This post contains 1 glittery term(s): shit.
Blake Syder’s {Extended} Beat Sheet – #AtoZChallenge
Plotters, Pantsers, and Tweeners
Plotters like to plan everything out from beginning to end before they ever begin writing the story itself.
Pantsers like to just dive right in, writing by the seat of their pants and letting the words come as they may.
I’m more of a tweener, myself: Halfway between a Pantser and a Plotter.
I start out with an idea and run with it, pantser-style. When the story starts to work, I take a step back and make some plans, plotter-style.
I keep the next bullet-point in mind, even as I am unsure exactly how I will arrive at that juncture. And sometimes I never arrive, and have to re-plot my strategy. This has happened more than once during the course of my current work-in-progress {WiP}, THE GREENE.
I find it helpful to study writerly guides. My very, very favorite is Blake Snyder’s SAVE THE CAT! {StC}, followed very closely by James Scott Bell’s PLOT AND STRUCTURE {P&S}.
SAVE THE CAT! by Blake Snyder — Although the subtitle reads “The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need”, don’t be fooled — this is a great writing guide for novelists and screenwriters alike. TRUST.
Who is Blake Snyder?
Blake Snyder was a successful screenwriter who wrote and sold several screenplays. Somewhere along the way came up with the crazy idea of the Beat Sheet.
While his book claims to be for writers working on scripts, you need to trust me that this thing works for novels, too. I have taken a shit-ton of notes from this guide and it is really helping me to shape my WiP.
The title of the book is derived from the idea that there is a specific moment in your story when the protagonist “does something – like saving a cat – that defines who is and makes us, the audience, like him.”
This is a great concept, because our protagonists are not always the most likable individuals, and sometimes they need to display redeemable qualities in order for the reader to relate on some level.
What is a Beat?
Story beats are the plot events (including choices, dilemmas, and questions) that occur on a regular basis and drive the story forward. ~
James Scott Bell, the author of P&S along with a myriad of other great books, says this:
Plot is about elements, those things that go into the mix of making a good story even better.
Structure is about timing– where in the mix those elements go.
Beats are the elements within a plot – the moments that happen throughout a story. And there are certain beats your story must have, turning points that progress the characters forward.
According to Blake Snyder’s Beat Sheet, there are fifteen major beats that must be hit for a story to be well-structured and satisfying, as follows:
What is a Beat Sheet?
Beat sheets provide a visual way of “tracking” our story and its structure. ~
You’ll notice the Beat Sheet pictured above shows numbers in parentheses. These reflect the page upon which each beat should occur in a screenplay. Visit The Beat Sheet calculator and enter your project’s total page count to see how the beats should line up for you. If, like me, you are more cognizant of word count than page count, this conversion tool might be helpful to you.
You also might notice that after Beat 13 {Break into Three}, there are only two more beats listed. Blake Snyder eventually added five more beats to this section, making up an Extended Beat Sheet. I was only ever able to find the information for these five extra beats in an ongoing conversation on some forum, not on his website. While I neglected to bookmark that page for future reference, I did copy-&-paste the beats into my own personal notes. I’ll share that with you in a moment.
Jami Gold is a paranormal and romance author who has written extensively on how to use the Beat Sheet. While I like Blake Snyder’s Beat Sheet best, she provides information for other tools you might find equally helpful.
Jami Gold also did something I think is really cool: She combined multiple sources to create her own version of a Beat Sheet.
I decided to do something similar. I combined my notes from P&S with the Beat Sheet, then added in the additional beats. The final result includes page numbers reflecting approximately where those beats should fall within my 110k-word novel. Here is the Beat Sheet I use:
Andi-Roo’s Extended Beat Sheet Index Cards: Start with the yellow cards first. These are the major turning points and you have to nail them before moving on.
Hope you find this helpful in your writing endeavors!
Visit to see who I’m making time for this month.
Or stop by my post The Great and Powerful AtoZ Challenge Theme Reveal to see a list of all my AtoZ entries for 2014.
