know.

CookbookBooks and writingNo. 8

A feature screenplay’s biblebeats, scenes, characters and the notes between drafts

Recipe No. 8 · Books and writing

For: A screenwriter between the outline and the third draft

You get: A beat sheet charted against the page, and scene cards per sequence

Time: An evening, then an hour a draft

See it in know.sh

The beat sheet with a dot plot in its overview: the target page and draft 2’s page for each beat.

ChangeoverNo. 1

Changeoverbeat sheet and scene cards

13 sections, 4,120 words, about 18 minutes, 2 highlights, revised 22 September

The last Saturday of 35 mm at the Rialto, and the reel nobody ordered. Draft 2 runs 118 pages against a target of 110; act two is where the pages went.

Act one ends six pages late, because Dell takes two scenes to decide what act one needs her to decide in one (sequence 1, scenes 6 and 7). The midpoint lands on time; the nine pages lost after it are in sequence 5.

Sections

  1. 1Opening image: threading in the darkDecision, page 1
  2. 2Catalyst: the can with no labelDecision, key, page 14
  3. 3Break into two: the fire shuttersDecision, key, page 31
  4. 4Sequence 1: the last Saturday, scenes 1–7Observation, 7 scenes

and nine more sections

A sequence as scene cards: a table of seven scenes, each with its page and the one thing that changes in it.

ChangeoverChangeover

9of 13

Sequence 1the last Saturday, scenes 1–7

Observation, 1 highlight, 1 note, 7 scenes, 380 words

Pages 1–31 of draft 2. The sequence sets up the booth, the town and the deadline, and ends with Dell keeping something she should hand over.

Scene 4 is the one to protect: the smell is how Dell knows, and it is how the audience learns she knows film better than anyone in the building.

A page per character, opening with a card of what they want, what they need and where the arc turns.

ChangeoverChangeover

1of 6

Dell Pruitt, the projectionist

Insight, key section, 2 sources, 540 words

At each beat. Catalyst (p. 14): she knows the stock by its smell. Break into two (p. 31): she hides it. Midpoint (p. 57): she finds her mother in the film, aged about twenty, at the mill gate. All is lost (p. 84): Marcus finds the cabinet open and calls the fire marshal. Break into three (p. 92): she asks Ines to make a safety copy she can show.

What the page does not show yet. Why she stayed. Every reader has asked; the answer is in my notes, not in any scene.

How it works

Why the catalyst lands on page 14 and not 12. What the projectionist wants in act one and needs by the end. Your assistant reads your draft, lays out the beat sheet, the scene cards and a page per character, and charts each beat against the page, so you see at once that act two is where the pages went.

  1. Have your assistant read the draft

    Give it the latest draft as a PDF or Fountain file and ask for a section per beat, with the page you meant it to land on and the page it lands on.

  2. Chart the beats against the page

    Ask for a dot plot chart element at the top of the beat sheet: your target page against this draft’s page. The gap between the two dots is the whole diagnosis.

  3. Put each sequence on scene cards

    Ask for a table element per sequence: a row per scene with its page, its heading and one sentence naming what changes. A scene where nothing changes is one to cut.

  4. Check the cards against each new draft

    Give it the new draft and the notes you have had. It files each note as a Suggestion and leaves a proposed note wherever a card and the pages disagree.

Try this prompt

Your assistant, connected to know.sh (Claude, ChatGPT or a local model):

Using know.sh, read the beat sections in *Changeover — beat sheet and scene cards* on my Changeover shelf and add a chart element to the top of its overview: a dot plot, one category per beat in story order, with two series, “Target page” and “Draft 2 page”, taken from each beat section. Change nothing else, and tell me any beat with no page number.

Your assistant, connected to know.sh (Claude, ChatGPT or a local model):

Using know.sh, compare the scene cards in *Changeover — beat sheet and scene cards* with the draft 3 file I have given you. Leave a proposed note on each scene card whose scene was cut, moved more than two pages or renamed, and on any character section where a character now learns something before the scene that tells them. Do not change any section.

Made with

ShelfDocumentYour AI assistantElementsProposed notesRevisions

See also