How many words is a 60-second script?
About 130 words, conversationally. Here is the whole table, from fifteen seconds to ten minutes, and the three things that make a real take run longer than the maths.
A 60-second script is about 130 words at a conversational pace — 100 words if you are speaking formally or to a room, and up to 170 for an energetic read to camera. The arithmetic is word count divided by words per minute. Expect a real take to run about 10% longer than that figure, because the count includes no pauses, no breaths and no room for the sentence you decide to say twice.
About 130 words. That is a 60-second script at a conversational pace — the rate most people land on when they are talking to a camera rather than to a hall.
If you want the rest of the table, it is below. If you want the reasoning, that is below the table, and it matters more than the number does.
The table
Words you need, for a given length, at a given pace.
| Target length | 100 wpm measured |
120 wpm presenting |
130 wpm conversational |
150 wpm energetic |
170 wpm fast |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 15 seconds | 25 | 30 | 33 | 38 | 43 |
| 30 seconds | 50 | 60 | 65 | 75 | 85 |
| 45 seconds | 75 | 90 | 98 | 113 | 128 |
| 60 seconds | 100 | 120 | 130 | 150 | 170 |
| 90 seconds | 150 | 180 | 195 | 225 | 255 |
| 2 minutes | 200 | 240 | 260 | 300 | 340 |
| 3 minutes | 300 | 360 | 390 | 450 | 510 |
| 5 minutes | 500 | 600 | 650 | 750 | 850 |
| 10 minutes | 1,000 | 1,200 | 1,300 | 1,500 | 1,700 |
The arithmetic is just word count ÷ words per minute. Everything interesting is in which column you belong to.
Which column is yours
The honest answer is that you do not know yet, and the figure above is a planning number rather than a measurement. But the ranges are well established, and you can place yourself quickly:
- 100 wpm — measured. Formal delivery, a large room, a eulogy, anything being interpreted or captioned live. Also where you end up if you are nervous and over-correcting for it.
- 120 wpm — presenting. A conference talk or a demo, where the audience is following an argument and needs the gaps.
- 130 wpm — conversational. Talking to one camera as though it were one person. The most common pace for a piece to camera, and a sensible default.
- 150 wpm — energetic. Short-form, a podcast with momentum, a read where the pace is part of the tone.
- 170 wpm — fast. A hard sixty-second cutoff, or a format where speed is the style. Past about 180 you are moving faster than a listener can comfortably follow.
If you want your own number rather than a bracket, read 300 words aloud at the pace you would actually use and time it. 300 divided by the minutes it took is your rate, and it will be more useful than any table.
Why your takes run long
The count above is of words. A take also contains everything that is not a word, and that is where the extra time comes from:
Pauses. Every full stop you honour, every beat before the punchline. A script with a lot of punctuation runs longer than one of the same length written in long sentences. Add roughly ten per cent.
Breaths and resets. You will restart a sentence. You will say “sorry, again” and go back four words. None of that is in the word count, and if you are recording in one take it is all in the runtime.
Things on the screen that are not you. If you are cutting to B-roll, reading a list off a slide, or waiting while a graphic lands, that time belongs to the video and not to the script.
So: take the figure from the table, add about ten per cent, and treat that as the planning number. If you have a hard limit — sixty seconds on a platform that will cut you off — write to about 90% of the table figure and you will make it comfortably.
Short-form in particular
A 60-second cap is the most common place people get caught, because the cap is real and the overrun is invisible until you have already filmed it.
At 150 wpm — a realistic pace for short-form, which tends to be delivered faster than a talking-head — sixty seconds is 150 words, and a safe target is closer to 135. If you are hooking in the first three seconds, that hook is costing you seven or eight of those words before you have said anything.
Ten minutes, at the other end, is 1,300 words conversationally. That is longer than most people expect, and it is the reason a “quick ten-minute video” turns into a three-hour afternoon.
Check your own script
Rather than counting by hand, paste it into the script timer: it gives the word count, the runtime at a pace you choose, and the pace you would need to hit a target length — useful in the other direction, when the script is written and the slot is fixed.
When you come to record it, the teleprompter scrolls at the same words-per-minute figure the timer quotes, so the length you planned for is the length you read at. That sounds like it should go without saying. It does not.
LensCue is a free online teleprompter — no signup, no watermark, and your script never leaves your browser.