Beat Sheet Examples
Three novels planned beat by beat with a word target on each, then every beat written as a chapter.
The tools this page uses
Three novels, beat by beat
What a beat sheet is, how word targets work, three filled examples, what they show side by side, and a blank sheet.
Almost every beat sheet example you can find is for a film, with page counts for a 110-page script. These three are novels, and every beat carries a word target. One is a public-domain novel you can check for yourself; two are original premises. Put your own word count into the free beat sheet generator, then let DreamPress write the beats out as chapters at 1 to 3 credits each, on 15 free credits a day, no card. Over 800,000 writers have signed up. Turn a beat sheet into chapters.
What a beat sheet is
A beat sheet is the list of turns in a story, in order. Not the scenes, not the chapters: the moments where the situation changes and cannot change back.
The version used here is Save the Cat, which has fifteen beats. It is not the only one. Three acts gives you eight, the hero's journey gives you twelve, a romance structure gives you ten, and kishotenketsu gives you four. The free beat sheet generator lays out all five, in order, with no account needed.
Beats are turns. Chapters are containers. One beat can take four chapters and another half of one, so do the beat sheet first and chop it into chapters second, which how to outline a novel covers. DreamPress does both ends: you give it the turn, it gives you the chapter. Write the first beat as a chapter.
How word targets work
Each beat has a usual share of the book, and the shares add up to 100. Multiply the share by your total word count and you have a target for that beat.
Worked through: the Midpoint has a share of 3%. In a 90,000-word novel that is 2,700 words, and it lands at roughly the 45,000-word mark because the beats before it add up to about half the book.
Two beats dominate every one of these sheets. Fun and Games and Bad Guys Close In are 22% each, which is to say that 44% of a novel is the first half of act two and the second half of act two. If your draft is thin, that is almost always where.
Put your total into the generator and it does all fifteen multiplications. Set the same numbers in DreamPress and the draft comes out the shape you planned. Start with your own word count.
Example 1: a romance (80,000 words)
Pride and Prejudice, which is in the public domain, mapped onto the fifteen beats. It is the clearest demonstration available that the structure predates the vocabulary.
| # | Beat | Words | What happens |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Opening Image | 800 | Longbourn, five unmarried daughters, and the news that Netherfield is let at last. |
| 2 | Theme Stated | 800 | Marriage as a transaction is stated in the first sentence. Elizabeth intends to marry only for affection. |
| 3 | Set-Up | 6,400 | The Meryton assembly, Jane and Bingley, the entail, and the family Elizabeth cannot control. |
| 4 | Catalyst | 1,600 | Elizabeth overhears Darcy call her tolerable but not handsome enough to tempt him. |
| 5 | Debate | 6,400 | Jane falls ill at Netherfield and Elizabeth spends three days there, disliking him in person. |
| 6 | Break into Two | 1,600 | Mr Collins proposes and she refuses him, committing publicly to her own judgment. |
| 7 | B Story | 2,400 | Wickham arrives with the account of Darcy that Elizabeth wants to believe. |
| 8 | Fun and Games | 17,600 | The Netherfield ball, Charlotte's marriage, Hunsford, Lady Catherine: everyone judging everyone wrongly. |
| 9 | Midpoint | 2,400 | Darcy proposes. Elizabeth refuses him to his face and tells him why. |
| 10 | Bad Guys Close In | 17,600 | The letter, then Pemberley, then the slow dismantling of everything she was sure of. |
| 11 | All Is Lost | 1,600 | Lydia runs off with Wickham and disgraces the family past repair. |
| 12 | Dark Night of the Soul | 4,000 | Elizabeth at Longbourn, certain that she has lost him and that it is partly her doing. |
| 13 | Break into Three | 1,600 | She learns that Darcy found Lydia, paid for the marriage, and asked for no credit. |
| 14 | Finale | 14,400 | Bingley returns for Jane, Lady Catherine demands a promise, Elizabeth refuses to give it, Darcy proposes again. |
| 15 | Final Image | 800 | Two marriages, and Pemberley, which is the opposite of the entail. |
Swap in your own two leads and beat 6 writes itself. Write this romance's opening image.
Example 2: a thriller (90,000 words)
An original premise: a hospital pharmacist notices that one consultant's patients die on the same day of the week.
| # | Beat | Words | What happens |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Opening Image | 900 | Dispensary at 6am. Ruth checks a dose nobody asked her to check. |
| 2 | Theme Stated | 900 | Her supervisor says the system catches everything. Ruth agrees out loud. |
| 3 | Set-Up | 7,200 | Her job, her hearing loss, her mortgage, and the consultant everybody likes. |
| 4 | Catalyst | 1,800 | Four deaths, four Thursdays, one signature. |
| 5 | Debate | 7,200 | She pulls twelve months of records at night and cannot decide who to tell. |
| 6 | Break into Two | 1,800 | She reports it to the trust, in writing, with her name on it. |
| 7 | B Story | 2,700 | The union rep who takes her case and has been through this before. |
| 8 | Fun and Games | 19,800 | The investigation: interviews, missing files, colleagues choosing sides, small victories. |
| 9 | Midpoint | 2,700 | The consultant is cleared, and Ruth is moved to a different department. |
| 10 | Bad Guys Close In | 19,800 | Her competence is questioned, her hearing is raised, her records are audited, and a fifth patient dies. |
| 11 | All Is Lost | 1,800 | She is suspended for the one procedural error she did make, two years ago. |
| 12 | Dark Night of the Soul | 4,500 | At home, unemployed, she accepts that being right changed nothing. |
| 13 | Break into Three | 1,800 | The union rep finds the original 2019 complaint, filed by someone else and withdrawn. |
| 14 | Finale | 16,200 | She finds the first complainant, they go to the regulator together, and the trust settles. |
| 15 | Final Image | 900 | A different dispensary, a different city. She checks a dose nobody asked her to check. |
A thriller lives on the reader believing the institution: forty chapters of consistent procedure, ranks and names. That is what the story bible is for, and it is the same on free as on Pro. Start the thriller.
Example 3: a fantasy (110,000 words)
An original premise: in an empire that rules by accurate maps, a cartographer is ordered to draw a coastline that does not exist.
| # | Beat | Words | What happens |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Opening Image | 1,100 | Kell copies a survey by lamplight and corrects an error nobody will notice. |
| 2 | Theme Stated | 1,100 | His master tells him a map is a promise, and promises are kept by the people who make them. |
| 3 | Set-Up | 8,800 | The Cartographers' Hall, the survey fleets, and the law that a mapped coast is an owned coast. |
| 4 | Catalyst | 2,200 | An order arrives to chart the Vellin Shelf, which he surveyed himself and knows is open water. |
| 5 | Debate | 8,800 | He checks his own records, then the Hall's, and finds his survey has been amended. |
| 6 | Break into Two | 2,200 | He draws the false coast, signs it, and keeps the true sheet. |
| 7 | B Story | 3,300 | Sena, a fleet navigator who will have to sail to the place he invented. |
| 8 | Fun and Games | 24,200 | Promotion, the capital, the pleasures of being useful, and the first ship sent to the Shelf. |
| 9 | Midpoint | 3,300 | The ship does not come back, and the Hall issues a corrected chart he did not draw. |
| 10 | Bad Guys Close In | 24,200 | Four more coasts are ordered. Sena is assigned to one. His true sheets start disappearing. |
| 11 | All Is Lost | 2,200 | Sena sails. The Hall burns the archive, with his master inside it. |
| 12 | Dark Night of the Soul | 5,500 | Kell, alone with one surviving sheet, understands that he is the only proof. |
| 13 | Break into Three | 2,200 | He decides to publish, not to the court, but to the navigators. |
| 14 | Finale | 19,800 | He prints the true charts, the fleets refuse the false ones, and the Hall's authority collapses with them. |
| 15 | Final Image | 1,100 | A coast drawn blank, signed, and marked unsurveyed. |
110,000 words is roughly forty chapters, and the plot turns on one invented coastline staying invented. Write the world's rules into the story bible once; the running memory carries them to beat 15. Draw the first chapter.
Reading the examples against each other
The midpoint sits in the same place in all three, at about 47% of the way through. That is what makes it a midpoint, and a draft whose midpoint arrives at 65% will feel slow no matter how good the sentences are.
Bad Guys Close In stretches most by genre. In the thriller it is a sequence of institutional defeats and it needs every one of its 19,800 words. In the romance it is mostly interior, and Austen spends it on a letter and a house.
All Is Lost lands earlier and harder in romance than in the other two. Lydia's elopement is 2% of the book and it undoes everything, because in a romance the obstacle is social rather than physical and social obstacles work instantly.
The Finale is the beat most often underwritten. It is 18% of the book, which in the fantasy example is 19,800 words, or six chapters. Most first drafts give it two.
Drafts underwrite the Finale because by then the writer has lost the plan. Keep the plan where the draft can see it: put the beats in the story bible, and beat 15 is written knowing what beat 1 promised. Write a six-chapter Finale.
A blank beat sheet
The fifteen beats with their shares. Multiply the share by your word count, or put your structure and target into the free beat sheet generator and it fills the column for you.
| # | Beat | Share | What it is for |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Opening Image | 1% | The world and the flaw, before anything changes. |
| 2 | Theme Stated | 1% | Somebody says the lesson out loud; the lead is not ready to hear it. |
| 3 | Set-Up | 8% | The life that is about to be taken away, and everything that needs fixing. |
| 4 | Catalyst | 2% | The knock at the door. It comes from outside and cannot be unheard. |
| 5 | Debate | 8% | The lead tries not to go. The reader learns what going will cost. |
| 6 | Break into Two | 2% | A decision, made on the page, that closes the old life. |
| 7 | B Story | 3% | The relationship that will carry the theme. |
| 8 | Fun and Games | 22% | The promise of the premise, delivered. |
| 9 | Midpoint | 3% | A false victory or a false defeat, and the stakes become personal. |
| 10 | Bad Guys Close In | 22% | Everything that was working stops working, in order. |
| 11 | All Is Lost | 2% | The loss the whole book has been avoiding. |
| 12 | Dark Night of the Soul | 5% | No plan, no allies, and the theme heard properly for the first time. |
| 13 | Break into Three | 2% | The idea that makes a last attempt possible. |
| 14 | Finale | 18% | The attempt, in full, against the real obstacle. |
| 15 | Final Image | 1% | The opening image, changed. |
The chain is three steps. Pick a structure and the free beat sheet generator lays out every beat with its word target. Hand the plan to DreamPress and it writes each beat as a chapter at the length you set, 1 to 3 credits each, with pictures at 3 credits on any plan and narration included. The story bible and the running memory hold the plan the whole way, so beat 15 still knows what beat 7 did, forty chapters ago.
You get 15 credits a day to do it with, no card, plus 50 for verifying an email address and 20 a day once a streak reaches seven days. Fill in beat one tonight.
The three example novels
Two of these premises are original and the third is a novel in the public domain. All three are laid out beat by beat above.
Beat sheet FAQ
What is a beat sheet vs an outline?
A beat sheet lists the turns in the story with no chapters attached. An outline lists the chapters, each of which may contain a beat, several beats, or none. The beat sheet tells you what has to happen; the outline tells you where it goes. Do them in that order.
How long should a beat sheet be?
One line per beat, so fifteen lines for Save the Cat and four for kishotenketsu. If a beat needs a paragraph, you are writing a synopsis, and the structure stops being visible at a glance, which was the point of it.
What are the key elements of a beat sheet?
A beat name, what happens at it, and how much of the book it takes. The third is the one most beat sheets leave out, and it is the one that stops act two collapsing. Every sheet on this page carries it.
Is Save the Cat the only beat sheet?
No. Three-act, the hero's journey, a ten-beat romance structure and kishotenketsu are all in common use, and kishotenketsu in particular is worth knowing because it has no antagonist and no conflict beat at all.
Do beat sheets work for novels or only films?
They work for novels, with one adjustment: convert the page counts to word targets, because a novel's beats are measured in words and a script's in minutes. Every example on this page is a novel, and the free generator does the conversion for you.
Will a beat sheet make my story formulaic?
Only if you fill it in with the first thing you think of. The beats say when the situation should change, not what it should change into. Pride and Prejudice and a hospital thriller share all fifteen and have nothing else in common.
Welcome to DreamPress AI
Stories and characters that go wherever your imagination does. Made for adults, so you must be 18 or older to enter.
By entering, you agree to our Terms & Policies and our use of cookies.
I'm under 18