Audio guide script examples: 8 complete stops you can learn from

The best way to learn to write an audio guide script is to read complete stops. Here are eight audio guide script examples, one for each common type of venue, each between 150 and 220 words, annotated so you can see how it is built.

The objects and places are invented, so you can borrow the structure without borrowing anyone's facts. Each stop follows the five blocks explained in how to write an audio guide script: hook, look, story, context and bridge.

How to read these examples

Under each script you will find:

• Words and time: at a narration pace of about 140 words per minute.
• Hook: the first line that makes people look up.
• Look: the instruction that directs the eye.
• Bridge: how the stop sends them on.

1. A portrait in an art museum

Look into her eyes. Now take one step to the left. And another. She is still looking at you. Painters call this a direct gaze, and it was a bold choice in a century when most women in portraits looked politely away. She was the daughter of a silk merchant, and she was nineteen. The painter was her neighbour. Look at the ring on her right hand, painted with a single white dot of light. That dot took him a week, according to a letter he wrote to his brother, because he could not decide where the window was. In the end he chose the left, and you can follow that light across her cheek, her collar and the edge of the table. Nobody knows whether she liked the portrait. It stayed in the family for three hundred years, which suggests that someone did. Before you move on, turn around. The portrait opposite is her husband, painted ten years later. He is not looking at you at all.

• Words and time: 172 words, about 75 seconds.
• Hook: a direct order to look, then a small physical experiment.
• Look: the gaze, the ring, the light.
• Bridge: the portrait opposite.

2. An archaeological find

This is a lamp. It fits in your palm, and two thousand years ago it was the only light in a room after sunset. Look at the small hole on top, where the oil went in, and the black mark at the nozzle, where the wick burned. That mark means someone used it. Many times. Now look at the bottom, turned towards you in the case. There is a stamp: the workshop's name. Lamps like this were made by the thousand in a few big workshops and carried across the sea on ships, packed in straw. So this lamp travelled further than most people who used it ever did. It was found in a house just a few hundred metres from where you are standing, under the floor of a kitchen. Imagine the evening it was lit for the last time. In the next case you will see what people ate in that kitchen.

• Words and time: 160 words, about 70 seconds.
• Hook: naming the object plainly, then its scale.
• Look: the hole, the burn mark, the stamp.
• Bridge: the next case, linked by the kitchen.

3. A hall in a castle

Stand in the middle of the hall and look up. Those beams are oak, and each one is a single tree. They were cut, dried and raised by hand, without any machine you would recognise. For two hundred years this was the busiest room in the castle. The lord ate here, judged disputes here and, on winter nights, half the household slept here, on straw, close to the fire. Look at the fireplace on your right. It is tall enough for a person to stand in, and it had to be: it was the only heating in the building. See the dark patch on the wall above it? That is soot, five centuries of it. The windows were small on purpose. This was a home, but it was also a fortress. When you walk through the door on the far side, notice how thick the wall is. Count your steps.

• Words and time: 162 words, about 70 seconds.
• Hook: a physical position and an instruction to look up.
• Look: beams, fireplace, soot, the wall's thickness.
• Bridge: counting steps through the wall.

4. An altarpiece in a church

Before you look at the whole altarpiece, find the smallest figure. Bottom left, kneeling, hands together. He is the man who paid for it. Patrons often asked to be painted into the scene, close to the saints, as if they had been there. Now let your eyes move up. The altarpiece is a story told in panels, like a comic, and it reads from bottom to top. At the bottom, the saint is a young shepherd. In the middle, he is teaching. At the top, he is in glory, surrounded by gold. That gold is real: thin sheets of gold leaf, pressed onto the wood. In candlelight, before electricity, the whole thing would have flickered and shone. If you can, step back to the fourth row of pews. From there you see it as the congregation did. When you are ready, walk to the side chapel on your left, where the same saint appears in stone.

• Words and time: 167 words, about 72 seconds.
• Hook: finding the smallest figure.
• Look: the patron, the panels from bottom to top, the gold.
• Bridge: the same saint in the side chapel.

5. A barrel room in a winery

Breathe in. That smell is wood, wine and the cold stone of the cellar, all at once. You are standing below ground, where the temperature hardly changes from summer to winter, which is exactly what the wine needs. Look at the barrels nearest you. Each one is oak, and each one has a chalk mark on its face: the year and the plot of vineyard the grapes came from. The wine will rest here for between one and two years. During that time, a small part of it evaporates through the wood. Winemakers call it the angels' share. Now look at the barrels at the end of the row, darker than the rest. They are older, and older barrels give less flavour of wood, so the winemaker blends wine from new and old barrels to find the balance. In the next room, you will taste the result.

• Words and time: 158 words, about 68 seconds.
• Hook: smell, the sense no label can use.
• Look: the chalk marks, the darker barrels.
• Bridge: the tasting room.

6. A garden

Stop here, by the stone bench, and listen for a moment. You may hear water. The garden was designed so that you hear the fountain before you see it. Now follow the path to your right with your eyes. Notice how it narrows. The gardener planted the hedges closer together as they go, to make the path look longer than it is. It is an old trick, borrowed from painters. Look at the tree with the pale, peeling bark at the end of the path. It was planted when the garden was laid out, and it is the oldest living thing you will see today. In spring, the beds around it are full of tulips. In autumn, the tree turns yellow and drops its leaves on the path in a single week. Walk on towards it, and when you reach the fountain, turn back and look at the bench where you are standing now.

• Words and time: 163 words, about 70 seconds.
• Hook: listening, not looking.
• Look: the narrowing path, the old tree.
• Bridge: walking to the fountain and looking back.

7. A street corner on a walking tour

Stand on the corner, with the café behind you, and look at the building across the street. The second floor. See the bricked-up window, third from the left? For a while, windows were taxed: the more you had, the more you paid. Some owners simply closed a few. Now look down at the pavement. The strip of darker stones running across the street marks where the old city wall stood until it was pulled down to make room for traffic. You are standing, more or less, on the edge of the medieval town. Everything behind you was outside the walls, which is why the streets there are wider and straighter. Everything in front of you was inside. When you are ready, cross the street, step over the line, and walk two blocks down the narrow lane ahead. Listen for the next stop when you see the fountain.

• Words and time: 160 words, about 70 seconds.
• Hook: a precise position on the street.
• Look: the bricked-up window, the line of stones.
• Bridge: crossing the old wall line.

8. A children's version of stop 1

Hello, detectives. Here is your first mission. Look at the lady in the painting and stare right into her eyes. Now walk slowly to the left. Keep looking. Is she following you? She is! The painter used a clever trick to make her eyes follow you around the room. Now look at her hand. Can you find her ring? There is a tiny white dot on it. That dot is the painter's secret: it shows where the light comes from. Follow the light with your finger, in the air, not on the painting. Does it touch her cheek? Her collar? The table? Well done. Now turn around. Behind you is her husband. Is he looking at you? Not one bit. Your next mission is in the room with the big blue door.

• Words and time: 140 words, about 60 seconds.
• Hook: a role and a mission.
• Look: the same details as the adult stop, turned into a game.
• Bridge: the next mission.

Writing for children uses the same structure, with shorter sentences, a role and something to do. Writing audio guides for children and families explains the method.

What all eight have in common

• They start in the present. "Look", "breathe in", "stand here". Never "this was created in…".
• They give one idea. The direct gaze, the lamp's journey, the angels' share.
• They point. Every stop sends the eye somewhere specific at least twice.
• They avoid dates. Time is described as "two thousand years", "five centuries", "ten years later".
• They end by moving. The last line always tells the visitor where to go.

How to use these examples

1. Choose the example closest to your venue.
2. Copy its structure, not its words, into the audio guide script template.
3. Replace each block with your own object: your hook, your details, your one idea.
4. Read it aloud and time it. If it runs past two minutes, cut the context first.

How long should an audio guide stop be? explains how to decide what to cut.