How many words is a 60-second video? Script length by time

Multiply the minutes by your words a minute. At the three paces most people talk at on camera:

Those are spoken words. If the video has pauses, a demo with no talking, or a reaction shot, count those seconds out first. And a script always runs a little longer on camera than in your head, so plan for the lower number.

The free script timer does it both ways: paste a script to see how long it runs at your pace, or pick a length to see how many words fit, with the places to cut marked.

The National Center for Voice and Speech puts the average rate of speech for English speakers in the US at about 150 words a minute. ACX, Audible's audiobook marketplace, says most narrators read about 9,300 words an hour, or about 155 a minute. On camera, the pace moves with the kind of video:

The slow and fast paces here are our rough steps either side of the average, not measured figures; your own pace is the number that matters. Fast talkers on short videos often go well past 170, and plenty of tutorials sit nearer 130. Neither is wrong, as long as each word is clear.

1. Find your pace once. Read a page of something you wrote aloud, the way you'd say it on camera, and time it. Divide the words by the minutes: 300 words in 2 minutes is 150 words a minute.
2. Count the script. Any word counter does it; the character counter counts words too.
3. Divide by your pace. 210 words at 150 a minute is 84 seconds; at 170, 74.
4. Read it aloud anyway. Numbers, names and long words take longer than their word count says, and pauses for effect add up.

Or paste it into the script timer, set your pace, and it shows how long it runs. When you record, the free teleprompter scrolls the script at a speed you set (it starts at 140 words a minute), so you read at the pace you planned.

A short video's script is mostly the hook and the payoff, with very little in between. A rough plan for 60 seconds at a natural pace:

• Open on the line that hooks. No “hey guys”: the first sentence is the reason to stay. Ideas in hooks for short videos and the free hook generator.
• One idea per video. If the script makes three points, it's three videos.
• Write how you talk. Contractions, short words, sentences you could say in one breath. Read it aloud and change anything you trip on.
• Know the limits. Shorts run up to 3 minutes, about 450 words. TikTok's Creator Rewards only count videos of 1 minute or more, so about 150 words is the least there. See how long a short video should be.

Longer videos follow the same idea at a bigger scale: how to write a YouTube script has the structure and a template.

Cut words, not speed. In this order, most to least painless:

1. The warm-up. The first sentence or two is often you getting started. Start where the point starts.
2. Repeats. Saying the point, then saying it again in other words. Keep the better one.
3. Hedges and fillers: “basically”, “I think”, “kind of”, “so what you want to do is”.
4. What the screen already shows. If the viewer can see it, you don't need to say it.
5. The weakest example. Three examples are rarely better than the best one.

Then read it aloud and time it again. The script timer shows how many words fit your target length and suggests places to cut.

If you already talk for an hour on a podcast, a stream or a long YouTube video, the short videos are in there, unscripted. Each good moment is a 20 to 60 second clip with its own hook and payoff, said the way you'd say it anyway. Clyper finds them from a link: it reads what's said, cuts each moment to whole sentences, frames it vertically and captions every word.