How to write a reel script that does not sound written

There is a particular flatness to a reel read from a script. The words are right, the information is right, and the person sounds like they are reading a notice. Viewers leave inside two seconds and nobody can quite say why.

A teleprompter is now built into the editing app, so more people are reading than ever. That makes the writing the thing that separates a reel that holds from one that does not, and writing for speech is a different job from writing.

Why does a written script sound wrong?

Because we write in complete sentences and speak in fragments. Written English resolves every clause; spoken English abandons half of them, repeats a word for emphasis, and puts the important thing first, because the listener cannot scroll back to check what we meant.

When you read a written sentence aloud, your voice does the thing it does in a classroom: even pace, even pitch, falling tone at every full stop. That pattern is what a viewer recognises as reading, and they recognise it faster than they can tell you what they noticed.

What is the method?

Talk first, type second. We record a voice note explaining the thing to a friend, then transcribe that, then cut it down. The script that comes out is already in your own rhythm, because it was speech before it was text.

1. Explain the idea out loud, once, without stopping to fix anything.
2. Write down what you said, including the fragments and the repetitions.
3. Cut it by a third. What survives is almost always the useful half.
4. Read it back aloud. Any sentence that makes your voice go flat gets rewritten or removed.
5. Put the first line last in the editing order: write it once you know what the reel turned out to be about.

How do you set the teleprompter itself?

You can read scripts from your notes while filming, and adjust the text size and speed as you go. Those two settings do most of the work: text too small drags your eyes in, speed too fast makes you chase.

We set the speed a notch slower than feels comfortable and the text as large as it goes. Then we talk slightly ahead of the line rather than exactly with it, which keeps the delivery yours instead of the script's. It also means a stumble costs nothing, because you are not locked to the scroll.

How long should a script be?

Shorter than you think, and the reason is arithmetic rather than taste. Most people speak at about two and a half words a second when they are relaxed, so a thirty-second reel is roughly seventy-five words. A page of writing is a two-minute video nobody finishes.

We write to a word count rather than a time, because a word count is something you can check before you film rather than after. If the first cut runs long, we take out a whole point rather than trimming every sentence, since a reel with two clear ideas beats one with four hurried ones.

What do you do about the first line?

Write it last and treat it as a separate job. The opening has to work for somebody who has no context, is half-watching, and has already decided to keep scrolling unless something stops them.

It also has to survive being read. A clever written opening often lands badly aloud, because the joke is in the construction rather than in the sound. Our post on reel hooks has openings that were built to be spoken.

If you would not say it to somebody in a queue, do not read it to a camera.

Our last check before filming is to read the whole thing standing up. Sitting down flattens a voice, and a script that survives being read standing, at normal volume, in one breath per line, is one we know will not come out as a notice.

What about a second language?

Write the script in the language you will speak, not in English first and then translated. A translated script carries English sentence shapes into another language, and native speakers hear that immediately even when every word is correct.

Captions can be generated automatically afterwards, with bilingual caption upgrades named as coming, so the on-screen half can follow the spoken half rather than leading it.

When the reel does hold and the questions start arriving underneath it, Instoly answers each one with the link, so the writing you did once keeps working.