Wanna Be Original? Avoid Video Planning Templates

Seems like every other video creator, blog writer, and marketing guru is hyping some shiny template for video planning—Notion, Airtable, GDocs, GSheets, Trello, Jira, Monday… YouTube is a meat market for these cookie-cutter workflows and “formulas” that promise to unlock the secret to content creation nirvana: “How to Make YouTube Videos – Plan, Shoot, Edit, Post, Grow.” “How to Write a Script for a YouTube Video (Made Easy!)” “BEST YouTube Video Workflow!”

You get the picture.

What they’re selling is the idea that this *one* template will transform your process, your content, your life.

Let’s talk about the elephant in the room: All those templates they’re promoting? They’re for “productivity” apps. Apps designed for project management—tasks, assignments, collaboration, time tracking, scheduling. Useful for organizations and big-picture planning, but they’re not for video scriptwriting—the messy business of creating content with rubbernecking clout.

They’re not for storytelling.

And they’re sure as hell not designed for scrappy DIY creators making magic with duct tape and audacity.

Lego Instructions Lead to One Result

OK, templates. If you’re just dipping your toes into content creation, a template’s not a bad way to get your bearings—how to structure a video, how to organize your thoughts, content, flow.

Useful—for a while.

Any eight-year-old can follow the instructions in a Lego kit. And every kid with the same kit gets the same spaceship. But when you ditch the instructions and dump all the Lego pieces you own on the floor? That’s when you’re making something original. Something weird. Something yours.

That’s the difference between using a template and using your brain—and your gut. Forget the instructions—what do you want to make?

You’re a Creator, Not a Task Bot

Pre-made templates and “workflows” have their place, but they affect the creative process—and not always in good ways. Here’s what they are and aren’t, and why they should never be used as a substitute for your storytelling process:

• Templates Can’t “Think Different”
  They’re rigid. Static. Someone else’s idea of what your process should look like. They don’t adapt to you, your style, audience, or workflow—you adapt to them. And content creation trends change fast, so every template has an expiration date.
• Templates Promote Busywork, Not Storytelling
  They can help guide planning, but they can also box you into rigid formats or creative flows. Filling out a template feels productive, but let’s not kid ourselves—it’s not creative.
• Templates Don’t Evolve Beyond their Design
  Your video topics are a moving target—you throw ideas at the wall and see what sticks. Playing with new formats or storytelling techniques is how channels find their niche—and their audience. So every video you make is a different puzzle, a different story, a different challenge. But templates like predictability. They don’t like experiments or creative left turns.
• Templates Normalize Fragmented Workflows
  Currently, most creators use different tools in the video creation lifecycle—a problem that we aim to solve with ShowShaper. Spreadsheets and note apps for ideas, file management systems for media, project management apps for episode/season planning, text editors for scripting, printouts and helper apps for presenting. But templates don’t solve this mess, they push you further into it—reinforcing the belief that this disjointed approach is normal.
• Templates Aren’t Hooked In to Your Content Universe
  Ideas, notes, scripts, media—they’re all scattered across apps and platforms. Templates are inherently limited—they can’t integrate all those elements into a cohesive, searchable system for streamlined episode building and content repurposing. They can’t see the “big picture”.
• Templates are for Planning, Not Presentation
  Most DIYers learn their presentation skills on the job. Many have never talked on camera or mic before—so anything that helps to calm nerves and to be prepared, focused, confident, and engaging is a big mental boost. Templates can’t offer that.
• Templates Can be Too Much for Rookies, Too Little for Veterans
  For beginners, templates can be intimidating—a minefield of jargon and form fields with no clear guidance on what makes a cohesive episode. For seasoned creators, they’re a creative straightjacket.

Nothing Ages Faster than a Winning Formula

Rock-solid content planning is the bread and butter of successful channels. Quality content equals more subscribers. It all starts with the scriptwriting. How vital has this skill become? Scriptwriters are now specializing in writing for YouTubers.

But scriptwriters don’t rely on templates—on formulas. Creativity—originality—doesn’t live in formulas.

Your scripts are the beating heart of your channel. Successful creators know this. Even when they’ve hit on a winning formula, they know that formulas get stale, that viewers get bored and move on. So they keep reinventing, finding fresh ways to surprise, entertain, and connect.

Templates work expressly against that principle: they aren’t designed to be changed, remixed, or reinvented.

A Template is Somebody Else’s Vision

Every video has its own creative pulse and purpose.

Their value as entertainment or education lies in your originality and creativity—to prioritize innovation and experimentation where templates don’t.

Templates are a band-aid for a broken, disjointed video creation process.

With ShowShaper, we aimed to transform that process with a dynamic creative workspace that offers a modular style of video planning—a video scripting workhorse that's hooked into your ideas and content database from the get-go. ShowShaper’s workflow gives creators total flexibility in how they pull together content, write scripts, and guide the flow of every episode.

The freedom to create, repurpose, and experiment is in its DNA.

Get creative freedom for $65/year for life—that’s 50% off. Not ready to ditch the templates? Join our waitlist for a creator-only offer.