An explainer video script is a Skill job: the AI writes a timed, ninety-second "what we do" voiceover from your homepage, with a visual note beside every line. It takes one sitting, usually under an hour from pasting the homepage to a script you have read aloud with a timer. An explainer is narrated over animation, screen recordings or footage, so a full written script is the right deliverable here. If you plan to talk to camera yourself, a script works against you, and the short-form video page covers that route with an outline instead.
The AI does the compression, which is the hard part: turning a whole homepage into about 220 spoken words. You do the part it cannot, which is deciding what is true, what matters most and how it should sound.
- Shape
- Skill
- Sitting
- one sitting
The shape: Skill
This job is a Skill because it fits in one conversation and follows one repeatable pattern. There is no chain of approvals, no tool to connect and no data to wire up. You paste the material, you ask for the script, you read it aloud, you revise.
The pattern is four beats. The problem, in the words a customer would use. What you do about it, in one sentence. How it works, in three steps or fewer. One next step for the viewer.
Ninety seconds is short, and that is the point. A homepage can hold ten services, a team page and a pricing table. An explainer holds one problem, one answer and one ask. A weak explainer usually fails because it tries to fit the whole website into the video and ends up saying nothing anyone remembers.
What makes this a script job, and not an outline job, is who speaks the words. In an explainer, a narrator reads over pictures, so the words have to be exact and timed to the picture. The AI is good at that kind of tight, timed writing when it has real material to work from. It is bad at it when it has to guess, which is why the inputs below matter more than the prompt.
What you give the AI
Gather these before you open the chat:
- Your homepage text. Copy it as plain text, top to bottom, including the headline, the subhead and the button labels. This is the source of the script.
- Your services or offer page. The page that says exactly what someone buys from you and what happens after they do.
- Five phrases customers use about the problem. Taken from emails, reviews, intake forms or calls, written the way they said them. "My books are a shoebox" beats "bookkeeping challenges".
- Your one-sentence answer. What you do, for whom, in plain words. If you do not have one yet, write it on the value proposition page first.
- How it works, in your own steps. Three steps or fewer, the way you would explain them on the phone.
- The one next step. Book a call, start a quote, visit a specific page. Name the page or link.
- Who will voice it. You, a staff member, a hired narrator or a synthetic voice. This changes how plain the AI should write.
- What the viewer will see. Animation, screen recordings of your product, footage of the work, photos you already have, or a mix. The AI writes visual notes to match what you can actually produce.
- What you will not say. Prices you do not publish, claims your industry restricts, promises you cannot keep.
If your homepage is vague, the script will be vague. In that case, fix the homepage first with the website copy page, because the explainer is the homepage said out loud.
What comes back
A script in two columns, split into timed sections, with a word count for each section and a total. The left column is the voiceover, word for word. The right column says what is on screen while those words are spoken. You also get three alternate opening lines, because the first five seconds decide whether anyone watches the rest.
Here is the brief to paste, with your material filled in after each label.
Act as an explainer video scriptwriter for a small business.
Below is our homepage text, our services page, phrases customers use, and notes on the video.
Use only the facts in this material.
If something you need is missing, ask before you invent it.
Homepage text:
Services or offer page:
Five phrases customers use about the problem:
What we do, in one sentence:
How it works, in our steps:
The one next step for the viewer (with the page or link):
Who will voice it:
What the viewer will see (animation, screen recording, footage, photos):
Things never to say:
Write a 90-second explainer video script, 200 to 230 words of voiceover in total.
Use four sections with these timings:
1. The problem, 0 to 15 seconds, in the customer's own words.
2. What we do, 15 to 30 seconds, in one plain sentence.
3. How it works, 30 to 75 seconds, in three steps or fewer.
4. The next step, 75 to 90 seconds, one action only.
Format it as a table with three columns: time, voiceover, on screen.
Give the word count for each section and the total.
Write for the ear: short sentences, everyday words, no jargon, nothing that only works when read.
Every visual note must be something we listed as available.
Then give three alternate opening lines for section 1.
Do not invent statistics, customers, results, awards or prices.
Do not use hype words such as revolutionary, seamless or game-changing.Read the script aloud once with a timer before you change anything. Your ear will catch what your eye skips. If one section is weak, ask the AI to rewrite that section only, and keep the rest.
How to judge it
You can reject a bad script in a minute. Look for these:
- It runs long. Over 240 words, or over ninety seconds when you read it at a calm pace. Cut an idea, not the pauses.
- The opening is about you. "Founded in 2012, we are a leading provider of" loses the viewer. A good opening names the viewer's problem.
- The problem is not in the customer's words. If it says "operational inefficiencies" and your customers say "buried in paperwork", ask again with their phrases.
- Two or more answers. The middle section lists every service. Pick the one most viewers came for and leave the rest to the website.
- More than three steps. If "how it works" has five steps, the viewer remembers none. Merge or cut.
- Visuals you cannot make. A note that says "animated city skyline" when all you have is phone footage. Each visual note has to be something you can produce this week.
- Lines written for reading, not hearing. Parentheses, long lists, semicolons, words that are hard to say. If you trip on it aloud, the narrator will too.
- Invented facts. A number of customers, years, awards, a statistic, a review. Anything you did not give it comes out.
- Two asks at the end. "Call us, follow us, and download our guide" splits the viewer. Keep one.
- Hype. "Revolutionary", "seamless", "the ultimate". Replace each with what actually happens.
If most of the script fails on the same point, the inputs are the problem. Add better customer phrases or a clearer one-sentence answer, and run the brief again.
What stays with you
The AI writes the words. The video and everything it claims are yours.
- Every claim. Check each sentence against what is true today. A turnaround time, a guarantee or a result in an explainer lives on your homepage for a year, so it has to stay true for a year.
- The emphasis. The AI weighs every part of the homepage the same. You know which problem brings in the customers you want most, and the script should lead with that one.
- The voice. Read it aloud as yourself or have the narrator do a test take. If a line sounds like a brochure, rewrite it the way you would say it across a counter.
- The visuals. Someone has to make what the right column describes, whether that is you with a screen recorder, a freelance animator or a video tool. Hand them the script with the timings, and they will spend less time guessing.
- Music and footage rights. Use music and stock footage you have the right to use, and get permission before showing a customer, an employee or a client's work.
- Regulated claims. Health, legal, financial and real estate work have rules about what can be promised, and those rules apply to video too.
- Where it goes. Put the finished video near the top of your homepage, where a first-time visitor decides whether you do what they need.
- When it expires. When your offer, your steps or your next step change, the script changes too.
A worked example
This is an editorial example with an invented business. Say you run a two-person bookkeeping practice that does monthly books for contractors.
The homepage says a lot: monthly bookkeeping, payroll, sales tax, cleanup projects, a team page and a list of software the practice uses. The customer phrases come from intake emails: "my receipts are in the truck", "the accountant is upset every April", "no idea if this year made money". The one-sentence answer is "We keep your books every month so you know where you stand and tax time is boring." The steps are three: connect your bank and card, send receipts by photo, get a one-page report each month. The next step is booking a fifteen-minute call from the homepage. The visuals available are screen recordings of the report and phone footage of a receipt being photographed.
The first draft runs 270 words and opens on how long the practice has been in business. It gets cut to the four beats. The opening becomes the line about receipts in the truck. Payroll and sales tax come out of the middle, because most contractors who land on the homepage are there for monthly books. One visual note asks for an animated chart, which the practice cannot make, so it becomes a screen recording of the real monthly report.
The final script is 215 words and runs eighty-eight seconds read aloud at a calm pace. The owner records the voiceover at a desk with a phone and a closet full of coats for sound. The script says nothing about how many clients the practice has, because that number is not something the video needs to prove.
Explainer or talking head
Both are short videos about what you do. The choice is about who is on screen, and that decides whether you need a script.
| Route | Who does the work | What you write | Best when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Explainer video | A narrator reads over animation, screen recordings or footage | A full timed script, as on this page | You sell something easier to show than to describe, or you would rather not be on camera |
| Talking head | You speak to camera | A short outline, never a script | Your expertise or personality is the reason people buy |
| Faceless social clip | Software or a short edit over images and text | On-screen text and a caption | You want a steady feed of short videos, not one homepage piece |
For the on-camera route, use the short-form video page linked above. For a no-camera clip made from your website, try the free faceless video generator. The full list of jobs like this one is on the DIY marketing hub.
Of every job on this list, social media is the one that comes back every week, and Boomp is software that does that one for you. See ten posts made from your website, free
