Also known as beat outline
A short outline of a story’s key moments — the beats — used to plan structure before or during drafting without writing every scene yet.
Treat each beat as a change of pressure, not a scene title. When you write "they fight," ask what becomes impossible afterward: a secret is out, an ally leaves, a plan dies. Specificity lets you test structure before you spend weeks drafting pages that cannot turn when the room asks hard questions about stakes.
Use the beat sheet to find missing turns early. If Act Two lists tasks with no reversals, the pages will stall. If the midpoint does not redefine the goal or the cost, the second half usually repeats the first. Reverse-beat a messy draft when discovery drafting left you with momentum but no spine worth defending in notes.
Keep the beat sheet beside the screenplay while you break — notes, treatments, and pages can live as separate Plot projects when you need distinct histories, or as sections inside one draft when the beat list is short. Name a save point before you reshape from beats into new scenes so the exploratory draft remains available while you protect the spine the room already agreed on during breaking.
Enough to prove the major turns -- often a dozen to two dozen named moments. If every scene needs its own beat, you are outlining, not checking the spine.
Use the act pattern your format expects, then name the turns that re-aim pressure. Pilots also need engine beats that prove the series can generate more episodes.
Decide which document is the truth for this pass. Either rewrite pages to honor the beats, or reverse-beat the draft and revise the sheet so the room is not chasing two stories.
Yes -- keep a short beat list in the same draft, or open a separate Plot project for a longer beat sheet when you want its own save history. Create a save point before you rebuild scenes from a new structural plan.
