A screenplay outline template
made of cards you can move.

A screenplay outline is a scene-by-scene map of a feature written before the pages. Each entry names the scene, whose scene it is, what that character wants, what stands in the way and how the scene changes the situation. Laid end to end, the entries show the film's chain of cause and effect and where the acts turn, so a passive protagonist or an unearned climax shows while it is cheap to fix.

Start with the logline, because every scene has to serve it. Write one card per scene with a goal, a conflict and an outcome, and lay the cards in the order an audience meets them. Group them into three acts and mark the two act breaks and the midpoint. Read the spine for cause and effect, run the protagonist's arc underneath, and connect every setup to its payoff.

Most feature outlines run 40 to 60 scene cards, roughly one card per two pages of a 110-page script, or five to fifteen pages as a document. A beat sheet is shorter: one or two pages and around fifteen beats. Two signals are reliable. Fewer than about 30 cards usually means whole sequences are still vague, and more than about 80 means you are writing the script in miniature.

Length, detail and reader. A beat sheet is one or two pages naming the major turns, often against page targets. An outline is the working document, 40 to 60 scene entries, written for you and your collaborators. A treatment is the presentation version: present-tense prose that reads like the film, written for producers and financiers. Most writers go beat sheet, outline, script, and write a treatment when someone asks for one.

A step outline is a scene-by-scene outline in which each scene is a numbered step: one or two sentences on what happens and how the situation turns, with no dialogue. In Storyflow each step is a card in its act column, so steps reorder with a drag and a step that changes nothing stands out. Ask the AI for a story outline from your logline and it lays out a first pass for you to rework.

Not as built-in markers. Storyflow has no Save the Cat or Story Circle marker sets. Name the structure you work in and the AI's story outline workflow lays your story out against it, one wall per beat, which you then fill, move or ignore. If you want those beats pre-drawn, Final Draft's structure templates and the Save the Cat software ship them.

Whichever makes your film easier to see. Three acts is the most general and the hardest to misuse, so it is the safe default. Save the Cat's fifteen beats with page targets suit commercial genre features. The sequence method, eight units of ten to fifteen pages, is the best cure for a sagging middle. Story Circle suits transformation stories. Laying two over the same cards shows what each one misses.

Usually outline first. Filling a template from empty tends to produce a film that obeys the template and means nothing, because you invent a catalyst to fill the catalyst slot. Break the story your own way, lay the cards out, then check them against a template to find what is missing. A beat with nothing near it is a real question; a beat invented to satisfy the template is usually the scene a reader calls generic.

In a 110-page feature, act one usually ends between page 25 and 30, when the protagonist commits and cannot go back. The midpoint sits near page 55 and flips the situation, raises the stakes, or turns a false victory into a real problem. The second act break lands around page 85 to 90, after the lowest point. Treat these as gravity rather than law: a 40-page act one is allowed, but worth knowing about.

That is not what it is for. The AI works on structure: it lays out a first outline from your logline in the structure you name, suggests what might happen between two scenes when you are stuck, and checks your cards against a structure to show which beats are empty. Because it reads the whole board, its suggestions fit the film in front of it. Every edit has one-click Undo, and the scenes and the voice stay yours.

No. 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, so a writing partner can join without paying. If you need a free option today, a stack of index cards and a wall is still the most reliable way to break a feature.