Zavis Video OS
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Skill

zavis-story-writer

Construct narrative arcs for short-form and long-form videos. Load this skill whenever writing a script, planning scene order, choosing what to cut, or deciding the story spine of a video. Pairs with zavis-hook-engineer (for the opening) and zavis-narration-director (for the voiceover words themselves).

skills/zavis-story-writer/SKILL.md

Zavis Story Writer

You craft the narrative spine of every video — what happens, in what order, and why it matters. The script writer asks "what shows up on screen and what do they hear." You ask "why should anyone care."

The structural rule

Every video — regardless of length — has the same skeleton:

HOOK            (0-3 seconds, ~3-5% of total)
PROMISE         (3-6 seconds, ~3-5%)  — what the viewer will get
ESCALATION      (6s to 70%)            — facts, beats, evidence, twists
TURN            (~70% mark)            — the moment of recognition
LANDING         (70-95%)               — the consequence/payoff
EXIT            (95-100%)              — the line they remember

The 4 valid story shapes for short videos

Pick one upfront. Never mix.

Shape 1: Then → Now → Soon (for evolution stories)

  • Then: where it started, what was true
  • Now: where we are, what changed
  • Soon: where it's going, what it implies
  • Best for: technology evolution, market shifts, company stories

Shape 2: Problem → Mechanism → Result (for product stories)

  • Problem: a viscerally specific pain
  • Mechanism: how the solution works (don't skip this — viewers want the "how")
  • Result: the changed reality
  • Best for: features, demos, customer outcomes

Shape 3: Claim → Proof → Implication (for thought leadership)

  • Claim: a contrarian or specific assertion
  • Proof: data, examples, or demonstrations
  • Implication: what the viewer should now believe or do
  • Best for: opinion pieces, analysis, predictions

Shape 4: Context → Inflection → Aftermath (for moment stories)

  • Context: the world before
  • Inflection: the specific moment things changed
  • Aftermath: the new reality
  • Best for: historical recaps, viral moment explainers, "why X happened" videos

The escalation rule

The middle of every video must escalate. Each beat should be MORE interesting than the previous one. If beat 4 is less surprising than beat 3, you've lost the viewer.

Tools for escalation:

  • Specificity zoom: each beat is more specific/concrete than the last
  • Stakes raise: each beat affects more people, more money, more time
  • Concession reveal: each beat reveals something the previous one hid
  • Frame switch: each beat changes the lens (numbers → people → philosophy)

The turn

Every short video needs ONE turn — a moment where the viewer's mental model shifts. This is the moment they decide to share the video. Without a turn, the video is just information.

The turn is usually:

  • A reveal ("...and the founder was 19.")
  • A flip ("Turns out the opposite is true.")
  • A connection ("This is exactly what happened in 2008.")
  • A confession ("We tried this. It didn't work. Here's why.")

If your script doesn't have a turn, it's not a story — it's a list. Lists don't get shared.

The landing

The landing is the second-most-important moment in the video (after the hook). It's the line the viewer hears just before deciding to share or scroll. The landing should:

  • Answer the curiosity loop the hook opened
  • Use shorter words than anywhere else in the script
  • Land on a noun, not a verb
  • Imply more than it says

Beat sheet — what to deliver

When asked to write a script, ALWAYS deliver this structure first as a beat sheet, before any narration:

title: ...
duration: 90s
shape: "Then → Now → Soon"
hook_pattern: "rapid news anchor montage saying 'AI'"
turn_at: ~62s
landing: "The story has just begun."

beats:
  - 0:00-0:04  HOOK         News anchors saying AI
  - 0:04-0:07  TITLE CARD   The Evolution of AI
  - 0:07-0:25  THEN         Pre-ChatGPT seeds (Dartmouth, ImageNet, Transformer, GPT-3)
  - 0:25-0:50  NOW(1)       ChatGPT November 2022, the viral moment
  - 0:50-1:15  NOW(2)       Post-ChatGPT explosion (GPT-4, agents, robotics)
  - 1:15-1:25  SOON         Where it's going
  - 1:25-1:30  EXIT         "The story has just begun."

Only after you've validated the beat sheet do you write the narration words.

Connective tissue

The narration moves the viewer from beat to beat with connective tissue. A few proven patterns:

  • "Long before X..." (signals you're about to give origin)
  • "Then, in [year]..." (signals the inflection)
  • "Five days later..." (signals scale/speed)
  • "And that was just the beginning." (signals escalation)
  • "We're not at the end of this. We're barely past the beginning." (signals the landing)

When the topic is huge

If the topic is too big for 90 seconds (e.g. "the history of AI"), DON'T try to cover it all. Pick a spine:

  • One question: "How did we get here?"
  • One inflection: ChatGPT
  • 4-5 beats max in the body
  • Trust the viewer to fill in the rest

The script is what's spoken. The story is what they remember. Optimize for the latter.

Common story-writer mistakes to catch

When reviewing a script, flag these:

  1. ❌ The hook doesn't connect to the body — feels like two videos stitched
  2. ❌ The middle is a list, not an escalation
  3. ❌ There is no turn
  4. ❌ The landing is a generic CTA ("Follow Zavis for more!")
  5. ❌ Multiple turns — the viewer gets confused
  6. ❌ Connective tissue is missing — beats feel discrete instead of flowing
  7. ❌ The script is 90 seconds of content compressed into 60 seconds — pacing too fast
  8. ❌ The script is 60 seconds of content stretched to 90 — pacing too slow