How many words for a 1-minute video?

The answer by minute

These figures come from the timing formula below, not from a stopwatch. Narration is sentences of about 12 words with one comma each; dialogue is lines of 6 words, each in its own shot.

The ceiling is the bare 3 words a second with no pauses, which no real voice keeps up for long. Plan to the first two columns.

How SceneMixer times a spoken line

When a storyboard is written, each line's shot gets the seconds its words need:

seconds = words ÷ 3 + 0.75 for each sentence end + 0.3 for each comma + 0.5 for the line

The shot length is then rounded up to the next half second and is never less than 2 seconds. An ellipsis counts as one pause, and the full stop in Mr. or Dr. does not end a sentence.

A segment of up to 15 seconds therefore holds at most about 45 words, and in practice 24 to 35 once the pauses are counted. Shot seconds and timing · AI dialogue generator · AI storyboard generator.

A worked example: a 90-second explainer

You have 8 sentences of 14 words each and one comma in every sentence, spoken as one narration block.

If every sentence is its own line in its own shot, add 0.5 seconds for each line: about 50 seconds of speech. Half the video is pictures with no voice, which is where the shots that show what the words describe go.

Script pages to minutes

The common rule is that a screenplay page is about a minute of screen time. It is a convention, not a measurement: dialogue-heavy pages run shorter on screen and action-heavy pages longer.

The project limit is on text, not on pages: up to 300,000 characters of English per project, about 50,000 words. On AI Create, the length menu counts characters (Mini 1,000, Brief 2,500, Short 5,000, Medium 10,000, Long 20,000), and a longer script gives more episodes, not longer ones. Choosing the script length · Script length caps · Vertical short drama script format.

Why the number is smaller than you think

• Silent shots. Establishing shots, reactions and actions with no words take seconds the voice does not use.
• Pauses. Every sentence end and comma costs time, and a whispered or heavy line is slower than a brisk one.
• Long words and names. The count is words, but a line of long names takes longer than a line of short ones.
• Different languages. The table is for English.

Write to about 10 percent under the table: a line that fits comfortably gets a better delivery than one squeezed into its shot.

Check it in three steps

1. Read it aloud with a timer. Your own pace beats any table.
2. If it runs long, cut words, not the pauses. A shorter line plays better than a faster one.
3. Paste it into the storyboard and look at the seconds each shot was given. A shot much longer than its line has room for a reaction; a shot that is too short for its line rushes or cuts the line. Writing dialogue in the storyboard.

Make it in SceneMixer, start to finish

1. Script: paste your own on Upload Script, or write the brief above in AI Create and let it draft the episodes.
2. Step 1: Type Short Drama; Scene Style Urban Opulence, Neon Nights; Costume Style Smart Casual, Streetwear; Visual Style Digital HD, Shot on Film; Target Region; dialogue language; 9:16 Portrait. Then read the script.
3. Step 2: Draw the people your lines belong to; the voices are matched to them, and each line's shot is timed to its words. The first 15 setup images on an account are free.
4. Storyboard: generate episode 1 first (free on your first drama) and read it before you render anything. One place per segment.
5. Video: render on the default tier at 10 credits a second, fix single shots instead of whole episodes, then put the episode together and post.

FAQ

Updated November 2, 2026