SAVE THE CAT BEAT SHEET
Lay the Save the Cat beat sheet
over your story and find what is missing.
The Save the Cat beat sheet is a diagnostic, not a form to fill in. Ask Storyflow's AI to lay the fifteen beats out as movable cards with their page targets, so you can see which of your beats land where they should and which are missing, with the research and characters on the same board.
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What is the Save the Cat beat sheet?
The Save the Cat beat sheet is a fifteen-beat structure Blake Snyder published in 2005, each beat with a target page number for a 110-page screenplay. Opening Image, Theme Stated, Set-Up, Catalyst, Debate, Break into Two, B Story, Fun and Games, Midpoint, Bad Guys Close In, All Is Lost, Dark Night of the Soul, Break into Three, Finale, Final Image. The page numbers are the part people argue about and the part that makes it useful.
It is a structural diagnostic. Its value is not that stories must follow it, but that when a script is not working, laying the beats over what you have usually shows you which function is missing. A midpoint that arrives on page seventy is a second act that sags for thirty pages, and you can feel that without being able to name it until the sheet tells you where to look.
The criticism is fair and worth stating: used as a template rather than a lens, it produces predictable, interchangeable films, and the page targets encourage writers to hit marks rather than tell stories. Snyder's own examples are commercial studio films, which is what the shape optimises for. Plenty of excellent scripts violate it completely.
So the honest use is diagnostic and retrospective. Write the story you want, then lay the beat sheet over it and see what the comparison tells you. Storyflow suits that: ask the AI to lay the fifteen beats out as cards beside your own, so the framework is something you compare against rather than a form that dictates the story. Storyflow does not format screenplays or paginate, so the script itself is written in a screenwriting tool.
HOW IT WORKS
Lay the framework over your story, not under it.
Start from what you have; use the fifteen beats to find out what is missing.
01
Put your own beats down first
One card per beat you already have, in the order the story runs. Doing this before you look at the framework keeps it a diagnostic rather than a template.
02
Lay the fifteen beats over them
Ask the AI to lay the fifteen beats out as cards with their page targets beside yours, and see which of yours map to which function.
03
Look at what does not line up
Missing functions and beats landing far from their target are the two readings that matter. A midpoint at page seventy is the note, not a failure to comply.
04
Decide what to change and what to keep
Some mismatches are problems and some are the reason the script is interesting. The sheet tells you where to look; it does not tell you what to do.
The four readings a beat sheet gives you.
All of them are about diagnosis rather than compliance.
The missing function
Find the beat that is not there
No Debate, no Theme Stated, no All Is Lost. A story missing a function usually feels flat in a way readers cannot name, and the framework names it.
See the beat board →
The page targets
See where your beats actually land
The targets are the useful part. A Break into Two on page forty is the diagnosis for a first act everyone says is slow but nobody can locate.
See the beat sheet template →
Fun and Games is the promise
Check the middle delivers the premise
The stretch after Break into Two is where the film gives the audience what the poster promised. A second act that forgets its own premise shows up here first.
See the story planning tool →
Structure is not the whole job
Keep characters and theme in view
A structurally perfect script with no character underneath is the standard failure of template writing. Keeping the character work on the same board is the counterweight.
See the character profile generator →Plans from $7.99/month annual. Free plan coming late 2026.
Anyone a paid member invites to a board joins free, which matters when a writing partner or a room needs the same board. Storyflow is paid-only during early access.
Readers open a view-only link without an account
Every project gets its own board, with no project limit
Export the board as a high-quality image or PDF
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WHY A CANVAS
A beat sheet in a document is a form. On a canvas it is a comparison.
The whole value is holding your story and the framework in view at once, which a list cannot do.
Two things at once
Your beats and the framework, side by side
The framework beside your cards: The fifteen beats as cards beside your own rather than a template you type into, which is the difference between diagnosing a story and generating one.
Mismatches are visible: A beat sitting far from its target is a spatial fact on the board, not a number you have to work out.
Try another framework: Ask the AI to lay out the Story Circle or the three acts beside the same beats. Different lenses catch different problems, and none of them is the truth.
The AI reads the board
Ask which function is missing
Canvas-aware AI: Storyflow's AI reads the whole active board, so your beats, the framework and the character notes are all in front of it when you ask what is absent.
Map your beats to the fifteen: Ask which of your beats is doing the work of the Catalyst or the Midpoint, and get an argument to disagree with rather than a blank comparison.
Draft candidates to cut: Generate options for a missing beat and reject most of them. A bad suggestion is usually more productive than an empty card.
What it is not
Honest about the ceiling
Not a screenwriting app: No screenplay formatting, no pagination, no revision colours and no Final Draft export. Write the script in Final Draft, WriterDuet, Highland or Arc Studio.
Not a formula: Used as a template rather than a lens, the fifteen beats produce interchangeable films. The page targets are diagnostic marks, not requirements.
Where it wins: Holding your story, the framework, the research and the characters in one space while the structure is still moving.
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The Save the Cat beat sheet, answered.
What writers ask before using the fifteen beats.
Opening Image, Theme Stated, Set-Up, Catalyst, Debate, Break into Two, B Story, Fun and Games, Midpoint, Bad Guys Close In, All Is Lost, Dark Night of the Soul, Break into Three, Finale, and Final Image. Blake Snyder attached a target page number to each for a 110-page screenplay, and those targets are what make the sheet a diagnostic: a beat landing far from its mark is usually where a script's pacing problem lives.
No, and treating them as requirements is the most common misuse. They are reference marks. A Midpoint at page sixty rather than fifty-five means nothing; a Midpoint at page seventy usually means the second act sags, which is a real note. Use the distance as a signal, not the position as a rule.
Used as a template to write from, yes, and that criticism is well earned. The structure optimises for commercial studio films and produces interchangeable ones when writers fill it in rather than write. Used the other way round, writing first and laying the beats over the draft to find what is missing, it is a genuinely useful diagnostic. The order of operations is the whole difference.
After a draft exists, or at least after you have your own beats. Its strength is comparison, and there is nothing to compare a blank canvas against. Writers who reach for it first tend to produce structurally competent scripts with nothing underneath them.
The functions do; the page targets do not. Convert them to proportions of the manuscript and the diagnostic still works: a midpoint at 65% of the book is the same problem as a midpoint on page seventy of a screenplay. Novels also tolerate more digression, so treat mismatches more loosely.
In a screenwriting tool such as Final Draft, WriterDuet, Highland or Arc Studio, with the board open beside it. Storyflow has no screenplay formatting, no pagination, no revision colours and no Final Draft export, so it is where the structure is worked out rather than where the pages are written.
Yes, and it is worth doing. Ask the AI to lay out the Story Circle or the three acts as cards beside the same beats and see whether they catch something the fifteen did not. Different frameworks foreground different failures, and no single one is authoritative.
Yes. It reads the whole board, so it can suggest which of your beats is doing the work of the Catalyst or the Midpoint and flag functions with nothing against them. Treat it as a first opinion to argue with; the interesting cases are the ones where you disagree.
No. A beat sheet is the list, usually against a named structure with page targets. A beat board is your beats as movable cards in space. In Storyflow both sit on one canvas, which is the point: the board holds your story and the sheet is the framework laid beside it.
Storyflow is paid-only during early access, with plans from $7.99 a month billed annually ($9.99 monthly). A free plan launches before the end of 2026, and anyone a paid member invites to a board joins free.
Lay the fifteen beats over your story.
The fifteen beats as cards beside your own, with the research and characters on the same board.