Why plan the beats first
A beat sheet is a list of a story's turning points, a line or two each, written before the script. It fits on one page, so a sagging middle, or an ending that doesn't answer the opening, shows up at a glance. Fixing it at this stage means rewriting a line.
Any structure can be written as a beat sheet. The best known is the fifteen-beat version Blake Snyder set out in Save the Cat! (2005), which names each turning point and gives it a page in a 110-page script. It is the one on this page. Three-act structure, the hero's journey and Dan Harmon's story circle divide a story in other ways, and many of their stages line up roughly with Snyder's.
The fifteen beats
Pages are for a 110-page feature, as Snyder gave them. Read them as proportions, not appointments: the calculator in the next section moves them to your length.
- Opening Image (page 1). A snapshot of the hero and their world before the story changes them.
- Theme Stated (page 5). Someone, usually not the hero, says what the story is about, often in passing, in a line the hero isn't ready to hear.
- Set-Up (pages 1 to 10). The hero's ordinary life, the people in it, and what is missing from it. Plant here what the story will need later.
- Catalyst (page 12). The event that throws that life off course: a diagnosis, a redundancy, a stranger on the doorstep.
- Debate (pages 12 to 25). The hero hesitates, and argues with themselves or with others about whether to go.
- Break into Two (page 25). The hero chooses to act and steps into the new world of the story. It works best when the choice is theirs.
- B Story (page 30). A second storyline starts, often a relationship, that carries the theme and helps the hero change.
- Fun and Games (pages 30 to 55). What Snyder calls the promise of the premise: the scenes the audience came for, as the hero tries out the new world, for better or worse.
- Midpoint (page 55). A false victory or a false defeat, after which the stakes are higher and the way back is closed.
- Bad Guys Close In (pages 55 to 75). Pressure from outside, and doubt and old faults from within.
- All Is Lost (page 75). The lowest point. Something dies here, a person, a hope or a version of the hero, literally or not.
- Dark Night of the Soul (pages 75 to 85). The hero takes in what has been lost, until the first sign of an answer appears.
- Break into Three (page 85). The answer arrives, often where the A story and the B story meet.
- Finale (pages 85 to 110). The hero puts what they have learned to work, and the old world, or the old self, gives way.
- Final Image (page 110). The opening image again, after the story has happened to it. Put the two side by side and the change should be plain.
Where the beats fall in your script
Type your page count, or pick a length, and every beat moves to its page. Each beat keeps its share of the story, so a 90-page comedy and a 120-page drama turn at the same moments in proportion.
| Beat | Where | Share of the script |
|---|---|---|
| Opening Image | page 1 | 1% |
| Theme Stated | page 5 | 5% |
| Set-Up | pages 1 to 10 | 1% to 9% |
| Catalyst | page 12 | 11% |
| Debate | pages 12 to 25 | 11% to 23% |
| Break into Two | page 25 | 23% |
| B Story | page 30 | 27% |
| Fun and Games | pages 30 to 55 | 27% to 50% |
| Midpoint | page 55 | 50% |
| Bad Guys Close In | pages 55 to 75 | 50% to 68% |
| All Is Lost | page 75 | 68% |
| Dark Night of the Soul | pages 75 to 85 | 68% to 77% |
| Break into Three | page 85 | 77% |
| Finale | pages 85 to 110 | 77% to 100% |
| Final Image | page 110 | 100% |
Beats placed for a 110-page script. Pages are rounded to the nearest whole page.
At about a minute a page, the same table is a clock for the film: the catalyst lands around twelve minutes in, the midpoint just before the hour, the low point around an hour and a quarter.
A worked example: Low Tide
Low Tide is the sample project in Scriptopus: a 12-page short drama in which a sound recordist goes back to her late mother's cottage on the day it is sold and finds her estranged father already there. Here it is on the fifteen beats. In a short the beats crowd together, a page or two apart, and several share a scene.
| Beat | Page | In Low Tide |
|---|---|---|
| Opening Image | 1 | Mara drives the coast road recording the sea. Her mother's voice on an old tape catches her, and she stops it without a flicker. |
| Theme Stated | 2 | A half-packed box, labelled in marker: KEEP? What you keep and what you let go. Snyder expects a line of dialogue here, but an object can carry the theme too. |
| Set-Up | 1 to 2 | The cottage, the SOLD sign, a key she still owns, and a job that turns feeling into control. |
| Catalyst | 2 | A floorboard creaks that isn't hers. Her father, Des, steps out of the back hallway. They haven't spoken in thirteen years. |
| Debate | 2 to 4 | Packing the kitchen side by side. Stay and finish the recording, or leave before the old fight starts? The estate agent comes for the keys at sundown. |
| Break into Two | 4 | She stays. |
| B Story | 4 | Her mother, Elena, through her things: a child's drawing, a birthday tape, and Des letting slip that "you'd be amazed what she kept." |
| Fun and Games | 4 to 5 | The box of school things, small truces and new wounds, a house full of evidence. |
| Midpoint | 6 | On the beach at low tide the argument breaks open. She accuses him of keeping her from her dying mother. He can't answer, and walks away. |
| Bad Guys Close In | 6 to 7 | She finds the key taped under her mother's desk and, against her father's plea, opens the locked drawer: unsent letters, and a dozen numbered cassettes. |
| All Is Lost | 8 | Tape one. Her mother chose to hide her illness and made Des keep Mara away. The story Mara built her life on falls apart. |
| Dark Night of the Soul | 9 | The porch step. She admits she made him the villain because it was simpler than her own guilt. |
| Break into Three | 10 | The tide turns and starts back in. She picks up her microphone. |
| Finale | 10 to 11 | As the estate agent's headlights swing into the yard, she records her father telling one story about her mother. |
| Final Image | 12 | The coast road at night, driven the other way, with his voice playing over her recording of the sea and the window down. |
Notice where the theme lives. The B story is a person who never appears, heard only on tape, and it is still the storyline that carries the theme. The final image mirrors the opening too: the same coast road driven the other way, with her father's voice playing where her mother's once made her hit stop.
In ScriptopusThe Beat Board offers a choice of structures before you start, with Save the Cat, the hero's journey, three acts and Dan Harmon's story circle among the choices, or none at all. Each beat is a card with its own estimated minutes, and each sequence carries the length you planned for it. The Beat Board is part of the free plan.
How to write your own
- Start from the logline. If you can't say the story in a sentence yet, the beat sheet will tell you why. Our logline guide helps.
- Fill in the load-bearing beats first: the Catalyst, the Midpoint, All Is Lost and the Break into Three. If those four are strong, the rest has something to hang from.
- Then the bookends. Write the Opening and Final Images as a pair, so the change is visible.
- One or two sentences a beat. If a beat needs a paragraph, you are writing the treatment, which is the next step.
- Leave blanks. An empty Debate or a vague Fun and Games is information: that is where the story needs more thought.
- Move it to your length. Use the calculator above. A short or a pilot keeps the shape and squeezes the pages.
When the beats don't fit
Plenty of successful films follow the fifteen beats closely, and plenty of others ignore them. Ensemble stories, slow-burn dramas, looser comedies and much of European and independent cinema bend the beats or do without them.
The sheet is most useful when something already feels wrong. If a draft goes flat around page 50, the beats point you to the part of the story to look at, and what you write there is up to you. If your story keeps arguing with the page numbers, try a different structure before you force it into this one.
Download the beat sheet template
The fifteen beats, each with a line on what it does, its place in a 110-page script, and space for your own. The spreadsheet works out every beat's page from the length you type in, and opens in Excel, Numbers and Google Sheets.
Fill it in on screen
The spreadsheet moves every beat when you type your page count.
Questions
Do I have to hit the page numbers exactly?
No. Snyder was strict about them, but most writers treat them as a guide. A catalyst on page 15 rather than 12 is fine; a catalyst on page 40 suggests the set-up is too long.
Is a beat sheet the same as an outline?
A beat sheet holds the turning points only. An outline adds the scenes between them, and a treatment tells the whole story in prose.
Does it work for a short film?
The shape does, compressed. In a ten-page short, several beats share a page and some disappear, but a catalyst, a low point and a change are still what make it a story.
Does it work for television?
For a single episode, loosely, with the act breaks marking the turns. A series needs more: a season's shape and an engine that keeps producing episodes.
Where do the fifteen beats come from?
The fifteen beats are Blake Snyder's, from Save the Cat! (2005), which built on decades of three-act thinking. The book is still the best place to read them in full.
Sources and further reading
- Blake Snyder, Save the Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need (2005). The fifteen beats and their page targets.
- Screen Australia, Story Documents: Drama (PDF), on outlines and the turning points of a story.
Save the Cat! is a trademark of its owners. This page explains the beats for writers and is not connected with them.
Write it formatted from the first line
Scriptopus sets every line as you type, keeps the beat board and the treatment beside the script, and exports the PDF and Final Draft file you will need. The editor is free on Mac and Windows.
- Every element in its place, with Tab, Enter and Ctrl+1 to 6.
- Beat Board, Treatment and Synopsis in the same project as the script.
- Six title page layouts, Industry Standard first.
- PDF, Final Draft, Fountain and Celtx exports.