How to Write a Script People Will Listen To

Nobody is reading this

A blog post gets a second chance. If a sentence tangles, the eye slides back up the page and untangles it. A video gets no second chance. Your words arrive once, in order, at the speed you say them, and then they are gone.

That one difference is the whole lesson. Write for the ear and everything downstream gets easier: the video is shorter, the voiceover sounds natural, and people stay to the end.

One idea per sentence

The eye can hold a long sentence with three commas and a clause parked in the middle. The ear cannot. By the time the listener reaches the end, the beginning has evaporated.

Here is a sentence that reads fine and listens badly: "Our bakery, which has been on Bridge Street since 2011 and is run by two sisters who both trained in Lyon, makes every loaf by hand." Now the same facts, one idea at a time: "We have been on Bridge Street since 2011. Two sisters run it. We both trained in Lyon. Every loaf is shaped by hand."

Nothing was lost. Everything got clearer. When you find a comma doing heavy lifting, that comma usually wants to be a full stop.

Say the important thing first

Broadcast journalists call this front-loading, and it feels rude on the page. Do it anyway. In a short video, the first four seconds decide whether there is a fifth.

Compare "After a lot of trial and error over the past few years, we finally landed on something that genuinely works" with "Cold water proves your dough overnight. Here is why that matters." The first is throat-clearing. The second gives the listener a reason to stay.

Vary the length, or you will sound like a metronome

Short sentences are the goal, but ten identical short sentences in a row tick like a clock. Mix a seven-word sentence with a fifteen-word one. Let a fragment land on its own. Rhythm is what makes a script sound like a person rather than a list.

Read it aloud. Actually aloud.

This is the step everyone skips and it is the one that works. Read the script out loud at normal speaking speed, standing up, into your phone's voice memo app.

Where you stumble, your listener stumbles. Where you run out of breath, the sentence is too long. Where you feel silly saying it, it is too formal for speech. Play the recording back while you do the washing up and the problems announce themselves in about thirty seconds.

One extra trick if a voice engine will read your script later: write numbers and abbreviations the way you say them. Write twenty eleven rather than 2011, write approximately rather than approx, and write pounds or dollars rather than the symbol. Machines guess, and they guess wrong at the worst possible moment.

Count words, not pages

Because speech runs at roughly 150 words a minute, a script is easy to time. Thirty seconds is about 75 words. Sixty seconds is about 150. Ninety seconds is about 225.

That count is your budget, and it is brutally honest. If your one-minute idea is 340 words long, it is not a one-minute idea yet. Cut before you record, not after.

Rewrite this script so it is written for the ear, not the eye.
Rules: one idea per sentence, no sentence longer than 20 words,
the most important point in the first line, plain spoken English.
Keep every fact. Do not add anything I did not say.
[paste your script]

Read this script as if you were saying it out loud.
List every place a speaker would stumble, run out of breath,
or have to go back and re-read. Quote the exact line and say why.
Do not rewrite it yet. Just find the trip hazards.
[paste your script]

Cut this script to 150 words so it lands in about 60 seconds
at normal speaking pace. Protect these points: [list them].
Everything else can go. Give me the final word count.
[paste your script]