Long-form and Shorts · the script, and every shot that goes on screen with it
A video usually goes wrong twice. First in the plan, before a word of it is written. Then in the edit, because nobody told the editor what to show. I write long-form and Shorts for documentary, essay and explainer channels, faceless or on-camera. Then I tell your editor what goes on screen, line by line, and make the shots you can't buy anywhere.
Who it's for
Maybe your views have gone flat and you can't see why. Maybe you're growing and the quality is getting harder to hold. Either way, it's usually decided in the script.
Scripts from $250 · full production package $500 · channel Blueprint $750 · one-video teardown free See all rates
Every channel has a cliff, the point where most people leave. It's almost never where you think it is, and it was there before a word was written.
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
Every sentence in it was competent. 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 passages, each written twice. On the left, what the brief normally produces, or my own earlier draft. On the right, what I wrote instead.
Then come the hiring numbers. Business Insider saw an internal PwC slideshow. It set the firm's goal for new junior associates in the United States at three thousand two hundred and forty-two for the year that ended in June 2025, and at two thousand one hundred and ninety-seven for its 2028 fiscal year.
That is one thousand and forty-five fewer planned first jobs, about a third.
PwC did not confirm the numbers. It did say campus hiring was going down, and gave two reasons: technological change, and fewer people leaving.
Every word of it is accurate. Read aloud, it is a slide being read out: two goals spelled to the last digit, two fiscal years, and a subtraction left to explain itself.
Fewer people may get those first jobs, too. Business Insider saw an internal PwC slideshow with a plan for about a third fewer new junior associates in the United States within three years.
That's roughly a thousand first jobs that aren't in the plan anymore.
PwC didn't confirm the numbers. It did say campus hiring was going down, citing technological change and fewer people leaving.
Same source, same caveat, same two reasons. The voice rounds to about a third and says what that is. The exact goals, 3,242 and 2,197, go on screen with the source beside them.
Same sourceSame caveatOn screen while the voice says “about a third”: 3,242 → 2,197
For about twenty years, Americans had been getting better at waiting. Researchers at Boston College tracked it: the share of new claimants taking benefits at sixty-two started falling in 2005, from around sixty percent to less than thirty percent by 2023.
People were working longer, and a later claim meant a bigger check every month for the rest of the way.
Every word of it is accurate. Read aloud, it sounds like a research summary: the research center named before anything happens, two years, every number spelled out, and a closing line that explains the trend when it could react to it.
For about 20 years, Americans had been getting better at waiting. Back at the start, around 60% of the people starting benefits each year were 62. The share kept falling right through COVID, and by the end it was under 30%.
That's a whole country slowly talking itself into the bigger check.
Same research, same two numbers. The research center and the two years go on screen with the chart, so the voice can just say “back at the start” and “by the end”. Then the narrator reacts to what the numbers add up to: a whole country, slowly choosing the bigger check.
Same sourceSame two numbersOn screen while the voice says “back at the start”: 2005: around 60% → 2023: under 30%
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.
It's 11:47, and the phone's still in your hand. You told yourself 11, and you meant it.
Then you pulled down to refresh, and something new was there. Sometimes it's nothing much. Sometimes it's the best thing you've seen all day.
That's pretty much how a slot machine pays out. And it's a strange thing to put up against a bedtime.
It opens on the time on the phone and the promise the viewer made, before anything is explained. Then it shows the pull to refresh happening, and only after that says what it's like. The research name and year go on screen, so the voice stays easy to follow. The last line reacts to the design, and leaves the viewer out of the blame.
About 22 seconds beforeAbout 24 seconds afterOn screen while the voice says “a slot machine”: variable-ratio reward · Ferster and Skinner, 1957
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 video pays off its title, and where people would have left.
04
To that plan, in your voice: told first, fact-checked second, then heard aloud. Every line gets its shot.
05
Day 28, the graph of who kept watching. What worked, 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. 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 the original sources, past the first page of results. I find the one number the argument rests on, and check that a study says what everyone quotes it as saying. This is where the days go.
In your channel's voice, told the way you'd say it to a friend, then fact-checked. Each source is named once, in plain words; the year and the exact figure go on screen. A source on file for every claim. Formatted to paste straight into your voice tool.
Built from the script, never an auto-transcription. Real punctuation, and every name and figure spelled the way the script spells 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.
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. The missing shot is nearly always the proof, so I make those and send them finished.
Grouped into scenes, with the order to build it in, where it speeds up and slows down, and what must never be cut. Your editor starts without a call.
YouTube tests up to three pairs and promotes the winner. Most writers deliver one. You get three, one marked recommended, plus the description, chapters, tags and pinned comment.
“Business Insider saw an internal PwC slideshow that planned for about a third fewer new junior associates in the United States within three years. That's roughly a thousand first jobs that aren't in the plan anymore. PwC didn't confirm the numbers.”
Source: Internal PwC slideshow, as reported by Business Insider. PwC did not confirm the numbers.
A real Blueprint, with the channel's name and some parts removed: the honest read, the four gaps, and one of the channel's openings rewritten, before and after.
PDF · 5 pages · no email requiredMost writers and clients never agree this up front, so it ends in an argument about whose fault the numbers are.
Every script after the Blueprint is faster, because the thinking is already done.
I take on a few new channels at a time. One writer, so the voice holds.
$199 one video
$750 one-time
$500 per video
$995 / month
Written the same way, in the same voice, with a shot for every line. Either cut from a long-form you've ordered, or written on its own. Sold in packs because one Short alone 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 | $2,000 – $7,500 | $750 |
| Per month, channel outsourced | $3,000 – $20,000 | $995 – $3,295 |
| One long-form script, words only | $500 – $2,000 | $250 |
Two of those rows compare different things, and I'd rather say so. An agency retainer buys production, editing, thumbnails and an account manager. The writing is one line inside it. Only the third row is like for like: words against words. The writers on those agency briefs are usually asked for four to seven scripts a week, about a day each, which tells you most of what you need to know about the research.
And what I actually sell isn't in the agency column at all. A script that arrives with a shot for every line, the proof made and ready to place, and the captions written is $500 here. Agencies don't price that as a script. It sits inside the second row, at $3,000 to $20,000 a month.
Longer videos, heavier research and rush jobs cost more. Half upfront, two rounds of changes included.
You probably have enough editors and not enough writers. That's the part I take: briefed once per client channel, one voice across all its videos, 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 for how well they cut, whatever they know about the subject. The subject knowledge is in the brief, so nobody on your team has to understand 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 and insurance economics, regulation and employment, and business. The method is about how a video is built, so it carries over 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. YouTube limits ads on the first three, or they carry legal risk, so they're a bad trade for you however 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 rounds of changes are included, for fixes inside 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. Most of the work is long-form, but Shorts are written the same way and in the same voice, either cut from a long-form you've ordered or written on their own.
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.
For research I only use official, public tools. I never get around a login to collect anything, and I delete what you've sent whenever you ask.
Yes, white-labeled, with non-solicitation as standard. Volume rates from $225 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.