The Save the Cat beat sheet: 15 beats for novelists
Each beat in plain words, where it falls in a novel of your length, all fifteen measured on A Christmas Carol, and a beat sheet you can copy or download.
The short answer
The Save the Cat beat sheet divides a story into fifteen beats across three acts, each with a target position. Blake Snyder created it for screenplays, and Jessica Brody adapted it for novels with percentages instead of page numbers. Some beats span a stretch of the book; the rest are single moments.
- Opening Image0 to 1%
- Theme Stated5%
- Set-Up1 to 10%
- Catalyst10%
- Debate10 to 20%
- Break into Two20%
- B Story22%
- Fun and Games20 to 50%
- Midpoint50%
- Bad Guys Close In50 to 75%
- All Is Lost75%
- Dark Night of the Soul75 to 80%
- Break into Three80%
- Finale80 to 99%
- Final Image99 to 100%
Single beatStretch of the bookLines mark the acts at 20% and 80%
Where it comes from
Blake Snyder, a screenwriter, published Save the Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need in 2005. The title comes from his advice to give the hero an early moment that makes the audience like them, such as saving a cat. The beat sheet in it set fifteen beats against the pages of a 110 page script.
In 2018 the novelist Jessica Brody published Save the Cat! Writes a Novel (Ten Speed Press), which carries the beats over to fiction, with positions as percentages of the book and examples from published novels. The percentages on this page are hers; the page numbers are Snyder's.
Save the Cat! is a registered trademark of Blake Snyder Enterprises, LLC. This guide is our own explanation and is not affiliated with or endorsed by the owners.
The 15 beats, one by one
In our words, with the question each beat answers for your book.
- 1
Opening Image0 to 1%
A snapshot of the hero and their world before anything changes. It sets the tone and gives the ending something to answer.
Ask: what one scene shows who they are now?
- 2
Theme StatedAbout 5%
Someone, usually not the hero, says something that hints at what the hero has to learn. The hero is not ready to hear it.
Ask: who tells the hero the truth too early?
- 3
Set-Up1 to 10%
The hero's everyday life and everything wrong with it: the people around them, what they want, and their resistance to change. Hint at what they stand to lose.
Ask: what needs fixing in this life, and why won't the hero fix it?
- 4
CatalystAbout 10%
The event that happens to the hero and makes the old life impossible to go back to: a letter, a death, a visitor, a firing.
Ask: what arrives that cannot be undone?
- 5
Debate10 to 20%
The hero reacts and hesitates. The debate usually takes the form of a question: should I go, can I do this, is it real?
Ask: what question does the hero argue with?
- 6
Break into TwoAbout 20%
The hero decides and acts, and enters a new world or a new way of living. It should be their choice.
Ask: what does the hero choose to do?
- 7
B StoryAbout 22%
A new character, or a new relationship, that will help the hero learn the theme: a love interest, a friend, a mentor, even a rival.
Ask: who carries the theme to the hero?
- 8
Fun and Games20 to 50%
The hero in the new world, succeeding or floundering. This is the part the premise promised, the reason a reader picked up the book.
Ask: what scenes would a reader of your blurb expect?
- 9
MidpointAbout 50%
A false victory or a false defeat that raises the stakes. The hero's goal often shifts here from what they want toward what they need.
Ask: what seems won or lost halfway, and why is it not final?
- 10
Bad Guys Close In50 to 75%
Pressure from outside grows, and so do the hero's own flaws, the bad guys inside. After a false victory things get worse; after a false defeat they seem to improve.
Ask: what comes for the hero, and which flaw helps it?
- 11
All Is LostAbout 75%
The lowest point. Something happens that, together with the hero's flaws, takes them to rock bottom. Snyder suggested a touch of death here, literal or not.
Ask: what is the worst thing that can happen that the story still survives?
- 12
Dark Night of the Soul75 to 80%
The hero takes in what has happened. This is the moment just before they understand what they have to change.
Ask: what does the hero finally admit?
- 13
Break into ThreeAbout 80%
The realisation. The hero sees how to fix the problem, and how to fix themselves, often by joining the A story and the B story.
Ask: what idea could only the changed hero have?
- 14
Finale80 to 99%
The hero carries out the plan and proves they have learned the theme. The world is set right, or at least better than it was.
Ask: how does the hero act differently from the opening?
- 15
Final Image99 to 100%
A mirror of the Opening Image: the after picture. Put the two side by side and the change should be plain.
Ask: what does the first scene look like now?
Beat targets for your novel's length
Enter your target length and the table works out where each beat falls, rounded to the nearest hundred words. Snyder's screenplay pages are there for comparison.
| Beat | Novel (Brody) | Script page (Snyder, of 110) | At 80,000 words |
|---|---|---|---|
| Opening Image | 0 to 1% | 1 | 0 to 800 |
| Theme Stated | 5% | 5 | 4,000 |
| Set-Up | 1 to 10% | 1 to 10 | 800 to 8,000 |
| Catalyst | 10% | 12 | 8,000 |
| Debate | 10 to 20% | 12 to 25 | 8,000 to 16,000 |
| Break into Two | 20% | 25 | 16,000 |
| B Story | 22% | 30 | 17,600 |
| Fun and Games | 20 to 50% | 30 to 55 | 16,000 to 40,000 |
| Midpoint | 50% | 55 | 40,000 |
| Bad Guys Close In | 50 to 75% | 55 to 75 | 40,000 to 60,000 |
| All Is Lost | 75% | 75 | 60,000 |
| Dark Night of the Soul | 75 to 80% | 75 to 85 | 60,000 to 64,000 |
| Break into Three | 80% | 85 | 64,000 |
| Finale | 80 to 99% | 85 to 110 | 64,000 to 79,200 |
| Final Image | 99 to 100% | 110 | 79,200 to 80,000 |
Showing positions for a novel of 80,000 words.
Worked example: A Christmas Carol
Charles Dickens's novella (1843, public domain) is short enough to see whole, and its shape is famous enough that you can check our reading against your own.
- Book
- A Christmas Carol, five staves, about 28,000 words.
- Theme
- A life closed to other people is a life already over.
- Positions
- Measured by us as a share of the words in the Project Gutenberg text. Stave II starts at 23%, III at 44%, IV at 73%, V at 92%.
- Opening Image1%
- Theme Stated5%
- Set-Up1 to 11%
- Catalyst11%
- Debate15 to 21%
- Break into Two27%
- B Story26%
- Fun and Games27 to 58%
- Midpoint58%
- Bad Guys Close In58 to 91%
- All Is Lost91%
- Dark Night of the Soul91 to 92%
- Break into Three92%
- Finale92 to 99%
- Final Image99%
TargetWhere Dickens puts it
| Beat | Where | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Opening Image | Stave I, 1% | Marley is dead, and Scrooge, his old partner, is a tight-fisted, solitary old sinner whom nobody stops in the street. |
| Theme Stated | Stave I, 5% | His nephew Fred defends Christmas as the one time people open their shut-up hearts. Scrooge answers with Bah, Humbug. |
| Set-Up | Stave I, 1 to 11% | The cold counting house, Bob Cratchit's one-coal fire, Fred turned away, and two gentlemen collecting for the poor, told the poor can go to the workhouses. |
| Catalyst | Stave I, 11% | Marley's face appears in the door knocker. |
| Debate | Stave I, 15 to 21% | Marley's ghost arrives in chains. Scrooge blames an undigested bit of beef, then asks whether he could take the three spirits all at once and have it over. |
| Break into Two | Stave II, 27% | The Ghost of Christmas Past takes hold of him, gently but not to be resisted, and they pass through the wall into his childhood. Scrooge does not choose; he is taken. |
| B Story | Stave II, 26% | The spirits themselves: three guides who show him the people he has shut out, from his sister Fan to Belle to the Cratchits. |
| Fun and Games | Staves II and III, 27 to 58% | The school, Fezziwig's ball, Belle releasing him, the Christmas markets, the Cratchits' dinner. The promise of the premise: a miser made to watch other people's Christmases. |
| Midpoint | Stave III, 58% | Scrooge asks whether Tiny Tim will live. The spirit answers with his own words about decreasing the surplus population. For the first time he cares about someone else's future. |
| Bad Guys Close In | Staves III and IV, 58 to 91% | Fred's party laughs at him in a guessing game; Ignorance and Want; the silent last spirit; businessmen joking about a funeral; a dead man's bed curtains sold; the Cratchits mourning Tiny Tim. |
| All Is Lost | Stave IV, 91% | The neglected grave, and his own name on the stone. |
| Dark Night of the Soul | Stave IV, 91 to 92% | He clutches the spirit's robe and begs to be allowed to change what the shadows showed. |
| Break into Three | Stave V, 92% | He wakes in his own bed, and the bedpost is his own. The time to change has not passed. |
| Finale | Stave V, 92 to 99% | The prize turkey sent to the Cratchits, a large gift to the charity gentleman, dinner at Fred's, Bob's salary raised. |
| Final Image | Stave V, 99% | Scrooge as good a friend and master as the city knew, and a second father to Tiny Tim, who did not die. |
What the example shows
- The first act lands on target. Theme Stated at 5% and the Catalyst at 11% sit almost exactly where the beat sheet puts them.
- The third act is short. All Is Lost comes at 91%, not 75%, and the Finale takes only the last 8%. In a novella built on a reversal, that can be right: the change is fast because everything before it has prepared it.
- The order matters more than the numbers. Every beat is present and in order, even where the positions drift. Use the percentages to find a problem, not to move a scene that works.
- Not every beat is a choice. Scrooge is carried into act two. Brody's Break into Two asks for a decision; if your hero is pushed, make the first real choice come soon after, as Scrooge's does at the midpoint.
Save the Cat beat sheet template
All fifteen beats with their targets and the questions above, plus space for the chapter where each lands. Copy it, or download it as a Markdown file that opens in Word, Google Docs or Feldar.
THE BOOK
Working title and target length:
Theme (what the hero must learn):
ACT ONE
1. Opening Image (0 to 1%): what one scene shows who they are now?
2. Theme Stated (about 5%): who tells the hero the truth too early?
3. Set-Up (1 to 10%): what needs fixing, and why won't they fix it?
When it helps, and when it doesn't
- It helps with genre fiction. Romance, thrillers, fantasy and young adult novels often follow this rhythm closely, and readers of those genres feel it when a beat is missing.
- It helps in revision. Mark where each beat falls in a finished draft. A Catalyst at 25% or a Midpoint at 70% points straight at the slow part.
- It is less useful for quiet books. Literary novels built on voice, braided timelines or several equal protagonists often fit loosely. Use the questions and drop the percentages.
- It can flatten a book. Fifteen beats at fixed positions make every story the same shape. If a beat appears only because the sheet asks for it, cut it.
For the frame around the beats, see three-act structure; for a story of leaving home and coming back, the hero's journey.
Planning the 15 beats in Feldar
Make a Plot card on the Canvas for each beat and link them in order with Causes. With a card selected, Branch and Next plot beat proposes the card that follows from it; keep it or delete it. Put the B story character on a Character card, and Feldar reads those cards when it suggests scenes or text.
Each chapter's page then gets an Outline of scenes: write them yourself, or describe the beat and Generate scenes proposes them, and Draft Page writes the page from those scenes. For a premise to start from, try the free plot generator or story generator; to go from beats to scene cards, see how to outline a novel.
Act 2
Questions
What are the 15 beats of Save the Cat?
Opening Image, Theme Stated, Set-Up, Catalyst, Debate, Break into Two, B Story, Fun and Games, Midpoint, Bad Guys Close In, All Is Lost, Dark Night of the Soul, Break into Three, Finale and Final Image.
Does Save the Cat work for novels?
Yes, with percentages instead of screenplay pages. Jessica Brody's Save the Cat! Writes a Novel (2018) adapts the beats for fiction; it works best for plot-driven and genre novels.
Where is the midpoint in Save the Cat?
At about 50% of the book: page 55 of Snyder's 110 page script, or around 40,000 words in an 80,000 word novel.
What is the B story?
A second storyline, usually a relationship with a new character, that carries the theme. It starts near 22% and often gives the hero what they need to solve the main story in act three.
Why is it called Save the Cat?
Blake Snyder's name for an early scene in which the hero does something kind, like saving a cat, so the audience is on their side.
How is it different from three-act structure?
It is a finer version of it. Three acts give the frame; Save the Cat names fifteen beats inside that frame and gives each a target position.
Sources
Checked on November 6, 2026.
- Blake Snyder
- Save the Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need, Michael Wiese Productions, 2005; the 15 beats, savethecat.com
- Jessica Brody
- Save the Cat! Writes a Novel, Ten Speed Press, 2018; beat percentages, Brody's starter kit
- The novella
- Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, 1843, Project Gutenberg eBook #46. Positions are word counts through this text, measured by us.