An explainer video script is written to a word count, not to a page. Voiceover runs at roughly 140 to 150 words a minute, so a ninety-second video is about 220 words — around half a side of A4. Almost every script we are sent is two or three times that, and almost every problem with it comes from that one fact being discovered late.
Start with the number, not the words
Before you write a sentence, decide how long the video is and turn it into a word count. At a natural narration pace of about 150 words a minute, thirty seconds is roughly 75 words, sixty seconds is about 150, and ninety seconds is around 220. Slower, more considered delivery runs nearer 120 words a minute; a fast, energetic commercial read pushes towards 175.
Use 140 to 150 as your working figure. Real voiceover has pauses in it, and the pauses are where the animation breathes.
Writing to that number from the start changes everything. It stops you listing nine features, because there is only room for three. It forces the point to arrive early. And it means the script you approve is the script that gets made, rather than one that has to be cut by a third after it is already written and everyone is attached to it.
The shape that works
Nearly every explainer video that does its job follows the same five beats. This is not a formula to be clever about — it is simply the order in which people are willing to listen.
- The problem, in their words. Roughly 25 to 35 words. Not your product’s absence, but the thing that is actually annoying them on a Tuesday afternoon.
- Why it hasn’t been solved. About 30 words. This is the beat most scripts skip, and it is the one that earns trust — it shows you understand why the obvious fix doesn’t work.
- What you do. Around 60 words. One sentence of what it is, then the two or three things it does. Not everything it does.
- Why that is better. Around 60 words. The outcome, ideally something measurable. Time back, errors gone, fewer calls.
- What to do next. About 20 words. One action. Book a demo, or request pricing, or read the guide. Not all three.
That adds up to about 210 words, which is your ninety seconds. If a beat is running long, it is nearly always the third one — the temptation to explain the whole product is very strong and almost always wrong.
Write it to be spoken
The most common fault in a script written in-house is not that it is badly written. It is that it is written well, for the page. Marketing copy and spoken narration behave differently, and a sentence that reads beautifully can be unsayable.
A few things that consistently help:
- One idea per sentence. If a sentence has a comma doing the work of a full stop, split it.
- Say the numbers as you would speak them. “Around a third” lands better than “32.7%”, and a voice artist has to read the latter out loud.
- Cut the throat-clearing. “In today’s fast-paced business environment” costs you eight words and buys nothing. At 150 words a minute, eight words is three seconds you no longer have.
- Use contractions. People say “you’ll”, not “you will”. Scripts without contractions sound like an annual report being read aloud, because that is what they are.
- Read it out loud. Every time. If you run out of breath, the sentence is too long.
The first ten seconds do most of the work
That is about 25 words, and it is the part worth spending a disproportionate amount of time on. Most viewers decide whether to keep watching well before the halfway mark, so a video that explains itself brilliantly at second forty has already lost the people it was for.
Open on the problem, not on your company. “Founded in 2016, we are a leading provider of…” is the single most common opening line we are sent, and it is twelve words spent on something the viewer does not yet have any reason to care about. Compare it with “Your team spends four hours a week copying numbers between two systems.” The second one earns the next eighty seconds.
There is a reason this works, and it is not a trick of copywriting. Attention, pacing and recall are the whole subject of the psychology of animation and how it influences viewer engagement, which is worth a read if you want the reasoning rather than the rule.
Leave room for the animation
A script for an animated explainer video is not a description of what happens on screen. It is the words that will be spoken. The pictures are our problem, and a script that tries to solve them tends to produce a video where the narrator describes what you are already looking at.
The rule we use: if the voiceover says it, the picture shouldn’t say it too. The voice says “it takes four hours a week”; the screen shows the clock. The voice doesn’t say “here you can see a clock representing four hours”. Saying it twice is how a ninety-second script becomes a two-and-a-half-minute video without gaining a single new idea.
If there is something that genuinely must appear — a product screen, a legal line, a logo at a particular moment — put it in a second column, or in a note at the end. Keep it out of the spoken words.
What to cut, when it runs long
It will run long. Everyone’s first draft does. In roughly this order, cut:
- Company history. Unless the video is about the company, nobody watching needs the founding date.
- The second and third use case. Pick the one that applies to the most people, or to the most valuable people. A video that covers four audiences convinces none of them.
- Features that are table stakes. If three competitors also have it, it is not persuading anyone.
- Qualifiers. “Can help to potentially reduce” is four words saying what “cuts” says in one, and it sounds less certain into the bargain.
- The second call to action. Two actions is the same as none.
This also happens to be the cheapest edit you will ever make. Our pricing is per finished minute — animated explainers start at £950 a minute, app and platform demos at £700 — so length is the main lever on cost, and length is decided in the script. Cutting a three-minute script to ninety seconds usually makes the video cheaper and better. That is the most common piece of advice we give.
Test it before anyone animates a frame
Three checks, ten minutes, before the script goes anywhere near a storyboard.
1. Read it aloud with a stopwatch. Not in your head — out loud, at the pace a voice artist would use. If ninety seconds of script takes you two minutes to say, you have a two-minute video. This single test catches more problems than everything else combined.
2. Give it to someone who doesn’t know the product. Ask them afterwards what it does and what they should do next. If they can’t answer both in a sentence, the script isn’t finished, however good it reads.
3. Get the approvals now. If a director, a founder or a compliance team gets a say, they need to see it at this stage. Changing a line in a script takes a minute. Changing it once the video is animated, voiced and timed to music can take a day. Approvals, not animation, are what make projects late.
A ninety-second script you could draft this afternoon
Fill in the five beats, keep to the word counts, then read it out loud and time it.
- Problem (30 words): the frustrating thing your audience already recognises.
- Why it persists (30 words): what people currently do about it, and why that doesn’t really work.
- What you do (60 words): one sentence of what it is, then the two or three things it does.
- Why it’s better (60 words): the outcome, in their terms. A number if you have an honest one.
- Next step (20 words): one action, said plainly.
If you would rather not write it at all, that is a perfectly reasonable answer and a common one. Script support is included in our per-minute price, so for most clients the script starts as a conversation and a one-page brief rather than a document they had to write. Send us the three things the video must say, ranked, and we will get it to 220 words.
You can see how the finished versions of these scripts turn out across our animated explainer videos and app and platform demos.