Save the Cat!
Fifteen beats, each with a page number.
A strong premise creates expectations about what kind of experience a story will deliver. Save the Cat!’s fifteen beats help organize that experience while following the protagonist’s change. The beat sheet is especially useful when you want to examine how setup, the central stretch, and the ending support one another.
How it works
Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat! (2005) pins the three-act screenplay to fifteen named beats, each with a target page in a 110-page script, on the idea that commercial stories share a known rhythm. Drawn from studio comedies and genre films, it became a standard Hollywood beat sheet, and later books, beginning with Jessica Brody’s, adapted it for novelists.
Act One runs to 23%. The Opening Image (0–1%) catches the hero’s world and the Set-Up (1–10%) shows what needs fixing, while at 4.5% Theme Stated names the lesson before the hero is ready. After the Catalyst at 11%, the Debate runs to 23%, where Break into Two enters the upside-down world. The B Story arrives at 27%, often a romance, as Fun and Games (27–50%) plays out the premise. The Midpoint at 50% is a false victory or false defeat. Bad Guys Close In until All Is Lost at 68%, a brush with death, and the Dark Night of the Soul lasts to 77%. At Break into Three the A and B stories meet. The Finale (77–99%) applies the lesson, and the Final Image (99–100%) answers the first.
Snyder’s main turns sit just off the common marks: Break into Two at 23%, All Is Lost at 68%, ahead of the shared timeline’s 72% low point, and Break into Three at 77%. Field’s Paradigm places its plot points nearly as close, at 22% and 73%, but Snyder names much more of the middle. He also runs theme as a thread of its own, stated early and carried by the B Story.
The sheet earns its keep once the premise is settled and pacing becomes the question, in a commercial feature or a genre novel. Laying a draft against the fifteen beats shows where a stretch runs long or the Midpoint turns nothing. The page targets work best as ranges, since a script that lands every beat on its page tends to show its seams.
The framework, part by part
Positions are illustrative comparison references, not universal timing rules.
- Opening Image (0%, Ordinary world): A snapshot of the hero’s world before the story, usually mirrored by the final image.
- Set-Up (1%–10%, Ordinary world): Introduce the hero, the stakes and everything in their life that needs fixing.
- Theme Stated (4.5%, Ordinary world): Someone states the lesson the hero must learn, before the hero is ready to hear it.
- Catalyst (11%, Inciting incident): The life-changing event: a telegram, a firing, a knock at the door.
- Debate (11%–23%, Hesitation): The hero asks whether to go, and the audience sees the risk.
- Break into Two (23%, Commitment): The hero chooses to leave the old world and enters its upside-down version.
- B Story (27%, New world): A new relationship, often the love story, that carries the theme.
- Fun and Games (27%–50%, New world): The promise of the premise: the trailer moments where the concept plays out.
- Midpoint (50%, Midpoint): A false victory or a false defeat; the stakes rise and the clocks start.
- Bad Guys Close In (50%–68%, Pressure mounts): Outside pressure tightens while doubt and jealousy split the team.
- All Is Lost (68%, Lowest point): The mirror of the midpoint, with a whiff of death, often a mentor’s.
- Dark Night of the Soul (68%–77%, Lowest point): The hero hits bottom, then finds the clue that leads to the answer.
- Break into Three (77%, Final push): The A and B stories meet, and the hero sees the solution.
- Finale (77%–99%, Climax): The hero applies the lesson, defeats the bad guys and builds a new world.
- Final Image (99%, New normal): The opposite of the opening image, proof that change happened.
Use it for
Commercial features and genre novels where pacing and a clear premise matter most.
Watch for
Hitting every page number exactly can make a script feel assembled.
See how your story works.
Explore 30 approaches to story structure through short films and illustrated guides. Bring an idea or a draft, build your outline, and compare how different frameworks organize its events.
Free to use. No account needed to write. Save a backup to keep your work.
A short film on every structure
Each of the 30 structures has a 90-second animation that draws its shape beat by beat, and a page with every beat, how its parts work, questions to try, and when it can help. Start with one you’ve heard of.
All 30 structures on one timeline
Each row is one structure. The story runs left to right, from the first page (0%) to the last (100%). Bars are beats that last a while; diamonds are single moments. Drag the red line to any point, and the list below shows the nearby beats in each structure.
- Bar: a beat that lasts a while
- Diamond: a beat at one moment
- Red line: the point you’re reading
- A blank stretch: that structure names no beat there
- Act II-A and II-B are the two halves of Act Two, split at the midpoint.
Rows 1 to 13 follow Robert Carlson’s Ultimate Story Structure Chart (2015). Rows 14 to 21 are the structures readers of that thread asked him to add, and rows 22 to 30 are nine more we added. Positions combine source conventions and editorial estimates. Use them to compare approaches; they are not universal timing rules.
† Credited on Carlson’s chart. We found no primary source; the tree line is also credited to George Abbott and George M. Cohan.
Outline your story in any structure
Choose a framework and give its prompts a few sentences. Compare suggested placements in other frameworks to find a useful question or a different way to develop an event.
Pick a structure you know
Not sure? Try one of these, or any of the 30.
Write a sentence for each beat
A beat is one turn in the story, like the Catalyst that knocks your hero’s life off course. Each beat comes with a question to help you answer it.
Compare another framework
The comparison suggests where your notes could fit. Review each match. You decide which prompts matter to your story.
We wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz as a Save the Cat! outline. These excerpts from our outline of Baum’s 1900 novel show how suggested placements change between frameworks. Unmapped prompts describe this partial outline, not a flaw in Oz. Pick any structure you know and try it with your own story.
Sketch your story’s ups and downs
Kurt Vonnegut drew stories as a line that rises when things go well for the main character and falls when they go badly. Draw yours from left to right and we’ll name the classic shape it’s closest to.
Take it to the page
The free 91-page guide has the full chart, a chapter on each structure, printable worksheets and beat calculators for films, episodes and novels.