- In this video, I want to go through story format
and how you can use it when you're crafting your videos
here on YouTube.
So I'm gonna be digging into my video
that's over on my second channel.
That's all about a climb I did in the North Cascades
on a mountain called Mount Goode.
This was a pretty insane climb,
and I've vlogged the entire experience,
but it's not just your typical vlog,
where you turn on the camera
and just shoot whatever's happening.
I like to call these vlogumentaries,
which have more of this documentary feel,
but in a vlog format.
And so in this video,
we're gonna break down the story format
that you typically see in like documentaries
or feature films or just short little videos here on YouTube
that do have more of a story.
And I think using a story format
when you're actually out filming
is gonna really make your videos stand out.
You see, all the biggest creators on this platform
are now using story formats in their videos.
They're not just turning on the camera and hitting record.
And you'd also don't always have to have
these crazy complex stories
to have a format like this in your videos,
because I think one of the biggest hurdles
when it comes to creators using story
is they think they have to have this big, huge thing
that they're gonna do and they build a story around it
versus making videos every week
and then including story in those videos.
It's definitely something you can do.
It's accessible to everyone
and you just have to understand the components
and the traditional story arc and then start fitting story
into the videos that you are creating.
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So let's go over the basic story format.
And once you see this format,
you'll see it again and again in videos that have a story.
And so the basic story formula goes like this.
You start with an introduction,
it goes to what's called an inciting incident,
and then there's rising action to a climax,
and then there's a resolution.
So these are the essential building blocks
to making a story.
And we're gonna go through each one
and explain kind of the big overarching picture
and then how I used it in the specific video
so you could see how you could use this in your vlogs.
So the first part is an introduction.
And this comprises of your hook and your backstory
and any information that the audience needs to know
before they get into the story
and what you're doing for this one episode
or this one video.
So on YouTube, you need to have a hook that's engaging,
something that's gonna grab your viewer's attention.
This could be just a sample of what's to come in the video.
I've seen a lot of creators do just quick snippets
of kind of extreme things that are going on.
Another method is just to tell your audience
exactly what to expect from this video.
And this style works on YouTube
because you are trying to grab someone's attention.
You see MrBeast use this all the time,
where he tells you exactly what you're gonna see
in the video.
And that's the whole idea of the hook,
is you wanna grab someone's attention
and get them to think,
well, what's gonna happen in this video.
And so another way you could do this
is just pulling a section out of the video.
Maybe it's like 15 seconds towards the climax of the video
or something that happened that's pretty extreme
and you're just building up to this moment
and then you cut off and then start the video back over.
And so you're giving people a glimpse into what's to come,
but you're not actually giving them enough information.
So they want to know what's going to happen.
So for the introduction of my climbing video,
what I did was just give a quick overview
of the mountain that I'm trying to climb and my objective.
Verge at the top of a treacherous peak
deep in the mountains of Washington
with no official trail to it,
lies a tiny lookout that can fit a handful of people.
And this is where we wanna camp for the night.
And so I set up a lot of different story beats
in this first section, and so it sets up,
well, what's gonna happen on this climb?
Now, looking back at this
after I've already published this video,
watched it a few times,
I could have done this intro much better.
So nice quick intro that kinda tells you
everything that you need to know,
but I kinda give away what happens
versus setting up a bigger question right at the intro.
So instead of showing us
on the mountaintop sleeping up there,
which is kinda the goal of the video,
I should have had a moment where
we might have been like hanging off the cliff
and there's like some issue happening.
So if we were hanging off the cliff
and I found a moment where I said something like,
"Can we get past this section?"
Or, "I don't know where we're going,"
or something like that to just set up like,
"Well, are they gonna make it?"
That would be a better hook.
So storytelling takes practice,
and you're gonna be consistently evolving your storytelling
and you're gonna look back
at your videos and realize that,
well, you could have done something a little better.
But with storytelling,
it's all about just putting in the reps
and just continually practicing the craft
of actually telling stories.
Now also in the introduction,
you wanna set up who the characters are
and what's happening.
So a lot of times this is the exposition
that somebody needs to be able to jump into your story.
When you're creating videos here on YouTube,
one of the assumptions is that you're making videos
for your subscribers who know who you are.
And yes, that is a portion of your audience,
but if you wanna grow a channel here on YouTube,
every one of your videos wants to be engaging
to the point where a random person can fall into that video
and then know exactly what's going on
and want to watch the video.
You don't wanna just make videos for your subscribers.
And so the introduction with this exposition
of telling who you are is super important
for those random people who stumble across your video.
And so this is setting up who you are,
what your channel's about,
what the video's about,
what someone needs to know
to be able to jump into the story.
And so if you are someone who is a vlogger,
this is your moment to really just give someone backstory
of whatever it is that you do on your channel.
So if you're someone who has say a food channel
and you're trying to find the most unique foods
in every city that you go to,
well, instead of just starting the video
and like jumping into the restaurant
of this like weird place that you're going,
you would set up that this is what your mission is,
is to go to these different cities
and find the weirdest food
because now somebody knows exactly what your channel's about
without having to actually dig into your channel.
Or for example, if you're a van lifer
and you're going across the US from one side to the other,
well, you could set up right at the intro
that you're living out of your van
and you're trying to get yourself to this location
and it's gonna take this amount of time.
And you can add all this information
that's just gonna catch someone up
to exactly what this moment is
before the story of the specific video starts.
And so for my climbing video here,
it's more of a one-off video.
It's not that I'm doing a series on this channel
because my second channel has kind of a variety of content,
but, and still I needed to set up what this video was about.
And so I've set up not only my history of climbing,
but the history of this mountain
and all the information that you need to know
about this mountain
so that when we get to the moment
where we actually start the journey,
you're up to speed and you're ready to go.
Now this peak has been on my radar for a while,
but I really didn't know what I was getting myself into.
What's up, man?
How you doing brother?
Growing up, I always dreamed of climbing mountains.
And six years ago, I booked a six-day expedition
to Mount Rainier in Washington.
On that trip, I met a group of climbers
and every year, we take on new challenges and new peaks.
We summited the tallest mountain in Mexico.
I got altitude sickness on a peak in Ecuador
and we've explored all over the North Cascades,
which brings us to our newest goal, Mount Goode.
This mountain is the highest peak
in the North Cascades National Park
standing at 9,220 feet tall.
And even though that might seem short
for a mountaineering objective,
this peak is not an easy trip.
This mountain can't be seen by any road.
It's deep in the national park,
and we have to hike a total of 36 miles in and out.
And once we finally get on the mountain,
we have to deal with waterfalls, glaciers.
And the biggest challenge is a 3,000 foot rock wall
to get to the summit.
To put that in perspective,
that's about the same size as El Capitan in Yosemite,
which is higher than two Empire State buildings
stacked on top of each other.
And one of the hardest aspects of this climb
is that we have to carry all of our gear on our back
because we go up one side of the mountain
and come down the other.
And that brings us to the next part,
which is the inciting incident.
And this is kinda that moment that you start on the journey
or that thing that pushes you on the journey
or the first time something happens in the story
that pushes you down the path
that's this video's gonna be about.
So the easy way to think about,
this is the the hero's journey,
character is living in their normal life,
kind of just average day-to-day life
and then something happens that pushes them on a journey.
That thing that pushes them on the journey
is that inciting incident.
And sometimes these can be a big thing that's gonna push you
on a journey of this video
and sometimes it's just what makes you go on this journey.
It could also just be a moment
where you set up what the goal is of this video,
and this is typically what you're gonna see
in a YouTube video.
So for example, Ryan Trahan with his penny series,
this is that moment where he tells you what his idea
for a money-making method of that video is.
And then you start going on the journey.
So it's kind of that moment that sets up,
well, what's the rest of the video going to be about?
If you're working on big feature films, documentaries,
there's typically an inciting incident
that changes your character's trajectory.
But for a YouTube video,
it might not be this huge big moment that happens.
And it might just be as simple
as setting up exactly what this video is gonna be about
and what your objectives are for this video.
So for this climbing video that I was making,
the inciting incident is setting up
that we're trying to camp on the summit of this mountain.
This basically gives us that objective
and it tells us where we're going in the video.
So this first part of your video
could be super short and super fast,
or it could be a little bit longer with more backstory
and bringing your audience up to speed with what's going on.
But between the introduction and the inciting incident,
this is everything you need to know
before you start your journey.
And so you could have an introduction that's super quick
like a MrBeast video
or you could have it a little bit longer
that has more backstory to get your audience up to speed
with what you're doing in the bigger picture.
But either way, you wanna have all of the elements
within the first part of your video.
You wanna hook someone,
you want to give them enough information
so that they know what's going on
before you start on the journey.
And you also wanna set up what the goal is
or the objective or the big thing that pushed you
on your journey for this video.
And that brings us to our next section,
which is the rising action.
And so this is like the main part of your video.
This is everything that happens.
This is what most people
turn on the camera, start recording,
but don't set up what they're about to go do.
And this is like all the stuff that actually happens.
And so you wanna look for where you're going
and everything that stands in your way
from you to make that objective.
And so something to think about
when you're creating this section of your video
is what are the challenges that stand in your way
of getting that main objective?
So for my climbing video, it was the hike.
It was the different rivers that we were crossing.
It was the bugs and the places that we had to sleep,
the waterfalls we had to climb.
And then ultimately, the big thing that stood in our way
was this 3,000 foot rock wall.
And so one of the things that you want to keep
in the back of your mind is, well, what's gonna happen next?
And you want to keep posing that question to your viewer.
So you want things to come up in your video
that stand in your way of being able to move forward
towards your objective.
But this is also the section where you take the viewer
on the journey
and explore whatever it is that you're exploring
or go wherever you're going.
But you always wanna have that carrot dangling in front
of what is the goal and are you making progress
or are there things that are pushing you away
from actually achieving your goal?
Now the next section of your video is gonna be your climax.
And typically, this is the most intense part of your video
or the most exciting part of your video.
This is where you are actually achieving that thing
that you set out at the beginning of the video.
And so you can think of it
like the most intense part of the video.
We're standing on the wall,
we're confronting this huge 3,000 foot rock wall.
Are we gonna make it?
Are we not?
We get to the summit,
and then we actually achieve our goal
of getting onto the summit.
Halfway up the rock face,
I realize just how insane this climb is.
That's when the fear set in.
Heights have never been an issue for me,
but clinging to this rock
with the only protection being the rope
between me and Derek, made my heart skip a beat.
I had to take a minute and refocus my attention
to the mountain because I'm four hours up a rock wall
and there's no easy way off.
(dramatic music)
This is the last few steps.
(indistinct chatter)
(dramatic music)
- Awhoo!
- [Jeven] Whoo-hoo!
(indistinct chatter)
- And so now that we've finished the story,
we've achieved our goal of standing on this mountaintop,
well, the video's kind of over
and you don't wanna drag on too much after this moment
because your audience was set up with this goal
of getting to the summit of this mountain.
And then now that you're here,
you don't want to just like drag on another 10 minute video
that has nothing to do with that goal that you set up
at the beginning of the video.
So the resolution is the moment when you wrap up the story
in a nice, neat little bow.
Now, this would be that moment where you would say,
"In conclusion, da, da, da, da."
But in a YouTube video,
you really don't wanna have this big long ending
that drives your viewer away
and then drops your average view duration.
So a lot of times, what this moment is used for
especially here on YouTube is,
just a moment to kind of wrap up everything.
Maybe give your biggest takeaway from this experience,
something that transformed you
if this was a big life-changing experience
or just something the audience can take away
from what you've learned going through this journey.
For me, the resolution,
especially on a video like the mountain climb
is a moment to take what I've done,
connect it to the viewer
and something that they could take away in their lives.
And the channel, "Yes Theory" does this all the time.
If you look at the ending section
of any one of their videos,
they kinda wrap up the story that they went through,
but then connect it to all of us on a global scale
versus just something that happened in the story.
So the resolution you can think about as answering questions
or finding a takeaway or connecting it to everyone
on a broader scale
and making the journey or the story
bigger than just the one video that you're in.
Now, not every video that you create
will have this huge, big resolution,
but something to think about when you're making your videos.
And so this is the resolution that I used for this video.
We climbed the mountain and made it to the summit,
but in reality, we're only halfway.
After a short celebration,
we boiled some water for dinner and slept on the summit.
It's only enough room for the five of us
and we had to hang our packs off the side.
From here, it's two more days of down climbing,
repelling, bush whacking,
and after that,
another 16-mile hike to get out of the forest.
So why climb?
These types of challenges puts the rest of life
in perspective.
You'll never know your limits
until you meet them head on and push past them.
We all don't have to be climbers to experience this,
but we should all find something that will challenge us
and push us to our limits.
Now, this resolution for me was
about the last minute of the video.
I could have chopped this down to even 30 seconds.
I don't think your resolution needs to be super long
and drawn out.
I think you wanna have it quick
so you don't lose your audience
and have them click off to another video.
And that's kind of the game that we're playing here
on YouTube is that we want to have quick introductions
that get people up to speed and get into the video
and then quick resolutions and quick endings
so that we're not just dragging things out.
If you're making something like a documentary
or a feature film or a longer piece
that's not geared towards a YouTube audience,
well, these moments will be more stretched out
and there'll be more information on the introduction
and there'll be longer outros on the resolution.
And so now you can see the whole basic story structure,
which is introduction,
something that happens or a goal that you set
that sets you on the journey,
the entire video, the rising action,
all the conflicts, your climax, the final moment,
the final thing that you're challenging you
to get to your goal,
and then in the final resolution where you achieve the goal
or the big thing happens in the video.
And then there's some takeaway for the audience
or you answer the questions that you set up
at the beginning of the video.
Seems complicated at first,
but when you start watching videos,
start looking for this format
and you'll start seeing how different creators
use story structure and start finding those creators
in your niche that create stories
and start applying those techniques to the videos
that you're creating to keep a more engaged audience.
Now, next, you should check out this video right here,
which goes through theme,
which is another important storytelling technique
that you should be using in your videos.
I'll see you over there.