The Key to Scripting

Creating a great script is key to any endeavor in engaging an audience, and scripting in the fields of design, marketing, branding, or theater is relatively all the same. It contains a series of well-placed events that tell an interesting story that the audience buys into. You will notice the key-word event or events. Events are what make the world go-round. In describing emotional experiences, people talk about specific events in their lives. The word event is simply a description of a happening. Events describe what happens. Great events make great happenings. Good scripting merely involves a series of active, interesting happenings in the storyline. What’s happening in your storyline? Concerning your product, what happens when the consumer encounters it, opens it, or uses it?

In creating these scripted events into your storyline, a simple formula will turn them into great events. After setting a great stage (sensory elements) and establishing great dialogue (copy) with a depth of characters (product), we then move to weave these elements into a sound and spectacular script. The main elements to a good script can be pulled from your own human experiences. Whenever you have experienced a good script that has moved you—it has most likely contained the elements of Anticipation, Progression, and Surprise (APS). We call this the APS proposition. Think about your favorite movie, book, play, concert, theme park ride, or even some memorable event that you have attended. What made all of these products delightful was their ability to create anticipation, provide an interactive movement or progression, and a series of surprising twists and turns. You can apply these basic elements to create any exciting event or script. When they are missing, you don’t really notice why or what went wrong—you only know that it wasn’t very exciting or more aptly put—a dud.

Anticipation builds emotion, progression keeps it coming, and surprise triggers adrenaline—and a positive emotion about the product. Without the element of surprise, we feel let down. If you already know what’s going to happen at the end of a book, movie, play—or even in the course of intimate play in the bedroom—it makes for a lousy script. It’s those things that you don’t know that create excitement in an event or even in a product.

If you understand that the APS proposition is inherent in every truly positive experience, you can design your product, service, marketing or brand around this premise. In order to accomplish this, you must think of your brand or product in terms of a human with a personality. And in order to humanize your brand, you need to first understand human nature.