FOR THE WORDS YOU PLAN TO SAY
Give your script
room to breathe.
An estimate before the first take.
Your text, your pace, your pauses.
03 / PARAGRAPH CUES
A rough run
through the page.
Paragraph timings include their own pause markers. Additional pauses are added only to the overall result. These are timing estimates, not subtitles or recorded speech.
Calculate a script to see its paragraph cues.
THE METHOD, WITHOUT THE MYSTERY
Words ÷ pace ×60.
Then add your pauses.
English or German word-like units are counted with the browser’s Intl.Segmenter, with a Unicode fallback in older browsers. Hyphenated terms and numbers may count differently from how you actually speak them. Ordinary stage directions also count: remove text you will not say.
Use [pause: 2.5] for a2.5-second deliberate pause; markers are excluded from the word count. Each marker allows0–600 seconds. Punctuation alone adds no automatic pause. Read a short passage aloud to choose a more realistic pace for yourself.
The estimate excludes music, editing, unmarked pauses, pronunciations and delivery choices. Limits:100,000 characters,200 paragraphs,2 hours of combined explicit pauses. Counting method reference ↗