The Blake Snyder Beat Sheet

Using a beat sheet

My Beat Sheet

I'm trying something new.

The Beat Sheet.

I've been very lucky (and ignorant) with my writing for a long time. I've never outlined my plots, used a three act system, or anything like that. I've just naturally written in that style - an opening, a problem, a climax solution, and an ending. And it's worked out for me. Probably b/c I've kept the story simple, or copied (aka been heavily influenced) by other's writing/stories.

But, I'm always looking for ways to get better. I ran across talk about The Beat Sheet and it made sense to me. Like I said earlier, this kind of plot structure is how I seem to naturally write. However, what I really hoped to get out of this sheet was organization.

Side Note: I guess the Blake Snyder Beat Sheet was originally set up for movie scripts, but it works well for any kind of story. There is a book called Save The Cat! that outlines the method in detail. I only took the basics.

I'm a mess when it comes to organizing. Trying to juggle multiple projects, submissions, rejections, and more complex stories, really slows the brain power down. I need to unload some of my thinking onto paper. In comes the Beat Sheet.

Now instead of trying to keep track of characters, Plot A, Plot B, where they are, where they are going, etc. I tried writing it out within this Beat Sheet system.

It seemed to work well for the general story line. And the best part is that it is written down. I can delete all that info from my brain and hopefully use that brain space to finish up some other projects. I'll come back to this when I'm ready. The best part is that I'll have a great head start.

That's my problem - too many ideas. If I don't write them down I'll forget them. In order to NOT forget them, I have to constantly think about them. So when I write them down, I might as well do it in a format that is going to help organize it. Make sense? 

I will let you know if this Beat Sheet works for me. I'm hoping to get to this project in the next few weeks...but being such an optimist I might be over estimating. It could be in six months from now!