A YouTube Shorts script template you can fill in five minutes

A template does not write a good Short for you. What it does is stop you from skipping a part. Most weak Shorts are missing one of the same few pieces: a hook that lands, a payoff that arrives before the end, or a closing line that loops back. Fill in every slot below and those problems mostly disappear.

For the reasoning behind each slot, read the pillar guide on writing YouTube Shorts scripts.

The template

Copy this into your notes and fill it in from top to bottom.

LENGTH: 30 / 45 / 60 seconds   (budget: 80 / 120 / 160 words)

HOOK (8 spoken words or fewer):
ON-SCREEN HOOK TEXT (5 words or fewer):

BEAT 1  (situation, one concrete detail)
  Line:
  On screen:
  Visual:

BEAT 2  (complication)
  Line:
  On screen:
  Visual:

BEAT 3  (the turn)
  Line:
  On screen:
  Visual:

PAYOFF  (the answer the hook promised, at 80 to 90 percent of runtime)
  Line:

LOOP LINE  (flows back into the hook)
  Line:

TITLE (under 40 characters, keyword first):
COVER FRAME (which beat, and 4 words of text or fewer):

Add a fourth or fifth beat only if the story needs it and the word budget allows.

A worked example

Here is the template filled in for a fictional 45 second Short about a mail carrier.

• Hook: "One man rowed the island's mail for 30 years."
• On-screen hook text: "30 YEARS BY ROWBOAT"
• Beat 1: "The island had forty people and no bridge." On screen: "40 PEOPLE, NO BRIDGE." Visual: wide shot of the water.
• Beat 2: "The county said a boat route was too expensive, so they offered nothing." On screen: "NO ROUTE." Visual: an old notice.
• Beat 3: "Walter bought a rowboat with his own savings and started the next morning." On screen: "HIS OWN BOAT." Visual: oars in the water.
• Payoff: "He missed four days in thirty years, all of them in the same storm."
• Loop line: "And that storm is the reason the island finally got its bridge, thirty years after one man started rowing."
• Title: "He rowed the mail for 30 years"
• Cover frame: Beat 3, text "HIS OWN BOAT."

The spoken lines come in under the 120 word budget for 45 seconds, which leaves room to breathe.

How to fill each slot quickly

Hook first. Write five versions and pick the most concrete. If none of them has a number, a place, or an object in it, the topic may not have a hook yet. Our list of Shorts hook examples has twenty to borrow structure from.

Payoff second. Before you write the beats, decide what the viewer learns at the end. Then build the beats backward from it. Beats written forward from the hook tend to wander.

Beats last. Each beat adds one new fact. If two beats say the same thing in different words, merge them.

Loop line after the payoff. Read the hook, then write a sentence that could come right before it. That sentence is the loop.

What to leave out

• Greetings, channel names, and "in this video."
• "Did you know" and "have you ever wondered."
• A recap at the end.
• Calls to follow or subscribe inside the script.
• Chains of four or more short fragments in a row.

Batching with the template

The template works best when you fill five to ten at a time. Batching keeps the voice consistent and makes it easier to test hook styles against each other. If you work from long-form research, pull one fact per Short, as described in repurposing long-form into Shorts.