"So last week I did this awesome hike with my buddy. We went up to the top of this mountain and it had like the best view ever."
That's a summary, not a story. And summaries don't hold attention, not in conversation, not in video, not anywhere.
Source: This concept comes from Jeven Dovey's "How To Vlog and Be a Better Storyteller", where he breaks down the two most immediate improvements any creator can make to their storytelling, with a side-by-side comparison that makes the difference impossible to miss.
Dovey identifies two switches that separate flat recounting from actual storytelling: present tense and named tension. Flip both of these in any script and the difference is immediate. The viewer's brain shifts from passively receiving information to actively experiencing a sequence of events with uncertain outcomes.
These aren't advanced techniques. They're foundational, and that's exactly why they matter for content teams. They're enforceable at the script review stage without requiring the reviewer to have any storytelling instinct at all. The check is binary: is the script in present tense? Is the tension named? If not, send it back.
Why Past Tense Creates Distance
Past tense tells the viewer that you already know how this ends. "I walked up the mountain. We made it to the top. The view was incredible." The outcome is settled. There's no reason to wonder what happens next because the narrator has already processed the entire experience and is reporting back.
This is the default mode for most people when they tell stories, both in conversation and on camera. It's natural because you're recounting something that already happened. But natural doesn't mean effective.
Past tense creates a buffer between the viewer and the experience. The narrator stands between the event and the audience, filtering everything through hindsight. The viewer isn't experiencing the hike. They're hearing about someone who experienced the hike. That extra layer of distance is where attention leaks.
Think of it like the difference between a live deployment and a post-mortem. During a live deployment, everyone is watching, engaged, uncertain about the outcome. During the post-mortem, the outcome is known and the tension is gone. The same events, told differently, produce completely different levels of engagement.
The Present-Tense Switch: What It Does to the Viewer's Brain
"I'm walking up this mountain and the sun is dropping fast" does something different in the listener's brain than "I walked up the mountain and the sun was dropping fast." The present tense removes the narrator's hindsight. The viewer doesn't know if the narrator made it to the top in time. The outcome is uncertain, and uncertainty is what holds attention.
This isn't just a stylistic preference. There's a reason sports commentary uses present tense ("He's rounding third, the throw is coming in...") and post-game analysis uses past tense ("He rounded third and beat the throw"). The commentary creates the experience. The analysis creates understanding. Both are useful, but only one holds you on the edge of your seat.
For video scripts, present tense puts the viewer inside the story as it unfolds. The narrator becomes a guide walking through the experience in real time, not a reporter summarizing it afterward. The viewer's brain treats present-tense narration as something that's happening now, and things happening now demand more attention than things that already happened.
The switch is mechanical. You can do it in a single editing pass. Go through the script and change every past-tense verb to present tense in narrative sections. "We decided to try a different route" becomes "We decide to try a different route." "The trail was steeper than we expected" becomes "The trail is steeper than we expected." The content doesn't change. The experience of receiving it does.
Tension Without Conflict Is Just Sequence
The second switch is harder to implement but more important. Tension is what separates a story from a sequence of events.
Dovey's bad version of the hiking story is a sequence: went on a hike, went to the top, great view. Things happened in order. Nothing was at stake. The good version of the same story has tension threaded through every detail.
Here's his good version, condensed: after five long days shooting in an LA studio, he and his buddy Jesse want to get outside. On a lunch break they search AllTrails for nearby hikes. They find a trail 10 minutes from the studio, 1,800 feet of elevation gain over a couple miles, basically straight up. They're not prepared. They start anyway because the sun is setting and they don't have much time. They push themselves up the mountain as the sun dips toward the horizon. Just as it's about to disappear, they reach the summit, and the view of LA from the top is one of the best they've ever seen.
Same hike, same people, same mountain, but the good version has tension because something is uncertain. Will they make it before sunset? They're unprepared, the trail is steep, the sun is dropping. The payoff (the view) lands harder because it was earned against the possibility of failure.
Tension requires something to be at risk. That's the part most scripts miss. They describe events without establishing what could go wrong. A video about launching a product that describes the launch steps has no tension. A video about launching a product where you describe what was at stake if the launch failed, how close you came to missing the deadline, what almost went wrong during the rollout, that has tension because the viewer is holding uncertainty about the outcome.
Specificity Is What Makes Tension Possible
Looking at the two versions of Dovey's hiking story reveals exactly which elements create engagement and which don't.
The bad version has: a vague timeframe ("last week"), a generic activity ("awesome hike"), a generic companion ("my buddy"), a generic destination ("top of this mountain"), and a generic payoff ("best view ever"). Every noun is unspecified. Every adjective is a placeholder. The viewer has nothing concrete to visualize and no reason to care.
The good version has: a specific context (five-day studio shoot in LA), a named companion (Jesse), a specific emotional state (wanting to escape the studio and get into nature), a specific discovery process (searching AllTrails on a lunch break), specific trail details (1,800 feet of elevation, couple of miles, 10 minutes from the studio), specific obstacles (unprepared, sun setting, limited time), and a specific payoff (sunset view of LA from the summit).
The specificity is doing two things simultaneously. First, it makes the story believable. Concrete details signal that this actually happened, which earns trust. Second, it creates the raw material for tension. "We weren't prepared" only matters if you know the trail is 1,800 feet of elevation gain. "The sun was setting" only creates urgency if you know they started late on a lunch break. Each specific detail reinforces the tension that the vague version couldn't create because there was nothing concrete enough to be at stake.
For script reviewers, this creates a practical test. Highlight every noun in the script. How many are specific (names, numbers, places, timeframes) versus generic (someone, somewhere, a lot, really good)? The ratio between specific and generic nouns is a surprisingly reliable predictor of how engaging the story will feel.
Stakes Come From Context, Not From Events
Tension requires stakes, and stakes require the audience to understand what could go wrong. This is where most scripts fail, not because the creator doesn't know the stakes but because they assume the audience does.
In the hiking story, Dovey doesn't just say "the sun was setting." He builds the context that makes the setting sun matter: they have limited time because they're on a lunch break, they're not prepared for the trail, and the elevation gain is significant. By the time he mentions the sun dropping toward the horizon, the viewer understands exactly what's at risk (missing the sunset, not reaching the summit, wasting their only break from the studio).
Adding stakes to any story follows a consistent pattern. First, establish what the narrator wants (to reach the summit for sunset). Second, establish what's working against them (steep trail, no preparation, limited time). Third, let the tension sit without resolving it too quickly (describe the push up the mountain with the sun dipping). Fourth, deliver the resolution only after the tension has been felt (they make it just in time).
This pattern works for business content just as well as adventure vlogs. A case study about a client project has natural tension: the deadline, the constraint, the thing that almost went wrong. A product launch story has natural tension: the competitor that released first, the bug found in staging, the team member who solved the problem at the last minute. The stakes are already there in almost every story worth telling. The writer's job is to name them explicitly rather than skipping past them to get to the result.
Real-Life Conversations Are the Cheapest Feedback Loop for Storytelling
Dovey makes a point that sounds simple but is probably the most practical advice in the entire video: to become a better storyteller, tell more stories. Not on camera. In real life.
When you're talking to friends or family about your weekend, about something that happened at work, about a meal you had, put it in the context of a story. Apply present tense. Name the tension. See where you lose the room.
The feedback loop in real-life storytelling is immediate and unforgiving. When you're telling a story to a friend and their eyes glaze over, you know the exact moment you lost them. On YouTube, you find out three days later in the retention graph. The friend's glazed eyes are a faster, cheaper feedback mechanism.
This matters for content teams because script quality is ultimately a function of storytelling skill, and storytelling skill develops through repetition. Teams that only practice storytelling in scripts are practicing in the most expensive, slowest-feedback environment possible. A 10-minute video takes hours to script, produce, edit, and publish, and then you wait days or weeks for retention data that tells you where the story lost people.
A 2-minute story told at lunch takes 2 minutes and the feedback is instantaneous. You notice that your coworker checked their phone during the middle section. You realize you spent too long on context and not enough on tension. You try again the next day and adjust. Over weeks and months, this practice compounds into instinct, the kind of instinct that makes first-draft scripts tighter because the writer has internalized what holds attention and what doesn't.
These two switches, present tense and named tension, are small enough to implement in a single revision pass and significant enough to change how a script feels to the viewer. They don't require more research, more production value, or more time. They require a different relationship with the material. Instead of reporting what happened, you recreate what it felt like to not yet know the outcome. That shift, from retrospective summary to present-tense uncertainty, is the difference between content people watch and content people experience.
