Beat Sheet Calculator (Story Structure Page & Word Targets)

About the Beat Sheet Calculator (Story Structure Page & Word Targets)

Pick a story structure, say how long your story is — in pages, words or minutes — and see where each beat should land: the page of the Catalyst in a 110-page screenplay, the word where the Midpoint falls in an 80,000-word novel, the minute of the second plot point in a 95-minute film. For a novel, add your number of chapters and every chapter gets a word budget with the beats it holds; for a series, add the number of episodes or books and the same structure is stretched over the whole run.

The Save the Cat! beats use the percentages published on savethecat.com for screenplays and novels. The Hero’s Journey, three-act, seven-point and Kishōtenketsu placements are the conventional ones for the beats each method names. Every percentage is a starting point, not a rule: change any of them, rename beats, add your own, and write notes under each beat. Everything is worked out in this browser, and nothing you type is sent anywhere.

Common uses

• Outlining a feature screenplay so the turning points land where readers expect them.
• Planning a novel’s chapters and how many words each one needs before you start drafting.
• Checking a finished draft: is the midpoint really in the middle, or 20 pages late?
• Mapping a season or a book series so the big turns fall at the ends of episodes or books.
• Teaching story structure with the same story laid out in several methods.

The Save the Cat! beats

The percentages are those published on savethecat.com for screenplays and, with the same numbers, for novels:

• Opening Image 0–1 % · Theme Stated 5 % · Set-Up 1–10 % · Catalyst 10 % · Debate 10–20 %
• Break into Two 20 % · B Story 22 % · Fun & Games 20–50 % · Midpoint 50 % · Bad Guys Close In 50–75 %
• All Is Lost 75 % · Dark Night of the Soul 75–80 % · Break into Three 80 % · Finale 80–99 % · Final Image 99–100 %

The same site says that most feature screenplays run between 90 and 120 pages and that one page is roughly a minute of screen time, and that most novels run from 70,000 to 100,000 words, depending on genre. Save the Cat! is Blake Snyder’s method; this calculator is not connected with its publishers.

The other structures

• Three-act structure: Act One is the first quarter, Act Two the middle half and Act Three the last quarter, with the inciting incident at 12 %, the first plot point at 25 %, the midpoint at 50 %, the second plot point at 75 %, the climax at 90 % and the resolution in the last 3 %.
• Hero’s Journey: Christopher Vogler’s 12 stages from The Writer’s Journey, in his three acts: Ordinary World to Crossing the First Threshold in the first quarter, Tests, Allies, Enemies to Reward in the middle, with the Ordeal at the midpoint, and The Road Back, Resurrection and Return with the Elixir in the last quarter.
• Seven-point structure: Dan Wells’s Hook, Plot Turn 1, Pinch 1, Midpoint, Pinch 2, Plot Turn 2 and Resolution, placed at 0, 25, 37.5, 50, 62.5, 75 and 95–100 %. Wells suggests working out the Resolution first and making the Hook its opposite.
• Kishōtenketsu: ki (introduction), shō (development), ten (twist) and ketsu (reconciliation), a quarter each. The twist need not be a conflict.

These placements are conventions, not measurements: move any of them to suit your story.

How the targets are worked out

• Pages: the page a point falls on, rounded to the nearest page and never before page 1. 5 % of 110 pages is 5.5 pages, so the beat is on page 6; 75 % is 82.5, page 83. A beat that covers a stretch shows its first and last page.
• Words: the word count at that point (80,000 × 50 % = word 40,000). With chapters, the book is split into chapters of equal length in whole words, so the chapter totals add up exactly; a beat that lands on the boundary between two chapters opens the later one.
• Minutes: the time from the start, to the second (37.5 % of 100 minutes is 37:30).
• Series: the structure is laid over all the parts at once. A beat on the boundary between two parts closes the earlier one, so the midpoint of an eight-episode season ends episode 4.

Very short works

In a short film or a piece of flash fiction several beats can land on the same page. The tool lists them so you can merge them into one moment: on a 10-page script the Opening Image, Set-Up, Theme Stated and Catalyst all fall on page 1. Beats count as sharing a page when they land on the same page, the same minute, or within the same 250 words (about one double-spaced manuscript page). A structure with fewer beats, such as Kishōtenketsu or the three acts, often suits a short piece better.

Limitations

• The percentages are guides that writers and teachers use, not laws: successful stories break them all the time.
• A page is only roughly a minute of screen time; action-heavy pages run longer and dialogue-heavy pages shorter.
• Chapter budgets assume chapters of equal length. Real chapters vary; use the budgets as a plan, not a limit.
• The calculator does not read your script or manuscript: it works out where beats should go, not where they are in your draft.

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