Save The Cat Genres
CORRECTION: The wonderful Jami Gold has made a correction to this post. Although a number of “Beat Sheets” below are attributed to different authors, they were actually created by Jami herself.
She’s drawn from the teachings of Larry Brooks, Michael Hauge, etc. To assemble them, hence their names. The Blake Snyder Beat Sheet was created by Elizabeth Davis. Confused yet? All will become clear as you read further.Two other suggestions from Jami: first, she recommends this link for her Scrivener Beat Sheet:. And second, she provides a “clearinghouse” link for all Beat Sheets here:.)I’ve been seeing Fat Ladies around every corner.I think I’m ready to dive into my rewrite again, then I spot another Fat Lady and I’m off into more great writing tips. So here goes the penultimate, on the fascinating subject of “Beat Sheets.”First off, there’s no other way to say it — Jamie Gold is a treasure trove for writers.
I had read about “Beat Sheets” elsewhere but fortunately a link took me to Jamie’s site and its almost endless mines of writing advice. The library of blog posts on almost every facet of the writer’s craft would be valuable stuff for any author, but what sets Jamie Gold’s blog apart is a concentration on structure and how to evaluate your manuscript or your outline using “Beat Sheets.”For those, like me, who’ve come to Beat Sheets rather late in the game, this is a method of plotting and editing that breaks down the structure of any book – and I do mean any – according to Story Beats, also known as Turning Points. A Beat Sheet reduces the manuscript to Acts and Beats, which, depending on the version, are defined as Inciting Incident, End of the Beginning, Pinchpoint, Theme Stated, Catalyst, B-Story, Hook Moment, All Is Lost, and more, (many or few, again depending on whose Sheet you use). Each Beat is given a one-line description, Pages From and To, and Word Counts From and To. There are target ranges for the latter two.Beat Sheets began in Hollywood as a way of evaluating scripts to make sure that they had proper dramatic tension.
Save The Cat Genres
The late Blake Snyder invented and popularized the tool in his wildly successful “Save the Cat” books, software, and workshops. His website includes Beat breakdowns of major films.
Even if you’re not much of a movie fan, reading these quick analyses gives a potent glimpse into the value of this device. Already named Hollywood’s “Most Successful Spec Screenwriter,” Mr. Snyder is arguably the most influential Hollywood screenwriter ever because of his singular contribution of the Beat concept.It shouldn’t go without saying that the idea of reducing any film to a succession of plot points is not without its detractors.
Slate Magazine recently ran an article entitled “Save the Movie! The 2005 Screenwriting Book That’s Taken Over Hollywood—And Made Every Movie Feel The Same.”Whether or not its formulaic, and in a way it’s hard to argue that it isn’t, the Beat Sheet is a neat cheat Sheet. It’s like the old sentence diagram, which has fallen out of use in modern schools, but was something many of us grew up with.
Courtesy: a few years of diagramming, most of us could look at a sentence and quickly tell whether or not its parts were all in the right place. Beat Sheets are similar guides. That Hollywood has adopted them as the Holy Grail of scriptwriting doesn’t make them any less useful to us as mystery writers.In fact, all you have to do is read down a quick list of movies that Salon says supposedly fit into the Beat template – various “Star Trek” films, “Skyfall,” “The Dark Knight,” “ The Avengers,” “Olympus Has Fallen” “ Oblivion,” “ 21 Jump Street,” “Fast & Furious 6,” etc. – and you know you’re into some pretty heavy stuff, creatively speaking. As Salon itself says: “It’s as if a mad scientist has discovered a secret process for making a perfect, or at least perfectly conventional, summer blockbuster.” Well, I mean, who doesn’t enjoy a blockbuster?Jami Gold’s contribution to Beat Sheets has been to bring them into the realm of novel writing in a big way.
First, she’s assembled the most widely used versions both from Hollywood and from other authors and distilled from them a Master Beat Sheet, a Basic Beat Sheet, and other structure specific Sheets. Secondly, she provides in-depth instruction in understanding and using the concept and the templates themselves. You can obtain all the commonly used Sheets at her site. There’s good news for Scrivener users, too, as she’s created a dedicated Scrivener template:Author Tim Stout also provides an excellent basic understanding of the fundamentals of Beat Sheets here:I suggest you read Tim’s discussion alongside Jamie’s introduction to the concept at:This is Jami’s Basic Beat Sheet. (Make sure to go to Jami’s site to obtain the actual Excel Files.
These are static jpeg images.) As its name implies, this is the simplest of the Beat Sheets you’re likely to find. They go up in complexity but still are contained on one page.So you can see the possibilities, here’s the original by Blake Snyder:While you’re at Mr. Snyder’s site, take a fun detour to the list of the dozens and dozens of movies that have been analyzed by the incredibly talented “Master Cats.” Their analyses will blow your mind. One caveat: The Master Cats use Mr.
Snyder’s Beat Sheet but they all explain each Beat in depth. In other words, they don’t confine their deconstructions to one Sheet, though they all can be reduced to one page in the end.Also visit if you have a moment. The bestseller under discussion is in the steampunk genre, but that doesn’t diminish the fact that it’s still a bestseller.On to other types of Beat Sheets.
Michael Hauge created one for the Character Arc:Susan Kaye Quinn has a slightly different take on Beat Sheets. She’s created an Emotional Arc Sheet at:Jami’s Romance Beat Sheet looks like this:And her Master Beat Sheet is — well, masterful:Here’s Larry Brooks’ Beat Sheet for the Story Arc:Larry, by the way, does a superb Beat Sheet deconstruction of “Shutter Island,” as well as other bestsellers, both in our time and in previous eras. It’s definitely worth visiting his site for that alone. As with the Master Cat deconstructions, this particular one is somewhat lengthy. His single page analyses include: “Master and Commander,” “Commodore Hornblower,” “The Lake House,” and “The Ghost and Mrs. Thanks for the shout out to my site!
Just as a point of clarification, all of the beat sheets except for Save the Cat were actually created by.me. (Save the Cat was created by Elizabeth Davis). They were simply.based on. the teachings of Larry Brooks, Michael Hauge, etc.I didn’t want people to get the impression that those beat sheets were created, approved, or stamped “official” by my inspirations. 😉 Nope, just me taking what I learned from them and translating that into a beat sheet format in an Excel file so we can avoid doing math. LOL!Also, you linked to the Scrivener Template file, but a better link might be to the post where I talk about how to use it: My files can’t be directly downloaded from an external link, and I wouldn’t want your readers to think the file was broken.I have a Worksheets for Writers page with download links to all my files.
I hope that helps! Call of mini infinity forums. Thanks again!