How to make a Reddit story video
Reddit story videos take a thread, usually from r/AmItheAsshole, r/TIFU or r/relationship_advice, and turn it into a narrated short with burned-in captions.
They work because the story does the retention work for you. A thread that got 20,000 upvotes already has a hook, an escalation and a payoff, which is most of what a script needs. Your job is compression rather than invention.
This produces a finished 9:16 MP4 you can upload without opening an editor.
Steps
Find a thread that turns
Look for a post where something changes partway through: a reveal, a reversal, a consequence nobody saw coming. Threads that are purely a complaint have nowhere to go, and they flatten on video even when they read well. Aim for 150 to 300 words of actual story once you strip the preamble. Sort by top of the week rather than hot, because you want threads that already proved they hold attention.
Cut it to the spine
Remove backstory, usernames, edits, and every sentence that explains something the story survives without. What should remain is setup, escalation, turn, resolution. A 60-second video runs to roughly 150 spoken words, so most threads lose more than half their length at this stage. If cutting hurts, you picked a thread with too much scaffolding.
Move the turn to the front
Threads are written chronologically because that is how the poster lived them. Video cannot afford that. Take the most surprising line, put it first, and let the rest of the script explain how anyone arrived there. This single reordering does more for retention than any other edit on this list.
Write the opening line yourself
The first three seconds decide whether the rest gets watched. Do not open with 'so this happened' or a description of the subreddit. State the specific strange thing: 'She found the receipt eleven years later.' Everything after that is the story earning the promise you just made.
Generate the video
Paste your trimmed script into Leaxor as the topic and pick a quality tier. The scene illustrations, narration and burned-in captions are produced and assembled in one pass, typically in five to ten minutes.
Watch it once on mute
Play it back with the sound off before uploading. If the captions alone do not carry the story, fix the script rather than the visuals. Most of the feed watches without sound, and a video that only works with audio is a video that mostly does not work.
What you end up with
A vertical MP4 of roughly 45 seconds: eight illustrated scenes carrying the story beats, narration timed to the animation, and word-level captions burned into the frames. The sample reel on the homepage shows the same output shape from a different source.
Watch sample videosWhen this isn't the right approach
If you want to read the thread yourself on camera, use an editor like CapCut and record. If you already have footage you want cut down rather than a story you want built, Opus Clip or Submagic will serve you better. And if the plan is to publish dozens of near-identical threads with nothing added, that is the exact profile YouTube's reused-content review declines, regardless of the tool.
Ready to make one?
Make a Reddit story videoFrequently asked
Can I use Reddit posts in monetised videos?
Reddit's content policy permits sharing, but the person who wrote the post holds copyright over their words. Most channels paraphrase rather than reproduce verbatim, drop usernames, and add framing of their own. That is also the version that performs better, so the safe route and the effective route agree here. Reproducing an entire post word for word with nothing added is the case most likely to attract a complaint.
How long should a Reddit story video be?
Between 30 and 60 seconds for most threads. The story needs enough room for its turn to land, but past roughly 60 seconds retention falls faster than the payoff improves. If a thread genuinely needs 90 seconds, it is usually two videos.
Do you need permission to read a Reddit post?
Not legally in most cases, though attribution is still the right call and the subreddit's own rules may say otherwise. The practical risks are different from the legal one: naming individuals, keeping identifying details, or reading a post whose author has since deleted it are what generate complaints. Paraphrasing rather than reading verbatim, and stripping usernames and specifics, removes nearly all of that while keeping the story intact.
Why do these videos use a synthetic voice so often?
Because the format is consumed muted more often than not, and the voice is carrying captions rather than performance. That makes the read functional, which is exactly the case synthetic narration handles well. It also makes production repeatable at volume, which matters for a format where output frequency drives results. Where a human read genuinely wins is comedic timing, and comedic timing is worth the extra step on the videos that depend on it.