Script Statistics & Timing

Analyze your screenplay with charts, dialogue breakdowns, and runtime estimates.

Opening Script Statistics

Open the statistics panel from Tools > Script Statistics in the menu bar. The panel replaces the editor area with a full-width analytics dashboard. Click the × button in the top-right to close it and return to your screenplay.

Overview Cards

Four summary cards appear at the top of the panel:

Card	Shows
Pages	Total page count and estimated runtime
Scenes	Total scene count and average scene length (in pages)
Characters	Number of speaking characters and total dialogue lines
Words	Total word count and average words per page

Dialogue Distribution

A horizontal bar chart shows how dialogue is distributed across your characters, sorted by word count. Each bar is color-coded using the character's assigned highlight color from the Characters panel.

Below the chart, a detailed table lists every speaking character with:

• Lines — Number of dialogue lines
• Words — Total dialogue word count
• % Dialogue — Percentage of total screenplay dialogue
• Scenes — Number of scenes the character appears in
• Role — The character's role (Lead, Supporting, etc.) from their profile

Gender Analysis

A donut chart shows the dialogue split by character gender, based on the gender field in each character's profile. An accompanying table breaks down the numbers by gender group:

• Characters — Number of characters of that gender
• Lines — Total dialogue lines
• Words — Total dialogue words
• % — Percentage of total dialogue

Characters without a gender assigned appear under “Unassigned”. To get accurate results, fill in the gender field in your character profiles.

Scene Breakdown

Four mini-charts in a 2×2 grid give you a bird’s-eye view of your screenplay’s structure:

Chart	What it shows
Interior / Exterior	Pie chart of INT. vs EXT. vs INT./EXT. scenes
Time of Day	Pie chart of Day vs Night vs Other scenes
Scene Length Distribution	Bar chart showing how many scenes fall into each length bucket (<1 page, 1–2 pages, 2–3 pages, 3–5 pages, 5+ pages)
Top Locations	Bar chart of the most frequently used locations

Pacing Chart

A stacked area chart shows dialogue versus action density across your screenplay, scene by scene. The x-axis represents each scene in order, and the y-axis shows word count.

• Blue areas represent dialogue-heavy sections
• Orange areas represent action-heavy sections

This visualization shows the “rhythm” of your screenplay. A healthy script typically alternates between dialogue and action, creating peaks and valleys. Long flat stretches of a single color may indicate pacing issues.

Character Presence Map

A grid/heatmap where each row is a character (sorted by total appearances) and each column is a scene. Filled cells indicate the character appears in that scene.

This visualization helps you answer questions like:

• Does my protagonist disappear for long stretches?
• Do any characters appear in only one scene (and should they be cut)?
• Are there scenes with too many or too few characters?

Script Timing

OpenDraft estimates how long your screenplay will take to screen using the industry rule of thumb — one printed page is about one minute — measured on the content of each page rather than a word count:

• Every element is wrapped at its own column width, the way it prints: dialogue’s narrow column takes more lines than the same words as action.
• The white space counts: the blank lines above scene headings, action and character cues are screen time too.
• Character cues, scene headings and transitions each take their own line.
• The title page, Sections and Notes are not on the clock.

Lines are converted at your page size (about 54–58 lines a page) and the formatting template’s page time — 60 seconds for a screenplay, 30 for a multi-camera sitcom. The estimate is of story time: it does not include end credits.

Genre & Pacing

A page can’t show how a film will be directed. Open Format → Genre & Pacing… (or click Est. in the status bar) to tell OpenDraft:

Pacing	Effect	For
Brisk	×0.85	Fast-talking, quick cutting, overlapping dialogue
Standard	×1	One page ≈ one minute — right for most scripts (the default)
Measured	×1.3	Slow-burn or contemplative — long silences and lingering images

Each option shows the runtime it would give your script. Pacing never changes a scene timing you have set by hand.

In the same dialog you can tag the script with genres — pick any of the suggestions and add your own. Genres are saved with the script but don’t change the runtime: tested against released films, genre on its own said nothing about how long a script plays.

Runtime in the Status Bar

The estimated total runtime is always visible in the status bar at the bottom of the editor (e.g., “Est. 1h 47m 12s”, or “Est. 2h 5m 40s · measured” when a pacing other than Standard is set). It updates as you write; click it to change the pacing.

Per-Scene Timing

In the Scene Navigator, each scene shows a timing badge next to the page-length indicator. The badge is color-coded:

• Grey — Under 1 minute (very short scene)
• Green — 1–3 minutes (normal length)
• Yellow — 3–5 minutes (long scene)
• Red — Over 5 minutes (very long scene)

Timing Overrides

Some scenes may be shorter or longer than the algorithm estimates — for example, a montage covering three pages might only take 30 seconds of screen time. You can set a manual timing override on any scene heading to replace the automatic estimate. The override is stored as an attribute on the scene heading and persists with your screenplay.

Timing Report

At the bottom of the Script Statistics panel, the Timing Report table shows every scene with:

Column	Description
#	Scene number
Scene	Scene heading text
Dialogue	Estimated dialogue duration
Action	Estimated action duration
Est.	Total estimated duration (with override indicator if set)
Cumulative	Running total from the start of the screenplay

The final row shows the total estimated runtime for the entire screenplay.