Writing Short Scripts
A sixty-second script is not a three-minute script with the middle removed. It is built differently from the first line, because it has room for exactly one idea and has to earn attention before it has established anything.
Write the last line first
Knowing where the script lands tells you what the opening has to set up, and it exposes every sentence that is not on the way there. Most short scripts are a third too long, and this is how the third is found.
Say it once
Repetition is a long-form technique. In short form, a point made twice reads as a script that does not trust its audience, and it costs seconds that the ending needed.
“If you cannot say what the video is about in one sentence, the script is not finished — it is still research.”
Read it out loud, standing up
Written language and spoken language part company at about twelve words. Reading a draft aloud finds every clause that works on the page and collapses in the mouth, and it takes ninety seconds.
A structure that holds at any length
- The hook — a specific claim, not a question
- The turn — why the obvious answer is wrong
- The proof — one example, told concretely
- The ask — a single next step