Chapter 25 · Formats
Insights: Who Talks, Where, and For How Long
Insights is the panel that tells you the shape of what you have written: how long it runs, who does the talking, where the scenes happen, and which chapter ran away with you. It is arithmetic on your own text, done in your browser, and this chapter is about reading it correctly. Some of these numbers mean less than they look like they mean.
Opening it
Insights lives on the Review tab of the ribbon, in the same group as Research and Read Aloud. Click Insights and a panel opens over the page. Close it with the Close button or the Esc key.
Three things to know before you read a single figure:
- It is a snapshot, not a live readout. The numbers are computed the moment you open the panel. Write another paragraph and they do not move. Close it and open it again to refresh.
- It covers this document only. Not the project, not the binder, not the season. In a series, an episode's Insights is that episode's.
- Reviewers can open it. Insights reads the text and changes nothing, so it is not one of the controls locked to the owner.
The panel you get depends on the document's format, and there are three of them.
The prose breakdown
A novel gets four totals and then a chapter list:
| Row | What it is |
|---|---|
| Total | Every word in the document. |
| Reading time | The word total divided by 230 words per minute, rounded to whole minutes. That is a silent-reading pace, not a read-aloud one. |
| Chapters | How many buckets the document split into. See below. |
| Average chapter | The total divided by that number of buckets. |
Under Chapters, every bucket is listed with its own word count. The split is made at heading blocks, and here is the part worth knowing: any heading level starts a new bucket. Heading 1, Heading 2 and Heading 3 all count. If you use a Heading 2 for a section break inside a chapter, that section becomes its own row and your average chapter drops. If your chapter openers are typed as ordinary paragraphs in capitals rather than as headings, you get one bucket for the whole book.
Anything above the first heading is collected under (front matter). That is where a dedication, an epigraph, or a first chapter you never gave a heading to will show up. Long chapter names are shortened to the first 44 characters in the list, which affects the display only.
The running word count in the status bar is a different feature with a different job, and Chapter 13 covers it, along with daily goals and the manuscript-page estimate.
The screenplay breakdown
A screenplay gets four totals, then two tables:
| Row | What it is |
|---|---|
| Scenes | How many scene headings the script contains. |
| INT / EXT | Interiors and exteriors, counted from the start of each slugline. |
| Estimated pages ≈ minutes | The page figure from the status bar, repeated here. Screenplay pages are the engine's true Courier pages, which is why the old one-page-one-minute rule of thumb is worth anything at all. |
| Speaking characters | How many distinct characters have at least one line. |
Who talks lists the twelve characters with the most dialogue words, largest first, each with its cue count and its word count. A character extension is ignored when the name is read, so MARY, MARY (V.O.) and MARY (CONT'D) are one person rather than three.
Locations lists the eight most-used locations by scene count, taken from each
slugline with the INT or EXT prefix and everything after the dash removed. INT. KITCHEN -
DAY and INT. KITCHEN - NIGHT are two scenes at one location, which is what a
producer means by the word.
Simultaneous dialogue is not counted. A dual dialogue exchange is stored as a two-column block rather than as ordinary character and dialogue lines, and the Who talks table reads only the ordinary ones. Those words are still in your word count and still on the page. They are simply invisible to this table, so a character who speaks mostly in dual dialogue will look quieter here than they are. The same is true of simultaneous speech in a stage play.
Sluglines it counts oddly
The INT / EXT split reads the front of each slugline, and combined headings do not divide cleanly. The behaviour is consistent, so it is worth knowing rather than guessing at:
| Slugline | Counted as | Listed under |
|---|---|---|
INT. KITCHEN - DAY | INT | KITCHEN |
EXT. STREET - NIGHT | EXT | STREET |
INT/EXT. CAR - DAY | INT | CAR |
INT./EXT. CAR - DAY | INT | /EXT. CAR |
I/E. CAR - DAY | neither | CAR |
So a script written with INT./EXT. sluglines will show a location row beginning
with a slash, sitting apart from the same location's plain interiors, and a script written with
I/E. will have a scene total larger than its interiors and exteriors added together.
Nothing is broken and nothing is lost. If you want the split to be exact, write
INT. or EXT. and let the scene itself say the rest.
Chapter 16 covers how sluglines auto-form as you
type.
The video script breakdown
A video script gets one total, Total runtime (VO @150wpm), and then a Sections list split at headings, each section with its word count and its own minute estimate.
Two warnings, and they both matter if you are quoting a duration to somebody:
- The visual column is counted. The estimate divides every word in the document by 150, which includes what you wrote in the visual lane and never intended anyone to read out. A script with detailed shot descriptions will look substantially longer here than it plays.
- The 150 is fixed. Changing Read at on the Timing ribbon moves the running total in the ribbon and does not move this figure.
The Timing ribbon's running time is the one to trust, and to hand over. It times the audio lane of your rows at the rate you chose, which is the thing that will actually be spoken. Chapter 21 covers the two lanes, per-row durations, and the running clock down the left margin.
Stage plays and audio drama
There are three breakdowns and five formats, so stage plays and audio dramas fall through to the prose one. That has a visible consequence: neither format uses heading blocks, so the whole script lands in a single bucket labelled (front matter), Chapters reads 1, and Average chapter repeats the total.
The word total is correct. The reading time is a prose reading time at 230 words per minute and has nothing to do with performance length. Read the top line, ignore the rest.
Audio drama has a better tool for this, and it is one tab away: Reports on the Elements ribbon opens the cue sheet, the casting list, and a runtime built at the Spoken at rate you set, with a CSV download. Chapter 20 covers it. Stage plays have no equivalent report; the status bar's page count and the table read are the honest measures there.
When two numbers disagree
Storskarvia shows a duration in more than one place, and the estimates are built differently on purpose. When they disagree, the rule is that the format's own tool wins over Insights: the Timing ribbon for a video script, Reports for an audio drama, the Courier page count for a screenplay. Insights is the quick look across the whole document, not the production number.
None of these figures is a judgment. A chapter twice the length of its neighbours is a fact about your manuscript and not a verdict on it, and Insights has no opinion about which one you should cut. That belongs to Part VI, where the staff read what you wrote and hand back notes rather than arithmetic, and even there the bright line holds: Storskarvia never writes a word for you.
Updated 2026-09-01 · Full contents · Something wrong or missing?