Save the Cat Beat Sheet Template: All 15 Beats With Page Targets

The page targets below are Snyder's, for a 110-page script. The percentage column lets you scale to any length, including a novel.

The template

Copy the table into your outlining tool and fill the right-hand column with a one-line scene description for each beat. That is the whole template. The rest of this article is about doing it well.

The beats, one by one

1. Opening Image (p. 1). One scene, sometimes one shot, that shows the hero and the world as they are before anything changes. Its job is to be the "before" photograph that the Final Image will answer. A common mistake is to open on action that has nothing to do with the protagonist's flaw; the Opening Image should be about them even if they are not in it.

2. Theme Stated (p. 5). A line of dialogue, usually from a secondary character and usually not addressed to the hero directly, that names the question the story will test. It should sound like conversation, not a thesis. If you cannot find the line in your draft, you may not know your theme yet, which is useful to learn on page 5 rather than page 95.

3. Set-Up (pp. 1–10). Everything the audience needs before the story can start: the hero's ordinary life, what is missing from it (Snyder calls these "things that need fixing"), and every major character, at least in passing. The rule of thumb is that anyone important in Act Three should have appeared, or been mentioned, by page 10.

4. Catalyst (p. 12). The inciting incident. A telegram, a death, a job offer, a stranger at the door. It is something that happens to the hero, not something they choose, and it makes the old life impossible to continue. If your Catalyst is on page 30, your first act is too long, whatever your outline says.

5. Debate (pp. 12–25). The hero resists. This section is often underwritten by beginners who want to get to Act Two, and overwritten by writers who mistake it for a chance to explain backstory. The Debate should be a question the hero is actually weighing, with a cost on each side.

6. Break into Two (p. 25). The hero makes a choice and the story enters its second world. The key word is choice. If the hero is pushed into Act Two, the audience feels it; they need to walk in.

7. B Story (p. 30). A second thread, usually a relationship (love interest, mentor, friend, antagonist-as-mirror), that gives the hero somewhere to talk about the theme while the A story keeps them busy with plot. In many films the B Story is where the emotional climax happens.

8. Fun and Games (pp. 30–55). The section that delivers the premise. If the logline promised a nurse hiding her fugitive brother, this is where she hides him and it nearly goes wrong in entertaining ways. Snyder's phrase is "the promise of the premise", and the diagnostic is simple: are these the scenes in the trailer? If not, the premise is not being delivered.

9. Midpoint (p. 55). Either a false victory (the hero appears to have won) or a false defeat (all seems lost, prematurely). Stakes rise, often a clock starts, and the story turns from the hero reacting to the hero acting, or the reverse. It is the beat most often missing from weak second acts, which sag because nothing changes between page 30 and page 75.

10. Bad Guys Close In (pp. 55–75). The opposition tightens externally (the antagonist regroups) and internally (the hero's team fractures, their flaw reasserts itself). Momentum here comes from escalation, not from new incidents; each scene should make the previous one worse.

11. All Is Lost (p. 75). The mirror of the Midpoint. If the Midpoint was a false victory, this is a real-seeming defeat. Snyder notes a "whiff of death" is common: someone or something dies, literally or symbolically (a mentor, a relationship, an old identity), clearing the way for the hero's transformation.

12. Dark Night of the Soul (pp. 75–85). The hero processes the loss. It is the quietest stretch of the script and the one most tempting to cut short. Give it room. The audience needs to believe the hero might not recover.

13. Break into Three (p. 85). The lesson of the B Story combines with the plot of the A story into a plan. The hero has understood something, and understanding produces action.

14. Finale (pp. 85–110). The plan executed. Snyder's later work breaks this into five sub-steps: gather the team, execute the plan, high-tower surprise (the plan fails), dig deep down (the hero finds a new resource, usually the theme), execute the new plan. The antagonist is dealt with, the hero is changed, and the B Story resolves.

15. Final Image (p. 110). The Opening Image answered. Same setting or same composition, different hero. If the two images do not rhyme, the audience will not feel the arc even if they can describe it.

How to use the template without writing a formula

The most common criticism of Save the Cat is that it produces predictable films. That is a fair criticism of films written to the beat sheet, scene by scene, filling in boxes. It is not a criticism of the beat sheet as an instrument. Three ways to keep it as a tool rather than a mould:

Use it after the outline, not before. Write your outline from the story's own logic first. Then lay it against the fifteen beats and look for what is missing. A missing Midpoint means a saggy second act; a Catalyst on page 30 means a slow start; no Theme Stated often means the writer does not yet know why they are telling this story. The beat sheet is a diagnostic, and diagnostics are most useful on a patient who already exists.

Treat page numbers as proportions. The targets assume 110 pages. Scale to your length: for a 95-page thriller the Midpoint is around page 47; for a 300-page novel it is around page 150. Being ten pages off is normal. Being forty pages off is worth a look.

Let beats overlap and merge. In a good script the Catalyst may double as the end of the Set-Up; the B Story may introduce itself in the Debate; All Is Lost and Dark Night of the Soul may be one scene. The list is fifteen functions, not fifteen scenes.

A worked example

Take the story we have used elsewhere on this blog: a hospital nurse comes home to find her estranged brother, a fugitive, hiding in her house. Filling the template:

Notice that filling the template did not write the film. It exposed what the film needed: a B Story with its own pull, a Midpoint that turned rather than merely happened, and a Final Image that rhymed. Those are the things a first outline usually lacks.

Beyond Save the Cat

If the fifteen beats feel too granular or too prescriptive, alternatives exist at different resolutions: the three-act model (setup, confrontation, resolution, with turning points at roughly 25% and 75%), the Hero's Journey (twelve stages, better for mythic and fantasy stories), Dan Harmon's story circle (eight steps, popular in television), and John Truby's twenty-two steps (more character-driven). They all describe the same shape. Save the Cat is the one with page numbers, which is why it is the one most writers actually use.

For television, the beats compress and repeat per episode with an additional layer of season structure; our TV pilot guide covers that. For adaptation, the template is especially useful for finding which of a novel's many scenes are load-bearing; see how to adapt a novel.

Try it in SparkLore

SparkLore's outliner includes the fifteen-beat template as a starting structure, with the page targets scaled to your chosen length, so you can fill each beat with a scene card and then draft the scenes in script format from the cards. If you want a rough beat sheet from a premise before committing to a project, the free AI script generator can produce one from a logline; our plot generator guide explains how to keep such output from being generic. Full outlining and drafting are available once you create an account.