How to turn an article into a video

To turn an article into a video, treat the article as research, not as a script. Pick the three to five points a reader should leave with, give each one its own scene with a single visual and a line short enough to say in a few seconds, open on the question the article answers, and end on one action. Everything else, the background, the caveats, the second example, stays in the article, and the video links to it.

The hard part is the cutting. A blog post of 1,200 words is written to be scanned. Nielsen Norman Group’s classic study found 79 per cent of test users always scanned a new page and only 16 per cent read word by word, which is why web writing leans on headings and bullets. A video cannot be scanned. It plays in order, at the speed of the voice, so the structure that helps a reader has to be rebuilt as a sequence a listener can follow.

Pick the points before anything else

Read the article and write down the sentence a reader would repeat to a friend. That is the video’s thesis. Then list the points that support it, in the order a viewer needs them, and stop at five.

Articles that follow the inverted pyramid make this easy. Amy Schade’s piece on the technique describes putting the most important information, even the conclusion, first, and the test it recommends is the right one here: what is the key fact you want people to know if they only take in a single sentence? That sentence becomes the second scene of the video, right after the hook.

If the article buries its answer under three paragraphs of context, the video should not copy that order. Move the answer up.

Take the fictional plant care guide in the table below. It runs to 1,400 words across a headline, an opening answer, four sections and a nursery history. The sentence a reader would repeat is short: a fiddle leaf fig drops leaves because of light or water. Light, water and draughts support it. Repotting is true but needs a series of photos to explain safely, and the history supports nothing the viewer wants. So the video has three points, a hook, an answer and a close, and two sections of the article never appear in it.

Write the points as full sentences in your own notes before turning them into lines. A point you cannot state in one sentence is not ready to be a scene.

One scene per point

Give each point exactly one scene. The budgeting app UGC ad shows how little a point needs. Its whole message could fill a long post about budgeting habits, and the video reduces it to one confession, one screen, one number and one close: I had no idea where my money went, the weekly view, 640 dollars saved in three months without earning more, free plan with no card.

That reduction is the pattern to copy. The article’s anecdote becomes the hook. Its screenshot becomes the proof. Its result becomes the payoff, stated with its caveat. Its call to action becomes the close. Sections that are background, history or a second example get no scene at all.

A point that needs a sequence, such as a how to section with four steps, is the exception. It becomes a run of tutorial scenes, like the steps in the dashboard tour video, where one question holds five screens together.

Rewrite every line for the ear

Do not paste the article’s sentences into scenes. Written sentences carry clauses, parentheses and references to things above them. Spoken lines have to stand alone, arrive in order and finish before the picture changes.

Three rules cover most of it. Keep a promotional line to five to eight words, so it fits the few seconds a scene holds. Use the words a customer would use, which is the audience first principle the digital.gov plain language guidance is built on. And cut promotional adjectives: the same Nielsen Norman study found objective language improved measured usability by 27 per cent over marketing language, and a viewer has even less patience for it than a reader.

Read the lines top to bottom when you finish. They should sound like one person explaining something, each line picking up from the last. If a line only makes sense because of the line in the article above it, rewrite it.

Choose one visual per scene

Each scene needs something to look at that matches its line. Good sources are already in the article: the product photo, the screenshot, the chart, the before and after. The SaaS feature launch video puts one number on screen as a stat scene and one product view as its demo, and neither is decoration.

Where the article has no image for a point, type can carry it. A single statement in large letters, a short checklist ticking in or a drawn three step diagram all work without a photo, which is the approach behind a faceless video. What does not work is a stock photo that illustrates the topic loosely. It fills the frame and tells the viewer nothing.

Captions matter more here than in most videos, because a repurposed article often lands in a muted feed. The W3C’s media accessibility guidance describes captions as a text version of the speech and non speech audio, needed by people who are Deaf or hard of hearing, and in practice they carry the video for everyone watching with the sound off.

Write a close that goes somewhere

An article can end on a summary. A video should end on an action: read the full guide, book the check, start the trial. Pick one. The close is also where the cut material goes, because read the full guide at the link is an honest promise that the detail exists.

Keep the length in proportion to the points. A three point article makes a short video, and how long a promo video should be sets out lengths by placement if you are cutting for several platforms.

The table at the end of this article maps a fictional plant care guide to a finished scene plan, including the sections that get no scene. Two of the eight rows are cuts, which is about the right ratio.

Common mistakes

Narrating the article. A voice reading paragraphs over slides is the least watched kind of video.

Keeping every section. If a section needs a photo series or a caveat to be safe, leave it in the article.

Copying the headline. Search headlines sound stiff out loud. Rewrite it as the question.

Stacking statistics. One number per video, with what it measures.

Ending on the logo. End on the action, and let the link do the rest.

Build it

The brief takes up to 8,000 characters. Paste the article’s text into it as source material, or better, your list of points with the lines you want, and add up to 8 images for the scenes that need a real photo or screenshot. The AI video script page explains how the script is written scene by scene, with each spoken line and the on screen copy decided together and promotional lines held to five to eight words. Choose a length to match the points: short targets about 10 seconds with 3 to 6 scenes, standard about 18 seconds with 4 to 9, and long about 30 seconds with 6 to 12. Captions are on by default and follow the narration. How the pasted text becomes timed narration is covered on the text to video page, and the promo video tutorial walks through describing the video, arranging scenes, adding the voice and exporting.