So recently, I started making small youtube videos of me going over some of my written works. And as I adapt and evolve through the medium of video, to incorporate a picture and image to go along with the words, I am becoming more enlightened to writing.
At first, I wrote on this blogsite to just write up some thoughts and ‘publish them’. Publishing them online gives it a form of formality or degree of ‘completeness’ that upgraded my mad scrawling notes penned and ink in various places. It helped to create a cohesive and standing brick or work that is viewed as ‘completed’. And boy oh boy, I have a ton of notes on words, meaning, and things.
Throughout my writing, My thoughts can be seen in the words that I write, because they mirror -to a degree- my thinking process and it’s subsequent revision. The process of writing was a mental alchemy for me, it was the ability to write something, refine the ideas, import other ideas, combine and synthesize ideas, and formulate some coagulation that I could refine into a essence.
Essentially creating my own writing style while also creating works that I could later build or reference on. I also publish these notes online for others to work off of and see as well, to have their own ideas and reflect or wrestle or dismiss some of the thoughts written.
As such, I was looking at some articles I wrote from 2020, and I’ve noticed large changes in my writing style from then to now. It may be a sign of growth or change. Hopefully it sounds more consistent or leveled nowadays. But the written works from 2020 aren’t all suited for direct translation or transcription to a video, or something that I would write as is.
In my early time of two or so weeks learning about Youtube, I realize that I’m no longer making content for myself like a personal blog, but for myself AND for a meta-value to streamline for the future me as well as a targeted demographic of those that are meant to find it.
In my self discovery, I learn that I have to adjust my idea of cinematography and filming, and that will reflect in tandem back into my writing. Enriching my writing. To bring words to thoughts, is also equally important to bring images to ideas.
Let me explain how traditional English writing is, and then I’ll say how you tube alters my writing style.
(Me briefly explaining what’s next, is technically overt foreshadowing)
The traditional English Writing
To understand the basis of writing, we have symbols and letters that form sigils and shapes. We combine these vowels and few letters together to form prefixes, affixes, suffixes, and general ‘fixes’. These Fixes are combined to form words.
Words are read and written, top to bottom, left to right- on pages turned left to right. Which is an important distinction compared to other languages or other cultures.
Words placed with other words form sentences. Each word means many things, and the context of the word placement as well as in relation to other words gives it more inferential and implied meaning. A word can alter it’s meaning and the meaning of other words before and after the word based on placement.
Sentences lined up linearly in 3 to 5 or even ten sentences together create a block formally known as a paragraph. Just like how each word affects the words before and after in a sentence. Each sentence affects the sentence before and after. Each block of sentences, or a paragraph also has it’s own combined or collective meaning from all the sentences working together in harmony.
Get enough blocks together and you get a page or a chapter, compile enough chapters and you get a book or volume, combine enough volumes and you get a saga or trilogy or some other form of episodic sequencing. So on and so forth.
In terms of essays, they use statements followed by examples to reinforce an idea from a statement- as well as examples to pose differing opinions or options (if it’s balanced). Typically the rule of thumb (which is made up) is about three examples to reinforce an event, or a single example bold enough to prove that the statement can be true. It depends if you’re reporting on a trend or an exception. Essays are just formal statements of claims followed by evidence to say something or convince someone that it’s claim is a possibility.
There’s a lot more nuances depending on what you’re writing, but the general outline of things above is following the traditional guidelines of writing. They aren’t hard rules. You can get creative and reinvent words and grammar rules as you go. -Just know that doing too much or taking things too far, can lose some readers. Hence the problem with deviating from form and formalities of grammar rules and spelling rules and other ‘templates’ or ‘rules’.
In terms of Video Essays
It appears that the thumbnail and hook have to be appealing. To provoke a question or statement that is interesting to hook engagement to seek the targeted or intended audience. You’ll see that most titles are a ‘who, what, where, when, why, how’ question or some nebulous or direct targeted statement that may be sprinkled with charged words/names or Claims.
In terms of traditional writing, a book cover and title is basically the same as a video thumbnail and title. So that’s an interesting comparison. People most definitely judge books and videos by their cover. They want something consistent or appealing.
After you get someone to click your video, you have to answer their question or curiosity while leading them to the next logical question. Essentially you’re handholding the viewer and thinker in thoughts and visuals without being overly maternal or patronizing. You know, not insufferable or at least comedically overly insufferable.
Generally each video has a few video segments, each with their own purpose, and the entire video should be able to make a combined statement that culminates into a crescendo of catharsis or inner insight or enlightenment or meaning. This is typical for story telling, the whole climax, but rather than a suspense thriller, it’s more of a narrative device for imparting personal self-discovery in a sort of guided format.
Yea, that’s what videos are basically. A guided meditation or narration. Too much meditation from sounds and visuals could feel like brainwashing. Too little can be a turn off from being to unappealing and visually unsatisfying. So you find a balance between what you’re working with.
So the simple video essay format is, Write a hook (question or nebulous statement), answer it while leading the witness or viewer to the next logical progressions, and then finalize the statements to leave a feeling or deeper meaning or even nothing at all (if that’s the intent).
The Point of this specific article
Not to get all meta-4th wall breaking on you.
Is that I want to say, I was never a good story teller. I didn’t enjoy recounting events, and I scatter everywhere and everywhen. I have some wild stories from my personal life, and I have noticed that the story telling of these stories gets better with each retelling or reiteration.
But if I’m to write a narrative piece of literature, I have to create a linear story to easily follow the flow of the thoughts. The ‘weave’ as some call it. And that’s more important for a Video, in which it’s not readily easy to scroll up or down to move at a pace set by the reader. In a video, the pace is set by the video maker, and the it can be altered by a few people that discovered the speed-playback adjust buttons.
Point is, I have to get better at telling stories, and this will help paint better pictures and cohesively connect the dots of my thoughts.
Before, I mainly just wrote in note like fashion, to be standalone little pieces of notes, in a way for a sort of intellectual review of words and notes and meaning making. This is great, because I write as if I might have amnesia and have to re-read my works as if it’s the first time. This has catapulted my own world view via scattered thoughts and pattern recognition. It is however lacking, because it doesn’t have the meta-narrative story telling that brings it all together.
And stories are important, because if you can remember the story of goldi-locks or narcissus- you won’t have to retell the story itself to reference it’s meaning by merely talking about the story or names. It becomes a sort of verbal meme that transcends the specific descriptions of the story itself.
So each article, or written work, or video or whatever, is a sort of brick that builds a
The ramblings are still ramblings, but they weave into an almost coherent piece.
And an author is one that writes stories. If I lost you along the way, then that’s my fault and/or the current you is not meant to see it through the end.
Epilogue
Write beginnings, middles, and ends. Chain them together. Make it a story. Impart value and meaning.
If you don’t want to read it, why would anyone else? If you didn’t get anything (not even experience) from writing it, is the work putting you to work and elevating your craft? Or are you just going through the motions to die a slow death? Are you avoiding the hard questions?
People like short and concise things, the recap ought to be short and concise, and not have synopsis or reinterpretations that are longer than the actual direct texts unless you’re doing some sort of meta-analysis and accounting for unwritten things or whatever. (That task is pedantic and never-ending, but it can bear fruit sometimes. But I really don’t like philosophers’ books- my personal opinion).
Make multiple points. Chain them.
Another point- Video essays have caused me to reflect on my overall narrative in writing, and now I’ll attempt to make a more flowing and cohesive story rather than just the scattered thoughts and ramblings as I have them. It’s easier to follow when you go line by line rather than obscure text from one book to obscure text to another book. As much as I’d like to baptize you in scatology or coprolalia from my xenoglossy mind.
And do your process, your writing process. If you need reviews or breaks and revise later. Or if you drink drunk and then write freely while editing later, whatever. Your process is yours. You can adapt and evolve that process, and as you do so, you change your writing. As you change, so does your writing. Grow and evolve yourself, your process of writing, your writings, and all of the above.
It’s like all your old works, regardless of cringe, are booster stages to be rocket propellants that propel your own growth. You won’t be able to write your 100th work if you don’t write your first. And the person you were before your first writing, and after the 100th or so, is not the same person. So challenge yourself and grow.
And I guess I got sidetracked and started writing motivational footnotes for my future self, and for others to read. I apologize, but I stand by my statements. I’m just slinging words on a digital blogsite.
Words that Mean Things
P.S.
I wrote this article very linearly, start to finish. Then I revised and added some cross references between the writings.
Ultimately you can see the points that I make as they are titles.
I lead you from one thing to the next, and chain them.
From reviewing my past writings, to how English writing typically is, to how video essays get me to reflect, to making a point about how my writing has changed.
As always, the person who I am now is not the person who I once was nor will it be the person that I’ll become after more writing and jazz. I ultimately don’t know what I am doing, but I sure am doing it. Here’s a quote on writing;
“For the plan grows under the author’s hand; new thoughts occur to him in the act of writing; he has not worked out the argument to the end before he begins.”
-Plato
Words Mean Things 
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