The Lost Mine of Phandelver videos were my first attempt at producing a series. The videos were so long I had to write scripts and buy a teleprompter. Remember that word choice there, “the videos were so long“, because we’ll come back to that later.

I would spend about 10 hours writing and refining a script, thirty minutes setting up, an hour filming, and 20 hours editing. It was a crunch every week. When I tried to carry this process through Phandelver into other projects, I kept stumbling, missing deadlines and making excuses. My process had too much friction.

The goal became to reduce friction without damaging quality. So let’s imagine we’re with the Ghost of YouTube Past, we’re looking at me with a little notepad on an old-timey desk, and I’m writing down all the things I’d like to try in service of that goal.

The notepad says:

– I will arrange my set so my cameras and lights are always up.
– I will film some segments at my computer livestream-style and try to get them right in the can.
– I will batch-record and batch-edit where possible to maintain momentum and avoid context-switching.

But there’s be one more thing on that list…

During this period I was midway through a podcast project with Anto called *No Plan, No Problem!*. This was an unscripted podcast, but we’d riff within a structure of answering three D&D questions in a common theme, trying to boil our conversation into three, discrete pieces of advice for Dungeon Masters. Once we got into the rhythm of our roles, NPNP taught me how to riff — a handy tool.

If that tool had a user manual, it would say something like:

If I’m talking, as long as I’m making jokes, I’ll find my way to saying useful. And if I’m struggling, it just means I need to talk longer. 

And I think this is a fine tool to keep in your back pocket when you’re in a pinch. It’s something for when you’re presenting on stage and you can feel your point is slipping away. “Keep going! You’ll work it out!” It’s a nice reminder to push through and trust yourself.

It’s an emergency tool, right?

But here’s where we find that final item on my plan to reduce friction in my process.

The notepad says:

– I will arrange my set so my cameras and lights are always set up.
– I will film some segments at my computer livestream-style and try to get them right in the can.
– I will batch-record and batch-edit where possible to maintain momentum and avoid context-switching.
– I will stop writing and reading scripts. I will only riff from notes.

That last one is not good. Not good at all.

I was so intimidated by the scope of my Lost Mine of Phandelver series, the videos that were *so long* I had to get a teleprompter to get through them. And now that I’ve ditched scripts and gotten confident in my ability to riff, the videos are longer. 

These longer videos dilute my ideas, and even when I finally say something useful, it’s my first time saying it. To reduce friction, I’m serving my first draft. I don’t think that respects the viewer’s time and doesn’t reflect the disciplined person I’ve become.

So I’m going back to writing scripts.

FIN.