Daily devotional Shorts drawn from one verse

How it works

1. 1

   Write the devotional

   Set the project to portrait 9:16. Paste a verse and a reflection of 100 to 140 words into the Story box: the verse, what it means, one thing to do today, one line of prayer. Or give the story assistant the verse and ask for a 45-second devotional.

2. 2

   Doodaro builds the scenes

   Pick Gentle Story Comics, soft graphite and watercolor that reads warm on a phone, or Midnight Chalk if your feed is dark. Build scenes gives you 4 or 5 scenes, each with a drawn picture and narration.

3. 3

   Review, then export

   Play the Short on the storyboard. If the verse scene draws a symbol you would not use, edit the picture description and click Redraw on that scene. Give the closing line a 3-second hold, then render the MP4 and upload it as a Short.

Best practices

• Keep the Short under 60 seconds. At about 150 words per minute, that means 100 to 140 words: verse, reflection, one action, one line of prayer.
• Build 4 or 5 scenes of 8 to 12 seconds. Fewer scenes means each drawing gets time to finish on a phone screen.
• Put the verse in the first 5 seconds. Viewers decide whether to keep watching a Short in about 3 seconds, and the verse is the hook.
• Use the same style and the same narrator for 30 days in a row so the channel looks like one channel. Set the voice once per project and only override a scene if you must.
• Write 7 scripts at a time and build them in one sitting. Seven Shorts at 50 seconds each is under 6 minutes of exported video, which is a small slice of a monthly plan.