Every trailer that gives you chills started as a document nobody will ever see: the script. Animation, music, and sound design all serve the script. Get the script wrong and no amount of polish saves the trailer. Get it right and even simple visuals carry weight. Here is the structure we use for every script we write, and how you can use it for yours.
Viewers do not ease into trailers. They grant you about three seconds before the thumb moves on. So the script must open with its strongest moment: a striking line of dialogue, a shocking image, a question the viewer cannot unhear. Never open with your name, your title card, or a slow fade from black. Open with the hook, then earn the setup.
Write the hook last. Draft the whole script, then ask which single line would stop a stranger mid scroll. That line goes first.
A 60 second trailer is a story in miniature. Three acts, roughly timed. Once the script is set, the length question mostly answers itself.
One or two lines that place us. Who is this about, and what is their world? Think logline, not chapter one. Something like: in a city where memories are bought and sold, one thief steals the wrong one.
This is the meat. Raise the stakes in escalating beats: the threat appears, the cost becomes personal, the choice narrows. Each beat is one scene in the trailer and one sentence in the script. If a beat does not raise tension, it does not belong.
End on the question, not the answer. The trailer should close with the viewer needing to know what happens next. Title card, author name, release info. Done. The book is where answers live.
Scripts get better by subtraction. Cut these without mercy:
Both work, and the choice shapes the trailer's feel. A voiceover adds warmth and human presence, and it lets the visuals breathe while the story is told. It costs more and needs a good voice, because a weak read sinks the whole piece. Text cards are punchier and cheaper, and they play well on mute, which is how most social video is first encountered. Our rule of thumb: voiceover for emotional, character driven books; text cards for thrillers, horror, and anything where silence is part of the scare.
Whichever you choose, write for the ear first. Read every line out loud. If it sounds like a book blurb, rewrite it until it sounds like a movie.
The script is not a summary of your book. It is an advertisement for curiosity.
Here is the skeleton we start from. Flesh it out with your story's specifics:
You know your book better than anyone, which makes you the worst person to summarize it. Authors are too close. Everything feels essential. A scriptwriter's real job is killing your darlings on your behalf. If you write it yourself, get distance first: finish the draft, wait a week, then cut half. Our complete book trailer package includes a custom script written around your book, because we have learned that the script is where trailers are won.
About 130 to 150 words of voiceover at a natural pace. That is less than you think, which is why every word has to earn its place.
Never. The trailer's job is to create a question the book answers. Reveal the setup and the stakes, withhold the resolution.
Not always, but a bad read will sink a good script. If your budget allows one professional element, spend it on the script or the voice before anything else.
Our $600 complete package includes a custom script built around your book, then scene based animation to bring it to life. Tell us your story and we will take it from there.