Save the Cat Beat Sheet Template

What a beat sheet is

A beat sheet is a list of the moments a story needs, set at the points in the book where they tend to work best. This template follows the 15 beats of the Save the Cat! method, which Blake Snyder described in his book about screenwriting and which novelists have adapted ever since. It is an independent worksheet based on the beats as they are widely taught. Musael is not affiliated with Blake Snyder, his estate or the Save the Cat! company, and the method is theirs. If you want the full argument behind each beat, read Snyder's book.

The sheet is useful before the draft, when you are deciding whether a premise can carry a whole book, and after it, when a middle sags and you need to see which beat is missing or misplaced.

The 15 beats in order

Act One is about a quarter of the book. The Opening Image shows the hero's world before anything changes. Theme Stated hands the reader the question of the book in a line the hero does not yet understand. The Set-Up shows what is wrong in the hero's life. The Catalyst is the event that breaks that life open, the Debate is the hero's hesitation, and Break into Two is the choice to go through the door.

The first half of Act Two opens with the B Story, a relationship that carries the theme, and moves into Fun and Games, where the premise delivers what the reader came for. The Midpoint turns the story: a false victory or a false defeat, with higher stakes. In the second half, Bad Guys Close In, All Is Lost takes away what the hero thought they had, and the Dark Night of the Soul is the quiet after the loss. Break into Three, the Finale and the Final Image close the book, and the last picture answers the first.

Turning pages into word counts

Snyder's page numbers are for a 110-page screenplay, so this sheet gives each beat as a percentage too. For an 80,000-word novel the Catalyst falls at about 8,000 words, the Midpoint at 40,000, All Is Lost at 60,000 and Break into Three at 64,000. For a 100,000-word novel move every figure up by a quarter. Treat the numbers as a range of a few percent either side. A thriller may want its Catalyst at 5%, and a slow literary novel may take 12%.

Filling it in so the beats connect

Write the Opening Image and the Final Image together, because they are a pair: the same place, the same kind of scene, a different person. Write the Midpoint and All Is Lost as opposites. If the Midpoint is a false victory, All Is Lost should be the real defeat it was hiding. Let Theme Stated come from a minor character who has no idea it applies to the hero.

The Dark Night of the Soul should give the hero the answer that powers Break into Three, and the answer usually comes from what the B Story has been teaching. If your Finale could happen without the B Story character, the two stories are not yet joined.

Common mistakes

The most common mistake is to treat the percentages as a law and cut a good scene because it lands at 47%. The second is to skip the Debate: a hero who walks through the door without doubt has not chosen anything. The third is a Catalyst that the hero causes, when it works best as something that happens to them, so that the rest of Act One is a reaction. Use the sheet to find gaps, not to fill every space.