viral-short-scriptlisted

# viral-short-script A theme-agnostic **skeleton** for sub-60s vertical video. Structure first; the topic is plugged in afterwards. **Provenance, stated honestly:** the story shape (hook → escalate → turn → pay off) was *inspired* by a structural read of 47 acclaimed films, then stress-tested by a panel of seven frontier models. It is a **heuristic, not a proven formula** — the film study had no control group and no engagement data. Treat it as a strong starting structure and validate it against your own retention numbers. **The reality it is built around:** the feed is hostile, watched **muted**, and frame 1 is a **thumbnail**. You do not earn attention — you stop the thumb in about one second with a *picture*, then hold it with rising tension and a sensory change every couple of seconds. **Use for:** anything under ~90s; writing or fixing a hook; feeding a generation pipeline; when a draft trails off, buries the payoff, or reads like a monologue. **Not for:** long-form (>3 min), carousels, or news briefings with their own planner. --- ## THE GATE — the 3-second silent test Do this before anything else. **Mute the first 3 seconds.** From the frame and the on-screen text alone, can a stranger tell who it is for and feel a question or a tension? **No → rewrite frame 1.** This single binary gate replaces manual hook-scoring. --- ## The skeleton — 4 beats, two parallel layers Every beat is written on two layers at once, because most viewers never turn the sound on: -