Writing Process: Time

For awhile, I used to want to be a long form content creator. Exclusively. Somewhere out on Youtube are a few of my attempts at it. I enjoyed the prospect of entertaining people for awhile and really getting in depth on the things I talk about. A lot of Youtubers I really enjoyed watching did that. My friends and I would talk, sometimes for hours, on why things worked, didn't work, or just things that stood out to us.

Currently, my most successful video to date clocks in at 11 minutes. And to a degree it's started to influence my writing. I try to keep things shorter. It has caused my overall content to improve, I think as well. There's little dead air. The content is more accessible to people since they don't need to commit to a long time frame to watch.

But I'm a storyteller at heart. And so we get things like the Six Flags script that outpaced my last longest video in length by a whole ten minutes in pure audio. With all my editing it would've easily bumped it up into 40 minutes. And so I looked to split the video, otherwise I'd still be working on it right now after I hadn't posted a video in 2 weeks.

Even in Part 1, however, I had my struggles. A few things were cut, such as jokes that I felt were a little too niche and didn't even relate to Yu-Gi-Oh or the little story I've been telling at all. Kaiba's talk with Joey about the game industry almost got cut entirely as well to speed up the episode's pace. Same with Kaiba and Joey's talk on their siblings at the start. But when I tested the episode, people liked that segment. And so too, did Youtube. Comments about Kaiba speaking on the game industry have gotten so many likes that it did seem to resonate with a lot of people.

And that's part of what makes writing challenging. I feel I have a lot to consider whenever I cut a joke. I could be cutting something that really makes someone laugh or ponder something. Had I not tested the episode, I would've cut that segment. If my Youtube journey has taught me anything, it's a far greater respect for the editors out there.