Most of us are familiar with YouTube, where we can consume infinite amounts of cat videos, internet memes, and international music trends. What a lot of people are only just recently realizing is that YouTube is much more than just a way to share silly videos with
the world. In actuality, it's a unique social network in its own right.
And any smart-minded entrepreneur knows that a social network is ripe
as a platform to connect with people. The question then becomes: Is
there a space for us writerly types on YouTube?
The
answer is unequivocally yes, and building a subscriber base on YouTube
is an incredibly rewarding experience. But how we get there is a little
trickier, and how we begin cultivating our Youtube pages is going to be
decided mostly by what we want to say through our videos, and how we want to say it.
Getting
started on YouTube should be pretty easy. All you need is to create a
new account for free; since YouTube is owned by Google, you technically
already have an account to YouTube just waiting to be claimed if you
have a Gmail or Blogger account, and that account can later be linked
directly to your Google+ account through your current name. From here,
the sky is limit, although there are some caveats.
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Before you toss up a random video onto your profile, think about how you
want to present yourself. Like a Facebook or Twitter, a YouTube page is
essentially an extension of yourself. Unlike these other sites,
however, YouTube is designed to be consumed in large spoonfuls. Videos -
whether they're short or long - tend to be packed with a lot of
information. As someone making a video, you have to be aware of how you
want to package that information, and how to make that packaging look
interesting.
For
myself, I have a deep desire to teach others about writing. What
interests me most are the aesthetics of writing: why writers do the
things we do in our stories and our fiction. I see a lot of great
content on the internet about the aesthetic of film, or the aesthetic of
video games, but for the life of me I could not find any material on
the aesthetic of fiction. I sought to rectify that problem by producing
videos in my series Writers' Bloc.
Along with a companion blog, the idea was to make videos that emulated a
creative writing class, except without all the complicated words and
stuffy atmosphere of a university classroom.
This
means, essentially, I'm creating educational videos. Much like writing
an informative article or blog post, I research my topic and write out
my findings. From there, I merely record the written script, add some
funny pictures that relate to what I'm saying, and presto, I have a
video. The ability to present the same material one would normally find
in an article with visuals - essentially just a fast paced slideshow -
presents a useful lecture format that lets people learn. The snappiness
and silly pictures are my way of entertaining my viewers as they learn,
because - let's face it - most of the time, learning can be really dry.
Lecture
videos, however, can take on any style you want them to be. If you
literally want to make a powerpoint and stream it, simply record your
voice, and boom, instant lecture-styled video. If you want to go the
next step, take a camera (your iPhone will do!), turn it on, and start
talking. Ta da, an instantly watchable video, with your pretty face all
over it!
Maybe
you don't have a lot of prior knowledge, don't like researching, or
lectures bore you to tears. If you have some writer friends and a
Google+ account, you can all team up to do a live discussion "On Air,"
which can be posted directly to your YouTube page. These roundtables are
very popular, and quite handy. They can be used for nearly anything,
including critique, discussion on a topic, or Q&A interviews with
other authors.
Maybe
what is most important to you is plugging your latest release, and
building up hype for an upcoming book. Book teasers/trailers tend to be
popular with some. If you have the knowledge on how to edit videos - or
know somebody who does - you can craft an intriguing preview of your
book. Since video offers is instantly engaging to our senses, a trailer
can quickly catch eyes and build up excitement, and readers can share
the video around social networks to help you build up that hype.
Maybe
you don't want to give lecture, but also don't want to do a roundable
discussion, and don't know how to make fancy trailers. As long as you
have a camera, you'll be accepted on YouTube. Vlogging - blogging in the
form of a video - is a popular way to connect with people. In this
method, you can talk about anything you choose, just as you would on
your blog. For those of you who are not familiar with John Green (author
of The Fault in Our Stars, Looking For Alaska, among others), he has
become an internet celebrity over the past 5+ years by merely vlogging
to his viewers (and his brother) about whatever he fancies, including
how he plans on writing his next novel while walking on a treadmill (you
read that correctly). In your own vlogs, you can talk about the
progress you made in your writing, frustrations/successes in your
writing career, or merely allow your readers to glimpse into your
personal life. The options are limitless.
But
all these examples bring us back to our initial point: What do you want
to say? Knowing this ahead of time can save you a lot of hardship. Just
as with writing, you need to have a gameplan before you launch into
constructing your video. Hank Green - the other half of John Green's
vlogging channel - gives the best explanation. "The way that I imagine
it is that I am on a gigantic stage, and there is one person in the
audience. And I am talking to that one person. But I can't just talk to
that person like a normal person because I'm on a gigantic stage!"
Planning out what you want to say, and how you want to say it, will help
you craft more accessible videos that anyone can enjoy.
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The beauty of YouTube is that you can post anything you want, making it
anything that you want it to be. So now that you've potentially started
thinking about some things you could actually do with YouTube, let's
take a quick run down of some basic tips for your first video.
Script It
I get it, you have this great idea for a discussion about dragons. And
I'm sure it sounds perfect in your head. But very often, people are not
as good at speaking as we think we are. If you try to
stream-of-consciousness your vlogs, even when you have a solid topic,
you can easily get sidetracked, or babble off-topic, or get bogged down
with needless umm's and uhh's. These things make your video seem
amateurish, like you didn't really know what you wanted to do, and can
turn some viewers off. Remember, your video is one mouse-click away from
being closed. Don't waste your viewers' time. While I would recommend
scripting most of your videos, DON'T READ FROM YOUR SCRIPT. You will
sound silly. Like an actor, read your own script, think about it, and
then speak!
Edit if You Can
If
you have editing software on your computer (Movie Maker on Windows and
iMovie on Apple are both free!), you can go back to your video, and edit
them together. This is time consuming, but definitely adds a polish to
your video by cutting out less-than-interesting parts of your
conversations with your camera. You can also add background music or
film multiple times and put them together into a full video, making your
videos even more interesting and malleable. Again, this is optional,
and takes some practice. But it will improve the quality of your videos.
Silence is Golden
Quiet
in a video is your villain. You know those awkward silences at the
dinner table when nobody knows what to say, but it feels like something
should be said? That's how your viewers will feel if you stay quiet for
too long. You can edit these out if you use editing. But even if your
method of filming is turning on the camera and talking, having a note
card off to the side with one or two words to keep you on track with
your mental script can help prevent awkward silences.
Look at the Camera
That
little lens on your webcam, your camera, or your phone is not just some
glass. That represents your viewers eyes. If you look at the screen in
front of you, so you can see your own image, it's the same thing as
looking at your viewers feet. There's nothing wrong with it, per se, but
it looks quite odd. When speaking, pretend the lens of your camera is
your viewers face. Look there. It'll feel weird at first, but will give
the right perspective to your viewers, and you'll get used to it with
time.
Don't Ramble.
Nobody
wants to hear about how you've never filmed a video before, or how
you've tried to film this thing 6 times and got it wrong, or what you
did at the grocery store. BORING. Instead, say hello, give your viewers a
two or three sentence summary of what you're about to talk about, and
jump right in.
Making
videos for YouTube may not be for everyone. It takes a charismatic and
patient personality, or at least someone with a lot of heart. It does
take a bit to get good at, and if you don't have the patience or time
for the subtleties, you may not get the content that you envision in
your head. But the rewards for doing well are fantastic. I've had the
joy of connecting with hundreds of people through YouTube, and having
almost 40,000 people view my videos. That's 40k people who may want to
learn about me as an author. If you have the creativity or ingenuity in
you, you can find your own way of creating a space for yourself with
some intriguing video content.
Chris Fox is an author of the episodic space opera series, Star Sailor, which is free for download here.
He also runs the YouTube video series Writers' Bloc, which teaches
writers about the aesthetics and mechanics of fiction writing. You can see all the episodes here.
