Don’t Like Plotting but Want to Write Efficiently? Try ‘Beat Sheets’
The happy medium between plotting and pantsing —’ plantsing?’
The friendly rivalry (mostly friendly) between plotters and pantsers (people who write by the seat of their pants versus writers who pre-plan their writing) has probably existed as long as the novel itself. I tried plotting. I hated it. Some swear by it. Both methods work.
There are working writers who believe there’s no way to to maintain a publishing schedule without a detailed outline… and those who think outlines are a huge waste of time.
I like a little from both worlds. I lean more towards a pantser.
However, I couldn’t convert to full-panster. There was too much at stake — I’m not good enough a writer to keep the story from writing itself into a corner without a little framework.
I need some structure — a fence to surround the blank, creative corral.
I don’t want to miss the tropes of my genre. I prefer to stick with the hero’s journey versus free-forming my way to the end. I like the power of the subconscious, creative voice coupled with a little structure.
… I found beat sheets.
Beats are the large landmarks within a story — guideposts to hit as we move our pro and an-tagonists through their moment in time.
Think of story beats like empty coat hangers in a closet. The Hero’s Journey has 12 beats. The beat sheet I’ll share today has 15. The one I built for myself has 40.
You hang the important points of your story on each specific beat. As you write the closet fills. The reader opens the closet door (the books), starts from the left (the beginning), and moves the coats (story points) from right to left as she works her way through the proverbial closet.
If the writer does her job the beats form a story that works.
When we go full-on pants mode (unless you’ve got every beat burned into your subconscious — and some writers do) there’s a chance you’ll miss a beat or five.
When we miss beats the story skips.
When the story skips the reader gets pulled from the mental movie in her head. She starts thinking about the writing. We don’t want the reader to think about the writing. We want the writing to be invisible. We sell an experience, not a writing style.
Miss too many beats and the story sucks.
Your secret ‘beat sheet’ recipe
I write crime thrillers and short stories. Beyond the basic story shape, my genre has additional beats I must hit to ensure my readers get the reading experience they expect (there better be a dead body in the first scene, for example).
Your genre has its tropes too.
When we take all the obligatory beats, our genre’s beats, and the secret beats we use as our writing style — we pull them together and build a a custom beat sheet.
Don’t worry I’ll give you a classic example in a minute.
Where The Book Mechanic method differs perhaps from traditional beat sheets is that I don’t fill mine out in advance. Most authors use beat sheets as a thin plotting framework.
I prefer to use this framework blank, and pants my way towards each empty hanger in the closet. This way, I get to use the full power of my creative, subconscious voice (withing doing too much writing from the weaker, conscious mind). More on the two ‘minds’ in the article below.
I like to think of my beat sheet as a secret recipe.
There are writers who believe beat sheets are formulaic. They are right. But I’d prefer a formula over a story that doesn’t work any day. Beat sheets are designed for commercial fiction.
Those folks in the literary world have the luxury of fewer genre expectations, so many of these beats don’t apply.
But if we want to sell books and we want to make our readers late for work and late for bed (which I believe is the goal), because they can’t put our books down — beats are the best way to ensure we create such an experience.
Once we create our secret novel recipe, we hold it close. It’s like the formula for Coke or McDonald’s fries… whatever. Point is, We don’t share our specific beat sheets. We want us to be the only writer who writes like us.
Not that someone can steal your beat sheet and write like you, but if your beat sheet gets out the storytelling process loses some of its mystery. I mean, do as you wish, but I don’t plan on sharing mine.
OK, what does a beat sheet look like?
For this example I’ll refer to a couple contemporary classics of the writing world. A book called Save the Cat, by Blake Snyder, took the screenplay world by storm in 2005.
Synder passed away, but his book forever-changed the way screenplays (and now novels) are written.
In Save the Cat, Snyder breaks down the critical beats of a movie, and the exact points in the screenplay along which each beat is supposed to hit (including page numbers).
Note: the title of the book refers to the ‘save the cat’ scene in film (and novels), where the screen writer shows the inner-ethics of the protagonist by saving a cat from a tree, saving a baby from traffic, pulling an old lady from a burning house, etc.
Based on Joseph Cambell’s Hero’s Journey, along with more-contemporary examples, Save the Cat explains how every movie should have a series of specific beats if the screenwriter wants the script to work.
Authors got a hold of this paper goldmine as fast as the screenwriters did and ‘The Cat’ is now in its 24th printing. If you don’t have this book, buy it. You’re welcome.
In 2018 we got another gift. Author Jessica Brody wrote Save the Cat Writes a Novel. In this perfect companion guide, Brody fills in the blanks for novelists, where the original screenwriting guide was a little thin.
Buy this book too. You’re welcome.
Brody lists 15 beats, based on the original Save the Cat beats every commercial novel must hit in order for it to work.
Here are Brody’s 15 beats:
ACT ONE
- Opening image — the before/current world before the story kicks-off
- Theme stated — an ancillary characters makes a declaration as to what the hero must learn or discover by the end of the book
- Set-up — We learn the hero’s life and her flaws. We see the hero’s life before the transformation later.
- Catalyst — the inciting incident the kicks-off the hero’s epic quest
- Debate — the hero questions whether or not to accept the challenge and take the quest (both internal and external debate)
ACT TWO
6. Break into two — the hero accepts the challenge and leaves the ordinary world
7. B story — we learn more about the ancillary characters that help the hero complete her journey
8. Fun and games — here we learn the hook of the story, the reason the reader bought the book. Brody calls this the “promise of the premise.”
9. Midpoint — the middle of the novel. There’s a false victory or false defeat. Here, something happens to raise the stakes.
10. Bad guys close in — this is the part where things go south for the protagonist. The world seems to grow darker and the journey looks bleak. There are both inner and outer ‘bad guys.’
11. All is lost — the lowest point of the novel where both the external and internal bad guys force the hero to rock-bottom
12. Dark night of the soul — this is the dusting-off moment where the protagonist takes stock of everything that happened to get to this point, just before the moment of clarity and the final push to the end.
ACT THREE
13. Break into three — the aha moment where the protagonist discovers a solution the problems created in acts one and two.
14. Finale — the bad guys are destroyed and the world is forever changed.
15. Final image — the opposite of the opening image. We see how the old version of the hero has died and a new, forever-changed version emerges victorious
How to make your private beat sheet
As you see there are 15 beats above. A book with only 15 scenes does not a novel make. So we’ve got to flesh-out the between parts to help us fill in the gaps as we write our book.
My latest method is the Writing into the Dark system of looping edits as I write, so the entire manuscript is re-written as it’s written. More on that method in the link below.
In order for me to write efficiently I created a beat sheet that works for me. As I mentioned, I’ve got 40 beats in my beat sheet. I turn these into 40 chapters of a novel.
I like to write each scene as a chapter. Each chapter stands alone. Some authors prefer multiple scenes per chapter. Others, divide one scene into multiple chapters.
Act one has ten chapters. Act two (part A) has ten chapters. Act two (part b) has ten chapters. Act three has ten chapters.
I have a general idea how my novel will both start and end. I want to know why I’m doing what I’m doing and where I want to end up. The middle I want to discover as I write.
My beat sheet is more a guidance document than an outline.
Now it’s your turn
Maybe you were looking for a more-efficient way to pants your novel. Perhaps your outline failed you. Beat sheets can be a happy compromise to a full-blown outline.
Whether you fill-out the beat sheet in advance or you discover the story as you write, a beat sheet can help keep the tires on the road. Once I started using them I wrote myself into corners much less.
Also, you can ensure your plot-twists are spaced appropriately, your tension increases as the novel progresses, and you don’t include an act two scene in act one.
The beat sheet is yours.
Its form is personal, as is the writing process. I like to share as many tools as I discover, because we’ve all got different ways we uncover our stories.
Hope this helps.
I’d like to hear what you use to write your novels. Are you a plotter? A pantser? A plantser (this needs a better name, like ‘rocket’ or something). What tools do you use to get the story on the page?
It’s time to start writing. Go draft your beat sheet to help you through the next novel.
We’re waiting for you.
August Birch (AKA the Book Mechanic) is both a fiction and non-fiction author from Michigan, USA. A self-proclaimed guardian of writers and creators, August teaches indie authors how to write books that sell and how to sell more of those books once they’re written. When he’s not writing or thinking about writing August carries a pocket knife and shaves his head with a safety razor.
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