesn't work in tech.
71 words before71 words afterSame length. One explains a technology; the other hands you a document you have already been given.
We've all been there. You promise yourself you'll put the phone down, and before you know it, hours have flown by. Sound familiar?
In this video we'll be diving deep into the fascinating science of why our brains are wired this way.
Studies show that short-form content is rewiring our attention spans. Let's jump right in.
“We've all been there” is one of the most-used opening lines on the platform, which makes it the line guaranteed to sound like every other video. Then it promises science twice, delivers none, and calls itself fascinating rather than being it.
At 11:47 you were still scrolling. You had meant it at eleven, and that is the problem.
The decision didn't fail. It competed.
On the other side was a feed that pays out on no schedule you can learn, the same design that keeps a hand on a slot machine. Willpower was real. It got outbuilt.
It opens on the failure, not the intention. 11:47 lands before the viewer is told what it means, so recognition comes before persuasion. Then the turn: you had meant it, and that is the problem. Meaning it was supposed to be the defence. The four-word reframe hands them an opponent they can picture, instead of gesturing at “the science.”
56 words before56 words afterSame length. The rewrite gives you an opponent you can picture.
Most writers open a blank document and start typing. But most of what decides whether people keep watching happens before a word is written. The rest happens after, in what they see.
01
Your last twenty videos. Your competitors' best ones.
02
Who has made it already, and what every one of them missed.
03
Where the promise lands. Where they would have left.
04
To that shape, in your voice. Every line gets its shot.
05
Day 28, the retention graph. What held, what changes next.
Steps 01 to 03 are built once for your channel, and every script after comes out of them. That's why video twelve still sounds like the channel. Built across behavioral psychology, personal finance and enterprise tech — the structure holds across niches, the research gets rebuilt every time.
Most writers hand you words and leave the pictures to somebody else. That handover is where your week goes.
From primary sources, not the first page of results. Which number actually carries the argument. Whether a study says what everyone quotes it as saying. And the one finding that isn't in the first ten articles on the subject, because that's usually the video. This is where the days go.
In your channel's voice, sectioned so each part says what it's doing, formatted to paste straight into your voice tool. Sources for every factual claim.
Every line of the script has a shot next to it. What to show, where to get it, how long to hold it, what text goes on top. The words “make it” never appear. And nothing on screen is faked: if the script names a company you see that company, if it states a number you can read that number, with its source next to it.
You can buy a phone in someone's hand. You can't buy the phone showing your number, at the second your script says it. That's the gap, and it's always the evidence. The filing with your quoted figure highlighted. The chart plotting your data, source on screen. The card carrying your line. I make those and send them finished, cut to the length of the line they sit under, with the figure legible and the source on it.
What the video argues, the assembly order, where pace shifts, and what must never be trimmed. Your editor starts without a call.
YouTube tests up to three title and thumbnail pairs and promotes the winner automatically. Most writers deliver one, which means you're guessing. You get three, one marked recommended. Plus the description, chapters written as real search phrases, tags and the pinned comment.
A real Blueprint, anonymised and partly redacted: the honest read, the four-gap analysis, and a full worked rewrite of one channel's opening, before and after.
PDF · 5 pages · no email requiredMost engagements never define this, which is why they end in an argument about whose fault the numbers are.
The Blueprint is charged once, and credited in full against your first four scripts. Every script after it is faster because the thinking is already done.
Taking on a limited number of new channels at a time. One writer, and the whole point is that the voice holds.
$199 one video
$750 one-time
$650 per video
$1,350 / month
Written to the same system, on the same voice, with the same shot-by-shot treatment. Either derived from a long-form you've commissioned, or conceived standalone. Sold in packs because one Short in isolation rarely tells you anything.
Published US rates for the same three purchases, so you can see what you are and aren't paying for.
| The purchase | A US agency | Here |
|---|---|---|
| Getting started — channel audit, positioning, content plan | $2,500 – $10,000 | $750 |
| Per month, channel outsourced | $4,000 – $12,000 | $1,350 – $4,500 |
| One long-form script | $400 – $1,200 | $650 |
Two of those aren't the same purchase, and I'd rather say so than let the table imply otherwise. An agency retainer buys production, editing, thumbnails and an account manager. The writing is one line item inside it. Only the third row is like-for-like — and note it's not the cheap option.
Rates scale with runtime, research depth and turnaround. Fifty percent upfront, two revision rounds included.
Your editing capacity is probably covered and your writing capacity probably isn't. That's the part I take — briefed once per client channel, holding one voice across the whole slate, your name on the work and mine nowhere near it.
Scripts arrive with a shot for every line, the pieces nobody can buy already made, and an order to build it in. Your editors cut instead of reading prose and guessing. Nobody messages you at eleven at night asking what to put on screen.
It also means you can hire editors on craft rather than on subject knowledge. The domain judgment sits in the brief, so nobody on your bench has to be fluent in behavioral finance to cut a video about it. Editors I've asked put the saving at 30 to 40 percent of the build. Non-solicitation as standard.
Talk about capacityDeepest in personal finance, enterprise technology and AI, behavioral psychology, health research and business — those are the niches I've built in. The method is structural though, so it transfers to economics and industry, consumer culture, science and engineering. Anything where the video makes an argument.
What I don't write: true crime, partisan politics or current-affairs commentary, medical or health advice, and anything reaction, vlog, gameplay or personality-led. The first three sit inside YouTube's limited-monetization categories or carry legal exposure, which makes them a bad trade for you regardless of how well they're written. On health I report what the research found — I never write guidance.
No, and be careful with anyone who promises it. Views depend on your thumbnail, your edit, your upload timing and your channel's existing profile. What a script moves is how long people stay once they've clicked — and how many of them get far enough to be worth anything to you.
It's better with them. A screenshot of one video's retention graph roughly doubles what I can tell you. But the audit works from the public video alone, so it's optional, and I won't chase you for it.
Long-form scripts, four working days. Shorts, two. The audit comes back in three. Blueprints take about a week — most of that is watching your catalogue and your competitors properly, which isn't a step worth rushing.
Two revision rounds are included, scoped as corrections within the agreed angle. If the angle itself changes, that's a new script. Most of the risk is handled earlier than that though — the free teardown and the audit both exist so you can judge how I think before you commit to anything.
For an audit, three things: your channel link, one video you thought should have done better, and — optionally — a screenshot of that video's retention graph. That's it.
For scripts, more: analytics access or screenshots, the three videos you're proudest of and the three that disappointed you, who your competition is, what's off-limits, and who else has to approve a script before it's filmed. I ask for all of it once, in one document, rather than dripping questions at you for a week.
Yes — working that out is the job, not a prerequisite for it. Most channels that come to me have no defined structure, which is usually part of why the uploads don't read as one channel.
For one to three long-form scripts it doesn't much matter. From the fourth it does, so the Blueprint comes first, and the $750 is credited in full against those first four scripts. Eight scripts without a defined structure is eight separate acts of judgment, and by the fifth I'd be guessing at decisions I made in the second. That's the exact problem I'd have just finished diagnosing for you.
Both. Long-form is where most of the work sits, because that's where structure has the furthest to fall — but Shorts are written to the same system and the same voice, either pulled out of a long-form you've commissioned or conceived standalone.
They're sold in packs of four or eight. One Short on its own rarely tells you anything: the format is volatile enough that a single result is noise, and you need a run before the pattern means something.
They stay private. I don't publish client work, name clients without written permission, or reuse your positioning for anyone else — including channels in your subject area. Anything I publish publicly is anonymised past recognition, or it isn't published.
Research uses official, documented interfaces only. Nothing is collected by working around a login or an access control, and I delete material you've sent whenever you ask.
Both, in different places. Anything you can buy, I tell you exactly where to get it. The site, the words to search, what the shot has to show, how long to hold it. Described as a real thing, not a category. “A phone in someone's own hand, filmed over the shoulder, one red number on the screen” rather than “stressed person with phone.” I don't buy the clips for you. The licence needs to be in your name, not mine.
Anything you can't buy, I make and send you finished. The line between the two is specificity. Stock will sell you a phone in a hand; it can't sell you the phone showing the number your script just named. So that's what gets built, and it's nearly always the evidence: the filing with your quoted figure highlighted, the chart plotting your data with its source on screen, the card carrying your line. They arrive finished, cut to the length of the line they sit under, with the numbers legible and the source on them. Nothing left to build at your end.
Where the script uses something as proof, what's on screen is the real thing, with the source readable in the frame. Numbers stay legible. I won't invent a document to stand in for a real one.
Yes, white-labeled, with non-solicitation as standard. Volume rates from $375 a script, on a committed monthly minimum. Details here.
One page back within 48 hours: where people leave, whether that's the script, the edit or the thumbnail, and what your title and thumbnail are currently promising. It tells you what's wrong. What to do about it is the audit. No call, no obligation — if it's useful on its own, keep it and we never have to speak.