And now that I have mentioned Blake Snyder, I am obligated to mention “Blake Snyder’s Beat Sheet” or “BS2”.
High Noon Beat Sheet See how the film classic ‘High Noon,’ starring Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly, hits Blake Snyder’s story beats in this Save the Cat!® beat sheet, and understand why the film is in the Blake Snyder genre Superhero. Naomi Beaty, July 30, 2020 7 min. Blake Snyder (October 3, 1957 – August 4, 2009) was an American screenwriter, consultant, author and educator based in Los Angeles who, through his Save the Cat trilogy of books on screenwriting and story structures, became one of the most popular writing mentors in the film industry. Snyder led international seminars and workshops for writers in various disciplines, as well as consultation. THE BLAKE SNYDER BEAT SHEET. Movie TITLE: T oy Story. Opening Image (1): Andy is playing with Woody in his room. Theme Stated (5): it’s about toys that are alive. Set-Up (1-10): toys come alive and talk to one another. Catalyst (12): Andy receives buzz light-year as a gift at his birthday. He is the new favorite toy. 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. If mapping out the beats seems a little daunting; using the Blake Snyder Beat Sheet: 7-point system redux template, try mapping out the stages (using the Stages column) first. Using labels, and the words per beat column, roughly map out the number of chapters in each stage by dividing the total word count for each stage by the number of words.
Blake Snyder was a Hollywood script writer who suddenly died at age 51, one year younger than I am now. In his instructional book on screen writing Save the Cat he proposes a plotting plan based on 15 plot elements (beats) which is very useful and complete. When I was a young aspiring writer, I had to discover something like this on my own, which was far less complete and amateurish. His method has spawned a “Save the Cat” computer software and his “Save the Cat” website is still up and operating. They have a list of movies whose scripts have been reverse engineered using the beat sheet.
I have little to add to this so if you are an aspiring writer, you should explore and learn from the website yourself as much as possible.
With that caveat, let me examine the beat sheet of Steven Spielberg’s masterpiece JAWS. Why this movie? Because I am an old fart, and because this is a great movie that does not fit the beat sheet very well. It is a good case study on what you might do when your story does not fit the template.
Here is how “Save the Cat” website tries to fit the movie to the template.
Set-Up: A relaxed beach bonfire party segues to a couple sneaking off to skinny-dip… but during the jaunt the young woman goes missing. The next day we meet Sheriff Brody (Roy Scheider) and follow along as he is called to the site of the girl’s disappearance. There, the girl’s body is discovered washed up on shore and, though we don’t see it, the reactions of the officers convey how gruesome the sight. Back at the office Brody fills out a report on the incident, typing in “Shark Attack” as the cause.
Theme Stated: As Brody heads off to work his wife tells him to be careful and he laughs it off, replying, “In this town?” It seems danger can infiltrate even the sleepiest of small communities if we’re not vigilant.
If you are familiar with the movie, you should know that the scene where Brody heads off to work (“In this town?”) is after the woman is attacked by the shark and before the body is found. So “theme stated” is in the middle of “set-up”. Also, “Set-up” is supposed to be the description of how normal life would continue forever if the “catalyst” did not send the protagonist on a journey. (Luke Skywalker bored and frustrated on a desert planet is a “set-up”.) “Theme stated” is supposed to be an ominous statement that explains the moral/meat of the story. (“Money isn’t everything”, “(what could happen) In this town?”, “You must learn the Force too, Luke, if you are to travel with me to Alderaan” etc.)
So the structure is actually:
Opening Image – Underwater scene
Corpse on the first page– woman attacked by shark
Set up – family of New York cops in a peaceful New England town.
Theme stated – “What could happen in this town?”
Catalyst – dead woman found
Reaction 1 – “Beaches closed till further notice”
Counter Reaction 1 – Mayer Vaughn et al pressure Brody. “Don’t rush to cry shark.” (note: In the original book, Brody is a New England local. In the movie, he is an alien transplanted from New York city in search of a more peaceful life. Here, Brody is at a disadvantage because he is deemed an alien who does not understand the needs of the locals. Our hero has a weakness.)
Debate 1 – Brody broods. “That’s some bad hat, Harry.”
Catalyst 2 – A local boy is killed.
Reaction 2 – “Let’s go kill the shark!” Soon a dead tiger shark is brought ashore. Ding dong! The witch is dead!
Counter Reaction 2 – Brody is not convinced. Neither is Hooper the shark specialist.
Debate 2 – Brody and Hooper cuts open the tiger shark. It’s not the right shark. Hooper finds a shark tooth. It’s not the same shark. They try to convince the mayor. They fail.
Catalyst 3 – In spite of the coast guard protection, another victim is killed and Brody’s son almost dies.
Since this is a movie about Brody, Hooper and Quint going out to sea to kill a shark, half the movie is the build up to actually setting out on the hunt. Trying to fit this script on the BS2 feels forced because Spielberg’s script has a more rhythmical structure of Catalyst-Reaction-Counter Reaction-Debate-Catalyst-Reaction-Counter Reaction-Debate.
Debate 2 is longer than Debate 1 and Catalyst 1, 2 and 3 have sequentially longer, more elaborate buildups. In “Reaction/Counter Reaction” 1 and 2, Brody team and mayor team switch sides. Brody provides Reaction 1, mayor team provides Counter Reaction 1. Mayor team provides Reaction 2, Brody team provides Counter Reaction 2. Note that in both cases the Reaction is “Boom! Bang!” and Counter Reaction is more cautious. Reaction has BGM and/or sound effects. Counter reaction has sound of wind or waves in the background.
Catalyst 3 leads to the capitulation of the mayor team. The mayor finally admits he was wrong and allows the beaches closed and Brody to go on a hunt with Quint.
A similar pattern can be seen on many voyage movies where someone needs to be convinced before the protagonist is allowed to set sail.
My point here is, if your story does not quite fit on the template of BS2 or any other plot template, try doing a refrain of the plot elements, or beats. These elements are called “beats” for a reason. They are supposed to be the beat of the story.
Best for those outling a new work.
What’s awesome about it
- The word count for each beat
![Blake Snyder Beat Sheet Blake Snyder Beat Sheet](/uploads/1/2/6/4/126416518/922601075.jpg)
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
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.
Blake Snyder Beat Sheet Excel
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.
Save The Cat Story Beats
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 Blake Snyder Beat Sheet](/uploads/1/2/6/4/126416518/403104299.jpg)
Blake Snyder Beat Sheet High Resolution
- Blake Synder’s Beat Sheet: the 7-point system redux (Numbers | Excel)