Short-form script timer and 3-second hook pacing tool

How long should a short-form script be?

Spoken runtime is a function of two things: how many words you wrote, and how fast you say them. The formula this tool uses is simply seconds = (words ÷ WPM) × 60, with optional pause weighting added for punctuation. Everything else — zones, warnings, colour — is that number sliced against the moments where short-form audiences actually decide to leave.

Target word counts by format

These are clean-read numbers. They assume no breathing room, no B-roll beat, and no dead air at the top of the clip. In practice, budget roughly 10–15% fewer words than the table shows, or turn on Smart pauses to have the timer add that overhead for you.

The bottom row is the one to write to. Across 132 YouTube Shorts with at least a million views each, the median speaking rate was 193 WPM, so that row is the default here. A script timed at 155 WPM and then delivered at a natural short-form pace comes in roughly 20% early — about 12 seconds of unplanned airtime on a 60-second slot.

The mechanics of the 3-second hook

Short-form feeds are built around an immediate swipe decision. The viewer has already committed to scrolling before your video loads, so the opening line is not an introduction — it is an interruption. Whatever makes the video worth watching has to be legible inside the first breath.

Three seconds is a working budget, not a law of physics, but it is a useful constraint because it is brutally short: at the measured 193 WPM it buys you about ten words, at a storytime cadence about eight. That is one clause. If your opening line needs a subordinate clause to land, it is too long.

Measured against what actually performs, the rule is half right. In the 132 top Shorts we timed, a median of 9 words are spoken by the three-second mark, so the 7–10 word budget holds. But the first sentence runs a median of 11 words and 3.1 seconds: only 48% of those clips finish it inside 3.0s, 56% inside 3.5s, and 77% inside 5.0s. Fewer than half obey the three-second rule, and anything up to about five seconds is inside normal practice.

What tends to burn hook time

• Throat-clearing. "Hey guys, so today I wanted to talk about…" is three seconds of nothing.
• Context before conflict. Setup belongs in zone 2, after the viewer has a reason to care.
• Long proper nouns and numbers. They read fast on the page and speak slowly out loud.
• Qualifiers. "kind of", "basically", "I think" — each one costs you a fifth of a second.

A short pause in the opening is not on that list. One clip in five in the measured sample has a pause longer than 0.4 seconds inside the first three seconds, so a beat early on is not disqualifying.

How this tool grades the hook, using those measured cut-offs: a first sentence that ends inside 3.0 seconds gets a green light. Between 3 and 5 seconds you get a note, not a warning — half of top Shorts take longer than three seconds to finish their opening, so that range is ordinary. Past 5 seconds, where fewer than a quarter of top Shorts are still on their first sentence, you get a warning. Write the sentence the hook needs, then cut words, not tenths.

Retention zones explained

A script that spends most of its runtime in zones 1–3 tends to behave like a short. A script whose colour bar is dominated by zones 4 and 5 is a talking-head video that happens to be vertical — which can work, but it is a different format with different expectations.

Speaking rates worth knowing

The first four bands are conventional; the last is measured. We timed the first 30 seconds of 132 YouTube Shorts with at least a million views each and found a median of 193 WPM — so what this table calls a very fast cadence is the ordinary pace of a top-performing Short, not an outlier.

Everyday conversation sits somewhere in the 120–150 range for most English speakers; scripted short-form voiceover usually runs faster than that because the pauses get edited out. If your recorded runtime consistently comes in longer than this timer predicts, lower the WPM until the estimate matches your real reads — that number is your personal cadence, and it is worth knowing.

Measured pace by niche

The gap between the fastest and slowest niche is about 39 WPM, which is smaller than the spread inside any one of them. Pace is a property of the creator more than the subject, so use the niche row as a starting point and the Custom slider to dial in your own. One more thing the data settled: within the sample, speaking rate and hook length did not predict view counts. Pick the pace you can deliver cleanly; do not tune it hoping for reach.

Frequently asked questions

How many words is a 30-second video script?

About 97 words at 193 WPM, the median pace measured across 132 top-performing YouTube Shorts. A conversational 155 WPM read fits 78 words; a deliberate 135 WPM read fits 68. Budget 10–15% fewer if you pause for emphasis or cut to B-roll.

How many words is a 60-second video script?

About 193 words at the measured top-Shorts pace of 193 WPM — at exactly one minute the word count and the words-per-minute rate are the same number. A conversational 155 WPM read fits 155 words and a deliberate 135 WPM read fits 135, so the range across the presets is 135 to 193.

How many words is a 15-second video script?

Roughly 48 words at the measured 193 WPM top-Shorts pace, or 34 to 48 across the presets. At that length there is room for a hook, one point, and a close — nothing else.

How many words should a 3-second hook be?

7 to 10 words, depending on your pace — 10 at the measured 193 WPM top-Shorts pace, 8 at 155. That is one clause. Measured across 132 top-performing Shorts, a median of 9 words land before the 3-second mark, so the rule holds; their first sentence runs a median of 11 words and 3.1 seconds, and only 48% finish inside 3.0s while 77% finish inside 5.0s. This timer treats your first sentence as the hook: inside three seconds is a green light, three to five seconds gets a note rather than a warning because that range is normal practice, and past five seconds you get a warning.

What speaking rate should I use for TikTok, Reels, and Shorts?

Measured across 132 top-performing Shorts, the median is 193 WPM and the middle half runs 156 to 221 — faster than everyday conversation because the pauses get edited out. The Top Shorts preset is set to that 193 WPM median and is the default. A script timed at 155 and delivered at 193 finishes about 20% early, so only drop to the 155 or 135 presets if your recorded videos consistently run longer than the estimate; the WPM that matches your real reads is your personal cadence. Pace did not predict view counts in the sample, so choose the rate you can actually deliver rather than one you hope will travel.

How does the script timer calculate duration?

It counts words, divides by your words-per-minute rate, and multiplies by 60. With Smart pauses on it also adds 0.35 seconds per sentence end, 0.15 per comma or dash, and 0.5 per paragraph break. Each word is then colour-coded by the moment it finishes — the 3-second, 15-second, 30-second, and 60-second retention zones.

Is my script saved or uploaded anywhere?

No. The draft is stored in your browser's local storage so it survives a refresh, and it never leaves your device. The page makes no network requests after it loads.

How the timer calculates

• Word counting uses /\b\w+(?:['’]\w+)?\b/g, so contractions count once and double spaces are ignored. Hyphenated compounds count as two words, which matches how they are spoken.
• Base duration is (words ÷ WPM) × 60. With smart pauses off, 155 words at 155 WPM is exactly 1:00.0.
• Smart pauses add +0.35s per sentence-ending run (. ! ?), +0.15s per internal break (, ; : —), and +0.50s per paragraph break.
• Zone colour is assigned per word, based on the cumulative time at which that word finishes.
• Everything runs in your browser. Your draft is saved to this device's local storage and never leaves it. There is no account, no upload, and no server.