TikTok Script Writing: A Template, Word Counts and a Worked Example

A TikTok script is a table with four columns: the second each line starts, the words spoken, the words on screen and the shot. If you write only the spoken lines and improvise the text and the shots while filming, the overlays tend to repeat the speech, and the proof for your main claim may never make it into the video. Write all four columns before you film, and keep the spoken part to about 2.5 words per second.

Start from a video that already worked

Before you open a blank page, pull up a few TikToks in your niche that performed well and write down their structure:

1. The first spoken sentence and the second it ends.
2. The moment the product or the main idea appears.
3. Every line of on-screen text.
4. The last thing the viewer is asked to do.

Keep these in a swipe file, a sheet with a row per video. Once you have a dozen rows, sort them by opening type and look for the openings and endings that come up more than once. Borrow those structures for your script, and write your own words into them, since the original wording belongs to the creator who made the video.

Typing the lines out by hand is fine for a few videos. For a longer swipe file, paste each link into UGC Script to get the spoken lines with their timestamps, and on the paid plan you can type in your product to get a rewrite of the transcript as a first draft.

Budget the words by length

Baruch College's Tools for Clear Speech puts the average English speaker at about 150 words a minute, which comes out at 2.5 words a second. Use that rate to cap the spoken column:

Video length	Spoken words
15 seconds	about 38
30 seconds	about 75
60 seconds	about 150

Read the draft aloud with a timer. If you run over, cut a sentence. The same Baruch page advises speaking slightly slower than average when clarity matters, so speeding up to fit the time makes the read harder to follow.

Fill in the four columns

Set up a doc or a sheet like this:

Time	Spoken	On screen	Shot

Then fill it in, beat by beat.

The hook, 0 to 3 seconds. TikTok's creative best practices for performance ads tell advertisers to introduce the content proposition in the first 3 seconds and to prioritize the hook in the first 6. Put the viewer's situation in the first spoken line, and use the on-screen text to state the topic in a few words for people watching with the sound low.

The middle. Show the product or the idea in use. Give each claim its own row. In the Shot column next to it, write down what the camera shows to prove the claim, for example a before and after or a close-up of the label.

The ending. Ask for a single action. The same TikTok page recommends ending with a clear call to action, so write the exact words in the Spoken column and repeat them as text.

The on-screen column. Add text where it gives context the speech leaves out, such as a price, a step number or a product name. TikTok recommends showing 5 to 10 words per second when an ad uses text, so keep each overlay short enough to read at that pace. The same page tells advertisers to film vertically at 9:16 and to keep content inside the UI safe zone listed in TikTok's ad specifications. Note in the Shot column where your face and the product go, so both stay inside that zone.

A sample 15-second script

Driftwell is an invented sleep spray, made up to show the format. Write your own lines from what happened when you used the real product.

Time	Spoken	On screen	Shot
0s	I used to lie awake until two every night.	Awake at 2am again	Close-up, lying in bed, phone light on face
3s	Then I tried this spray.	Driftwell sleep spray	Hand lifts the bottle into frame
5s	Two sprays on the pillow, lights off.	Step 1: two sprays	Spraying the pillow
8s	Now I'm out before my usual scroll.	Week one	Phone face down on the nightstand
12s	Link's below if that's you too.	Link below #ad	Holding the bottle, talking to camera

That comes to 34 spoken words, under the 38-word budget for 15 seconds. With a real product, ask the brand for proof of any sleep claim before you film, and drop each line the brand cannot back.

Mark it as an ad

TikTok's Branded Content Policy counts a post as branded content when you promote or review a brand in exchange for payment or any other incentive, including gifted products and affiliate commissions. For those posts the policy requires you to turn on the commercial content disclosure toggle when you publish, and TikTok then labels the video as branded content. Add the toggle to your posting checklist, and keep a spoken or written disclosure in the script if the brand asks for one.

Check the draft before you film

Run through these questions with the table open:

• Can a viewer tell the topic from the first spoken line alone?
• Does each claim have a shot or a piece of text proving it?
• Does the on-screen column add information instead of repeating the speech word for word?
• Does the read-aloud time match the length you planned?
• Is the call to action a single step?

If a row fails, rewrite that row and read the whole script aloud again.