What is a beat sheet? Story simplified.

I love beat sheets, but when I was first starting out I had no idea what a beat sheet was. (Please Note: This is about Story Beats, not the beat used to indicate a pause when a character is speaking.) Even today, it's hard to find good accurate examples of what a beat sheet is. I guess beat sheets are still the best kept secret in the writing community.

Beat sheets are integral to the TV writing process, so using beats to work out a one hour drama show was how I really learned the proper use of a beat sheet. The first thing to understand is that a beat is NOT a scene. If you come across beat sheets that list every scene in a movie, and so run 60 to 90 beats long, this is WRONG. Do not follow this method. That is a scene by scene breakdown or outline and should not be confused with a beat sheet.

So what is a beat? A beat is a moment where new information is introduced into the story. Therefore, a plot point is a beat, but not all beats are plot points. And again, not all scenes are beats, rather beats are made up of scenes. I like to break down scripts in this way:

The Screenplay > Acts > Sequences > Beats > Scenes

When I write a beat sheet I like to do a sentence per beat. A feature length script (90 to 120 pages) is going to run between 30 to 40 beats. Much less than 30 and you don't have enough story to fill a script, and more than 40 you're probably writing an epic like Inception or Avatar, which you really shouldn't be doing unless your name is Christopher Nolan or James Cameron.

I have only found two good examples of beat sheets online. The first comes from John August's blog. In my opinion, this is a perfect example and I love that a Professional I highly admire provided us with such a rare gem. I recommend following John's model. Another I have found is Robert Towne's for Chinatown. Here, Towne takes it a step further with a paragraph per beat, which then often goes by the name of Step Outline instead and is usually the next step after you complete a beat sheet.

Beat sheets are a great way to learn and analyze story. On more than one occasion, I have sat down with a favorite film and done a beat sheet on it. I have one I'll share using Dr. No. Older films can be a good place to start because their longer scenes and more obvious sequences breaks allow you to get down the story beat on the first time through more often.

"Dr. No" Beat Sheet

If you know of any other good beat sheets out there, let me know in the comments. Thanks.