How to Write a Video Script

A video script is the written plan for everything a viewer will hear and, in most cases, a good deal of what they will see. It is the document every other part of a production gets built on top of, and it is the cheapest place to fix a problem.

Here is the whole process in seven steps:

1. Define the goal. What the video is for and what a viewer should do after watching.

2. Understand the audience. How technical they are, what they already know, what they get out of this.

3. Define the key message. The one thing that has to land, even if nothing else does.

4. Outline. Opening, body, call to action.

5. Set the length. Roughly 150 spoken words per minute of finished video.

6. Write the draft. Conversational, one idea per line, read aloud as you go.

7. Edit ruthlessly. Then hand it to someone else and edit again.

We have written scripts for hundreds of animations since 2015, across healthcare, financial services, higher education, and industrial training. The rest of this guide covers each step, the format a script should be written in, a template you can copy, and a full script from a finished client project with the animation next to it.

If you are working out how long your script should be, our free Script Timer converts a word count into an estimated runtime.

A video script is not a screenplay, and treating it like one is the most common mistake people make on their first attempt.

A screenplay is built for actors and a camera crew. It has slug lines, scene headings, and action blocks, and its formatting conventions exist to serve a shooting schedule. A video script for an explainer, a training module, or a product demo has a different job. Most of the time there is no camera at all. What you are writing is the spoken track, plus enough visual direction for a designer or animator to build against.

That difference changes what a good script contains. You are not describing camera angles. You are deciding what a viewer hears, what they see at that moment, and in what order the two unfold.

1. Define the goal

Before you put pen to paper, you need a clear picture of the end goal. What is the reason you are making this video? Who are you trying to reach? What action do you want them to take? What would you like them to feel?

Here is the test we use. If someone asked you a year from now whether the video was successful, what would you point at to answer?

If you cannot answer that, you are not ready to write.

2. Understand your audience

Make sure you understand who is watching and what they stand to gain. How technical are they? How new are they to the concepts you are presenting? What is in it for them?

This is mostly research and empathy. If you have never thought seriously about how to speak to rather than at your audience, it is worth spending time on a buyer persona, which is a semi-fictional profile of your ideal viewer built from real data about your existing customers. It will not describe your whole audience accurately. It does not need to. You just need a loosely accurate archetype of the people you are hoping to reach.

Sometimes the hard part is done for you. If you are scripting a video that explains the details of an insurance policy, you have a captive audience who already needs the information. You still need to be clear and engaging, but you are not fighting for attention. If you are scripting a product launch for social media, you are.

3. Define your key message

Sometimes the goal of a video is to land a single big message, and everything builds toward it. Other times you are explaining something complicated made of smaller connected parts. Or conveying several ideas at once.

Defining the key message early keeps you connected to the video's goal and makes the transitions between concepts much easier to write. A short strategic brief helps here: goals, intended impact, and the ideas you think will get you there.

4. Build an outline

Creating an outline, even a loose one, is close to essential. At minimum it should have an introduction to your subject, a body, and a wrap-up with a call to action.

How you approach it depends on the kind of video you are making. The script formats by video type section below covers the two structures we use most.

5. Decide the length

As a general rule, shorter and more concise wins. If you want people to listen, you have to give them a reason to stick around.

The length depends on the goal. If you want to pique interest and drive an action, go shorter. If you want to educate someone in depth, longer is fine, as long as every section earns its place.

When we can, we keep videos between one and two minutes. Sometimes shorter. Engagement tends to drop off after about 45 seconds, so anything past that has to keep working for its runtime.

For planning purposes, a natural narration pace runs at roughly 150 words per minute. That puts a 60-second video at about 150 words and a two-minute video at about 300. Paste a draft into our Script Timer to get a runtime estimate before you commit to it.

6. Write the draft

Keep it simple. Writing in flowery detail or impressive jargon might have earned you an A on a senior thesis, but it is not how clear communication works in the real world. Video scripts are best kept clear and conversational, with an unflinching sense of empathy for the viewer.

Keep. It. Simple.

Establish tone by painting a picture, not by instruction. When you feel passionate about a topic it is tempting to assume everyone else does too. They do not. Hold your audience's hand and guide their emotional state. Take them on a journey and help them feel what you feel. It is never about telling an audience what to feel.

If your goal is excitement, the script should be punchy and upbeat, grabbing attention right away with a burning question or a compelling statistic. If your subject is more serious, you still have to earn interest, usually by making the importance of the subject clear and explaining the urgency of dealing with it. There, a tone of trust and authority matters more than energy.

Lean on figurative language. Because video scripts are short, comprehension shortcuts do enormous work. Our brains are wired for them. Long before written language, legends and myths were passed down through motifs, allegories and symbols, because a story compresses a complicated idea into something a person can hold onto. When it comes to communicating a nuanced idea, the shortest route from point A to point B is usually a story.

Mind your transitions. Pop quiz: what do almost all choppy, disjointed videos have in common?

Answer: choppy, disjointed video scripts.

A book can use chapters to separate sub-storylines. A video usually has to flow between concepts without a visible seam. One reliable technique is the head-to-tail transition, where you place a word or concept at the start of a paragraph that echoes something from the end of the one before it. There is no faster way to lose a viewer than failing to walk them from one idea to the next.

7. Edit ruthlessly

After you have finished a first draft, know this. It is only a first draft.

Writing a perfect video script on the first try is a bit like the last time I stumbled upon a 22 carat golden elephant roaming the streets of Philadelphia. In short, it has not happened yet. Never say never, I suppose.

Here is what to do while editing:

• Read the script out loud, multiple times. Cut any word or phrase you keep stumbling over.

• Check that the tone matches your goal and your audience.

• Check that it flows between concepts and sections.

• Ask another writer to read it. Be open to suggestions and do not be too proud of your work.

• Check spelling, language, and the actual meaning of the words you have chosen.

• Take a break between edits and come back with fresh eyes.

• Be extra ruthless. It is going to go through several rounds of revision anyway.

Then ask yourself:

• Will this resonate with my audience?

• Does it communicate the core message?

• Does it tell an engaging story with a logical flow?

• Does it include a compelling call to action?

• Is it any longer or more complex than it needs to be?

• Is it likely to achieve its objectives?

The closer you are to your own work, the harder objectivity gets. Leave it for a day or two and reset, or recruit an extra pair of eyes.

The standard video script format is a two-column table, sometimes called an AV script. Audio on one side, visuals on the other, with each row representing one scene or one beat.

The layout matters more than it looks like it should. A single block of prose forces your animator to guess where one visual ends and the next begins. A two-column table makes that decision explicit, row by row, before anyone starts building.

Three columns is the usual working setup:

• Scene. A number, so everyone in a review can point at the same thing.

• Visual. What appears on screen at this moment, described plainly. On-screen text and data go here too.

• Audio. The exact narration or dialogue, written the way it will be spoken. Music and sound effect notes go here.

Write the audio column first. The visual column is easier to fill in once you know what is being said over it.

Copy the table below into Google Docs or Word and write directly into it. This is the same structure we use on client work.

Six rows is a starting point, not a limit. A 90-second explainer usually runs 12 to 25 scenes once it is fully built out, which is also roughly the panel count you will end up with when you take it to the storyboard stage.

The structure you use depends on what the video is for. Here are the two we build from most often, plus how they change across the kinds of work we do.

Explainer video script format

Explainer videos highlight a product, service, idea, or mission succinctly. The job is to communicate the most information in the shortest time while keeping the viewer engaged. They usually follow four steps.

Step 1. Highlight the problem. Draw attention to the problem your product or service resolves. Even when the audience already knows the problem exists, remind them of it, or contextualize why it persists.

Step 2. Introduce the solution. Once the problem has landed, present the solution. This is a short, necessary step before you move on.

Step 3. Show how it works. Explain what your product or service actually does and how a viewer would use it. Depending on the goal, this is either the bulk of the video or a quick, punchy overview that sends them somewhere they can see it in action.

Step 4. Call to action. If you fail to tell viewers what to do next, what was the point of everything before it? Visit a site, call a number, download an app. Make the next step unmistakable.

Explainers work because they are crystal clear and they engage the logical, decision-making part of the brain. Concise step-by-step logic is extremely easy to follow. Pair that with strong visuals and the format is hard to beat.

Storytelling video script format

Sometimes the purpose is not to market a product but to tell a story. This is common for mission-driven organizations like nonprofits and NGOs, and it also comes up when the explainer structure is simply too rigid.

In those cases you can build on a plot people already recognize. The best known is the hero's journey, where a protagonist faces a series of challenges before reaching the top of a metaphorical mountain. When you place your message inside a plot the audience already identifies with, even subconsciously, they put themselves in the character's shoes.

Storytelling videos work because they are emotional rather than logical, and memories stick far better when they are attached to an emotional experience.

That is not a wishy-washy idea. It happens in neurochemicals. When we hear a story built around a hero we relate to, brain activity studies suggest we view ourselves as participants rather than observers. That creates empathy, and the brain releases oxytocin, which is involved in trust as much as affection. Viewers who trust you are more engaged and more receptive. As the hero faces obstacles, the anxiety of those subplots triggers cortisol. When she overcomes them, the brain releases dopamine.

That is a simplified view of the science. The takeaway is that experiences soaked in emotion are stickier, and a good script writer builds for it.

There is one more piece. In storytelling, an unresolved problem usually remains at the end. Say your video raises awareness of childhood illiteracy in a developing country. If it simply ends, the viewer thinks, well, that is very sad, I wish there were something I could do.

If you do everything well and then fail to close with a call to action, the only thing you have accomplished is letting a viewer feel proud of themselves for feeling empathy.

Bravo to you. Hooray to the viewer.

Except not really, because the viewer feeling proud is not helping the children who need to learn to read.

The unresolved problem has to open the door to action. Tell the viewer what they can do.

Training and eLearning scripts

Training and eLearning scripts are written for a captive audience, which changes the calculus. You are not fighting for attention, you are fighting for retention.

Two things matter more here than anywhere else. Chunking, because a 40-minute module written as one continuous script will not be remembered, and a script broken into short sections with clear objectives will. And accuracy of terminology, because in regulated environments the words are frequently the deliverable.

Write the learning objective at the top of every section. If a paragraph does not serve it, cut the paragraph.

Commercial and brand scripts

A commercial script is the hardest version of this, because you have 30 seconds and no goodwill. The hook has to arrive in the first three seconds and the brand has to arrive before the viewer leaves.

Thirty seconds is roughly 75 words. Write it, cut it in half, then see what actually broke.

Here is a complete script from a finished client animation, with each section of the video next to the words that produced it.

The brief

Our client, Invested.ch, is a Switzerland-based startup that encourages everyday U.S. and Swiss citizens to invest a portion of their savings. Their target audience is broad: anyone with savings they could be putting to work but who does not understand why it matters.

The goal. After a discovery meeting we learned their most important early task was not explaining their tools. It was helping people understand there was a problem in the first place. That made the problem section unusually important.

The audience. Anyone with a few thousand dollars in savings they do not need to touch, concentrated in Switzerland and the United States. The script was later translated into German.

The key message. Most Westerners do not invest, and inflation quietly costs them money every year. The wealthiest know this and use investing to multiply what they have. Nothing prevents everyone else from doing the same except a false narrative of complexity.

The format. A hybrid. Storytelling through the first half while the problem is established, then a conventional explainer structure for the solution and the call to action. There are no unflinching recipes here, and this is a good example of why.

Scene 1: Introduce the problem

Did you know, if you're not investing your money, you are, in fact, losing your money? Thanks to inflation, you are losing an average of about 3 cents for every dollar, every year, or about 3 percent.

To be clear, we're not talking about the loss of physical money, but how much your money is actually worth. Think of it this way, the quarter your grandfather was once able to buy a loaf of bread with, can now only buy you a slice.

Note the hook. A question that reframes something the viewer thought was safe, followed immediately by a concrete image doing the work an abstract number cannot.

Scene 2: Contextualize the problem, part one

So while 3% in one year might not sound like much at first, it really adds up. If you put $10,000 of your hard earned money in the bank, you can expect to lose over $300 of value, year after year after year. So saving money in the bank is simply not analogous to "playing it safe."

Now what about a person much richer than you? Inflation should affect the wealthy the same way, right? Well it would, except the mega rich are sidestepping the problem.

Scene 3: Contextualize the problem, part two

While the majority of us are passively allowing our savings to be swallowed up by inflation, the top 10% of earners are actively investing in stocks, not only offsetting inflation but multiplying their wealth. This, along with a general lack of investing on the part of the middle class, has contributed greatly to the extreme levels of wealth inequality we see today. In other words, the rich are in fact getting richer, and the middle class, if they're not investing, are getting poorer. And if you're in the majority this is affecting your wallet, your opportunities, and your life experiences.

Three scenes on the problem before the solution appears. That is longer than a standard explainer would allow, and it was the right call for this brief.

Scene 4: Introduce the solution

To combat this, Invested.CH, a Switzerland based initiative, stepped back and asked a basic question. What if we created an intuitive tool that allows you to not only easily invest in stocks, but to invest wisely, and with whatever amount you can spare?

Invested.CH aims to make up for the guaranteed loss caused by inflation by empowering the middle class to make real investments, like the wealthy have been doing for decades.

Scene 5: Show how it works

Our cutting edge tools are designed to be simple and intuitive. To guide you through your first investments, the website also includes a series of step by step, easy-to-understand tutorial videos, like this one.

Within no time, you'll be making well informed trades based on innovative financial models. In many respects, more cutting edge than those used by professional stock forecasters.

Scene 6: Call to action

The tool is constantly being refined. Come be a part of the movement, by visiting us at Invested.ch and be among the first to test drive our latest investment tools. While you're there, you can also follow our progress by signing up for our newsletter.

For more finished work built from scripts like this one, browse our animation portfolio or read through our case studies.

The script is the foundation, but it is one part of the finished piece.

Video scripts are not endlessly abstract like a Jackson Pollock painting. They are also not formulaic like instructions for an IKEA desk. A video script is closer to writing a lyrically driven song, where the words have to mesh with sound, emotion, and visual ideas that are all interdependent. Take away the music and you lose emotional pull. Take away professional visuals and the whole thing looks amateurish. Take away the voiceover artist and, well, you get the point.

Which brings up the voiceover. Beyond the style you write in, whether friendly, authoritative, or upbeat, you are also writing for a literal human voice. Casting decisions change how a line lands, so it is worth knowing what tone you are writing toward before you finalize the words.

Then there is the storyboard. A script sits alongside a storyboard, which describes what happens visually on screen. While you write, you will start to wonder whether the production team can build on-screen action that fits what you have written.

Resist the temptation to visualize too much, too soon. The story comes first. Sacrificing the flow of a script to cram in a visual concept before the storyboard has been thought through is rarely worth it. Write a strong script, take it to storyboard, then come back and revise the script against what the visuals need.

Once your script is roughly 80 percent of the way there, you can move into storyboarding with confidence. Our guide to storyboards covers the five types, real examples from finished projects, and how many panels a video actually needs. And for the full picture of how a script fits into an entire animation production, read our guide to producing an animation on a budget.

A script is a blueprint for everything that comes after it, and it is worth the time it takes to get right.

If you would rather not write it yourself, we script and produce animations across healthcare, financial services, education, and industrial training, and scriptwriting is included in every production we run.