Ever since an established producer recommended I read Blake Snyder's Save the Cat, I've found it to be an essential tool, both for my own writing, and for the writers I've worked with as a consultant. I think its 'Beat Sheet' is great for structuring a story - and that it builds on paradigms that have come before in a fun and very practical way. The Blake Snyder beat sheet looks like a very useful resource, though I can't say I have tried it yet. Overall this has been an incredibly useful read to me if only to bring me back to basics and get me fired up again for a new batch of writing. Mar 10, 2015 Blake Snyder’s beat sheet from Save the Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need is the primary structure or foundation by which we are going to build our story. It’s the skeleton of the screenplay on which we will soon put on flesh. The beat sheet is a lot more than just Act I, Act II and Act III. In today’s post, we’ll examine how, with Blake Snyder’s famous “Save the Cat” beat sheet template that revolutionized the industry. Get ready to chart out your idea over 15 unique beats to see if it holds up! Watch: Infinity War vs Save the Cat Beat Sheet Subscribe for more filmmaking videos like this. Blake Snyder Beat Sheet (BS2) Opening Image – A visual that represents the struggle & tone of the story. A snapshot of the main character’s problem, before the adventure begins.
Best for those outling a new work.
What’s awesome about it
- The word count for each beat
What’s not-so-awesome
- It’s daunting, especially when your manuscript is half-written
- No capacity to outline subplots
The awesome
When I first came across Blake Synder’s Beat Sheet (BS2), I was half-way through the manuscript for Hero and the word count for each beat made me to blanch. The idea of trying to shoehorn my (at that point in time) pantsed story into all of those little boxes (opening image, catalyst, black moment) with their prescribed word counts, was more than my brain could take, but when I went back to the BS2, a new story in mind, they appeared as godsends.
I don’t know about you, but I often find myself wondering how long the different stages of my plot (setup, act II, etc) should be. The BS2 solves that issue by calculating when a stage should start and end, based on your overall word count. Say you want to write a 100,000-word novel (about 400 pages), then your setup should be around 9,000 words long and the first half of your second act 27,500.
It also has the side-benefit of breaking your manuscript into manageable chunks; instead of stressing about only having 13,000 words done, you can celebrate having written Turning Point 1.
The not-so-awesome
Blake Snyder Beat Sheet 2
If you’ve come across a beat sheet template and haven’t read Blake Snyder’s book, Save the Cat, it can be daunting. The descriptions of the beats included in the template don’t fully adequately what’s meant to happen in each beat, and finding more information on the internet is practially impossible (or else I wasn’t looking in the right places).
In the end, I bought Save the Cat, and it was worth every one of the ten dollars I spent on it.
What I love most about the 7-point plot system, and which BS2 doesn’t do at all, is the ability to outline subplots alongside the main plot and then layer them to see how they interact.
I suppose that you could use multiple beat sheets, one for each subplot, or simply incorporate each subplot into the main outline, but that doesn’t offer the same flexibility as the 7-point system.
To get around this, I created my initial outline using the 7-point method and then expanded it with the beat sheet (the process of which I will discuss in another post), which gave me the best of both worlds, the subplot layering and the word count.
The Goodies
As part of my experimentation with the BS2, I updated the existing template with two additional columns.
The first, 7-Point Plot Arc, is a summary of each stage of your initial outline (completed using the 7-point plot system). The second, Words in Beat, is the number of words in each of the fifteen beats, which is handy for such things as adding targets word counts to chapters and scenes in Scrivener.
Blake Snyder Beat Sheet Explained
- Blake Synder’s Beat Sheet: the 7-point system redux (Numbers | Excel)