Preptober: What Is a Beat Sheet?
A series on structure
What Is a Beat Sheet?
Put simply, a beat sheet is a roadmap of the story you want to tell. Or, more accurately, it’s the landmarks you want to pass through on the journey of your plot. A few of these are going to be the same no matter where you go: you’ll need to stop to refuel the car and eat lunch. But, like roadmaps, beat sheets will vary depending on your goals for the story.
A beat sheet lays out the expectations for your story so that you can be sure you hit them when you draft — or to check after drafting that you have hit them.
Beat sheets ensure not just that “things happen” in the book, but that the events build in a sequence that challenges your main character to change.
Beat Sheet Examples
One of the most famous examples of a beat sheet is Save the Cat, a guideline developed for screenwriters that’s been adapted for novel use. This one relies on twelve main points in the story, from the opening image through the finale.
Another beat sheet recently developed is Romancing the Beat, a spinoff from Save the Cat the focuses on the two characters of the romance and lists the parts of the story that readers expect from the genre.
These two we’ll be looking at in more detail soon, but they aren’t the only ones. There’s the hero’s journey (a mythic structure), the heroine’s journey (common in books by Nora Roberts), Truby’s 22 steps (which I use in my own work), the Story Engineering beat sheet (which, again, is part of my own process), and more.
Jami Gold has a great list with printables and resources available for many of these here.
Why Are There So Many?
Just as Google Maps can show you five different ways to get to your destination depending on your goals — do you want to get there fastest? Lowest miles driven? Avoid freeways? Avoid tolled roads? — beat sheets branch into different forms depending on the goals of your story.
Horror novels have different pacing than literary novels, which have different pacing than epic sci-fi stories. True romance has a specific set of expectations for the plot as rigid as, say, a plan to travel Route 66 or hike the Pacific Crest Trail.
And this is just for Western conventions (which I’m most familiar with and will talk about most). Eastern stories have an entirely different set of guidelines, pacing, and expectations in stories.
Most Western beat sheets will have a lot in common — they’ll ask for an opening image, a climax, a conclusion, and events that push the characters between the acts (either three or four, depending on the beat sheet). However, each beat sheet has a slightly different focus. Some focus on how the character changes, some focus on the plot, and others focus on the intersection thereof. This means that it does make a difference which one(s) you choose to follow.
How Do I Choose Which One to Use?
There are a few questions to ask when deciding which beat sheet to use as you look to outline your story. Here are a few that I ask:
- Is there a standard beat sheet for the genre I want to write in (like a Western romance)?
- Do I think this story needs more of a focus on the plot, or the character arc? Which one am I struggling with defining the most?
- Do the beats on this sheet make sense to me? Do I understand the terminology and what it’s asking so I can use it effectively?
- Are there beat sheets that I feel are complementary that I can use together for a bigger picture of my book?
The latter has been where most of my stories end up. I like the detailed finale beats in Save the Cat, the pinch points from Larry Brooks, and the character arc/morality decisions from John Truby’s 22 steps. My final outline usually combines all of them, because it makes sense for me.
In the end, the best beat sheet for you is the one that you will use, and that helps you discover more about your story’s potential without overwhelming you.
Do you have a beat sheet you prefer to use? Is it a standard one or a conglomeration? If not, do you outline without beats, or are you a pantser? Let me know in the comments!
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