Beat sheet

Each line is one beat: a turn, a reveal, a question raised, a payoff delivered. Screenwriters have used the format for decades, and Blake Snyder's Save the Cat popularised a fifteen-beat version for feature films. Video creators use something shorter, often eight to twelve lines for a long-form piece. Written out in running order it shows you the shape of the thing before a single line of script exists, which is when a sagging middle is cheap to fix. The usual failure is writing beats that name topics instead of movement. 'Talk about the price' is a topic. 'He finds out the cheap one is better' is a beat.