Scripting guide

Your script can coach you.

Three small marks turn a plain script into one that follows you: it greens what you cover, ticks off a point the moment you make it in your own words, and keeps an eye on the clock.

Just a section

A place to jump to. Tab, Shift-Tab, and the number keys move between your sections.

## Warm-up

Tab12jump to it

## !

Cover this section

The bang means this one matters. It greens as you cover it, and if the clock gets tight while it is still ahead, Tellie tells you.

## ! The close

→covered

> key:

Make this point

Name the phrase that matters. Say it your own way, anywhere in the take, and it ticks itself off. You never have to read the line.

> key: new lease on time

→said

Optional fourth: minutes: 10 on its own line near the top sets your real slot. And if you would rather not type anything, a Word, PDF, or Pages file brings its own headings in as sections, automatically.

See for yourself

A Tellie script assembled with Stagehand marks: a must-cover heading, a key phrase line, and a minutes budget.

In Tellie

What you write

minutes: 10

# 2026 season preview

## ! Intro
> key: welcome back, new era
Welcome back. The season is finally here, and the roster changed more than anyone expected.

## The big signing
> key: franchise quarterback
A point to make in your own words. Say "franchise quarterback" however you like and Stagehand checks it off, even if you riff on the whole thing and never read this line.

## The schedule
No mark here on purpose. Worth covering, but if the clock gets tight this is the one to drop.

## ! Outro
> key: predictions, comments
Built to compete right now. Drop your predictions in the comments.

Reading the Intro greened it. Saying "franchise quarterback" out loud checked off The big signing without reading a word of it. The amber ring is the Outro, still ahead, with 7:45 left to land it.

Send to Tellie

Steal one of these

Four finished scripts, marks and all. Read one here and send it straight to Tellie, or write your own and share it as a link.

Three sections, one of them must-cover. Skip the last one on purpose and watch Tellie notice.

Send to Tellie

Have your AI do it.

Copy that line and paste it to your agent along with your unformatted script. You'll get back one that will work magic with Tellie.

Read https://tellieapp.com/agent and use it to turn my script into a Tellie script.

The instructions live at tellieapp.com/agent if you want to read them yourself.

When you want to go deeper

Numbers, and why you list both

Numbers are the one thing that trips a key phrase up. Speech recognition decides for itself whether you said "forty" or "40", and the two do not match each other.

So do not guess. List both, separated by a comma, and whichever one comes back, the section is covered:

## ! The number that matters
> key: forty percent, 40 percent

This is what commas are for in a key phrase: they are alternatives, not a checklist. Saying any one of them is enough, which is also how you write a key phrase for a point you might phrase either way.

Set a time budget (optional)

Put minutes: 15 on its own line near the top, and Tellie shows a per-section finish clock and warns you against your real slot.

Leave it out and Tellie makes its own deadline: it learns your opening pace and projects the whole script from it, then warns "running long" if a must-cover section ahead will not fit. No dial to set. Writing minutes: just replaces the guess with your real number.

Make sure you reach a strong finish

Tellie's runway warning defends must-cover material that is still ahead of you. Once you have covered everything you flagged, it goes quiet. So if all your ## ! marks sit early and your strong finish is unmarked, a slow back half will not draw a warning, because nothing you flagged is still at risk.

The fix is one more bang on the last thing that matters, even if it is just:

## ! The close
Thank them, say the URL, stop talking.

Now the runway defends the whole talk: "The close is still ahead and will not fit" is exactly the nudge a strong finish needs.

Using Word, PDF, or Pages?

You do not have to write Markdown. When you open a Word, RTF, or PDF document, Tellie reads its structure for you. Nothing below requires editing your document into Markdown; the import does the translation.

You want	In your document
Sections	Nothing to do. Your Word and RTF heading styles, and a PDF's larger fonts, import as real sections automatically. The chapters you already have light up the navigator and Tab jump.
A must-cover section	Type `!` as the first character of a heading. A heading reading `!The close` imports as a must-cover section, flag and all. The bang never shows in the prompter. (A bang anywhere else, like "We won!", is left alone.)
A key point	Type a plain paragraph starting `> key: your phrase` on its own line under the heading it belongs to, exactly as in Markdown. Under a plain heading it is a key point you say; under a must-cover heading it credits that section off-script. It imports as the quiet key chip, never as spoken text.
A time target	Usually unnecessary; with `## !` marks Tellie baselines your own pace. If you want a hard slot, put a `minutes:` line near the top of the document.

Using Pages? Export to Word first (File, then Export To, then Word), and open the .docx. Reading structure straight out of Pages is a someday; for now the export path keeps your chapters.

Grab the starter and try it

Download the ready-made script, open it in Tellie, and read. Change a few words and it's yours.

Download the starter script Get Tellie, free

The script needs somewhere to be read. Tellie is a free Mac app, and every new install gets 10 days of Tellie Pro.