Writing copy for audio or video scripts is a different craft than writing copy for print ads, billboards, or social media. As soon as words are meant to be spoken aloud, the dynamic changes. The writing has to captivate the audience, and has to sound appropriate to the campaign. Here are a few tips to help.
Know Your Audience
It’s important to know your audience in any form of writing, and it’s absolutely vital in scriptwriting. Often, you’ll have two audiences; the client, and the audience who will see or hear the words you’ve written. Ultimately, the audience who will hear the final ad is what matters most, yet you won’t reach this final audience unless the client is happy. In both cases, it’s important to know who you’re focusing on reaching, and anticipate how they’ll respond. If you’re writing a script to advertise a historical documentary on PBS, you’re going to use a more formal style of writing than you would for a local skateboard shop. For the latter, you’re likely to use more colloquial language. However, the language you use must be authentic for the audience to respond.
Use Humor When Appropriate
This doesn’t mean you write slapstick pratfalls for a TV ad or snappy one-liners for a radio ad, though both could be appropriate for the right product or audience. Even in the previously-mentioned example of a historical PBS documentary, humor in your script can help engage the audience. In the case of a PBS audience, you’re not going for guffaws, your aim is the sort of light humor that brings a smile or a light chuckle. For the skateboard shop, pratfalls might very well be appropriate, as long as they’re not done in a way to makes the audience cringe or feel like the ad is disrespectful to skate culture.
Read Your Scripts Aloud
Words and phrases flow effortlessly when we read silently to ourselves, and then this same script may sound unnatural when spoken aloud. Professional actors can do wonders with scripts that would be tricky for the layperson to speak out loud. However, there are times when it’s more appropriate to use a business owner or a customer instead of a professional actor. You want those words to be easy for them to get through. And even when you are using actors, the more natural the words and phrases sound, the better the performance.
