Also known as crawl · opening crawl · rolling crawl
Text that scrolls over the picture (or a field of stars) to deliver prologue information — famously the Star Wars opening crawl. On the page: CRAWL or TITLE CRAWL with the copy.
On the page
Crawl
TITLE CRAWL:
The outer colonies have fallen silent.
A crawl is exposition with a tempo. It works when the audience needs a political or historical frame before characters can dramatize it — and when the voice of the crawl is itself part of the genre contract. If the same facts could arrive as a charged scene in ten pages, prefer drama over scroll.
Write the exact crawl text you want read. Keep paragraphs short; crawls that apologize with paragraphs of lore train audiences to skim. Place CRAWL near the open (or wherever it appears), then cut cleanly into the first dramatized scene. Font and scroll speed are design jobs unless the look is the joke.
Not every franchise needs a crawl homage. Using one as parody still requires clarity about what information is load-bearing. Pair crawl facts with later payoffs so the open is a promise, not a wiki dump that the draft never needs again.
Related but different. A SUPER is usually a short overlay (date, city). A crawl is longer scrolling text, often prologue. Use SUPER for labels; use crawl when the scroll itself is the form.
Only if the form earns it. Many readers associate crawls with specific franchises or parody. If you need prologue, also consider a cold open that dramatizes the same stakes.
Short enough to read aloud without losing the room — often a few tight paragraphs. If you need a novella, you need scenes, not a longer scroll.
Usually no. Write the words and that it crawls. Specific audiovisual pastiche belongs to production unless the gag depends on naming the homage.
