If you’re not familiar with what each beat represents, it’s well worth running a quick internet search or purchasing the book Save the Cat and/or Save the Cat Goes to the Movies. (The numbers in parenthesis relate to page numbers in a typical 110-page feature screenplay.)Įach of these fifteen beats are said to occur in every successful (and usually mainstream) movie-mostly in this order and somewhere on or around these pages.

“Blake codified a common structure, a universal key to unlock every successful story: the fifteen story beats of the Blake Snyder Beat Sheet.” If you’re not familiar with this hugely popular screenplay beat sheet template, here’s a quick overview from Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat website itself: Note: Some of the items below may include affiliate links, meaning if you purchase using that link, we’ll get a small commission but you won’t pay a penny extra. We use the movie Up in the Airas an example for both methods so it might be a good idea to watch or rewatch it first if your memory’s a little hazy. In this post, we’re going to compare both of these structure methods, discuss their pros and cons and reveal how you can combine them to come up with the perfect screenplay structure. Is it the go-to template that anyone can plug their story in to and get amazing results? Or is it a screenwriting-by-numbers method that’s not much help?Īnd just what are screenplay sequences? Are you better off using them to structure your screenplay instead? Or do they just make your writing too “mechanical”? Just how useful is a Save the Cat beat sheet (also known as the “Blake Snyder beat sheet”) to the budding writer?

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Save the cat novel beat sheet