I want to BEAT you to death.

I think it was Ghengis Kahn who said 'be the change you want to see'.

As a screenwriter, there's one thing I always wanted to see -- a depository of beat-sheets from movies good and bad, old and new. When I write, I like to review various movies that attempt to use similar plots.

For awhile there, I had even planned to write a book in which I unveiled dozens of STORY PATTERNS and pointed to various scripts in different genres that shared similar ones. 

My buddy/mentor/co-writer BLAKE SNYDER of SAVE THE CAT fame did this. He wrote SAVE THE CAT GOES TO THE MOVIES. It's by far the book I return to most. BY FAR.

Here's Blake's website:
http://www.blakesnyder.com/


I want more. A lot more. So, I'm going to start posting beat-sheets here. Or linking to them or whatever. If you do one, let me know, I'll post it. If I get 1000 maybe I'll go away from this 'blog format' and build a database or some craziness.

I'm busy writing, so these won't appear very fast and furious(I'll do one for Fast and Furious).

Here's my approach:

•  I'm going to use a Blake Snyder beat-sheet. It's my blog! I'm a Cat-Man(I look good in latex). That said, I'll occasionally post synopsises(synopsi, synopsissies?) of others in different formats. I have a book of Hero's Journey breakdowns that I love and wouldn't mind seeing more from the unwashed masses. If you dig the hero's journey or the sequence method or Truby and want to share...Share!
• I tend to keep my  BS2's short. Above and beyond that, they're not as useful to me. I like to tear through these in minutes.That said, I'm already working on the first and it's long. So I'm a hypocrite!
• Beat-Sheets tend to be in the eye of the beholder -- I have my own modified view/opinions of the Blake Snyder beat-sheet.  I see Beat Sheets out there I totally disagree with. I disagree with some of Blake's beat-sheets. So what? This isn't a proof. There's no one right answer. Even beat-sheets I disagree with are useful tools. Some of it is semantics. Hopefully we'll find those differences and figure out our semantical disagreements and move on.
• I tend not to care about page counts in my beat-sheets. While that's highly useful information, I don't have time to put in the stop-watch work...so be warned. 
• I also am a big fan of THE MORAL PREMISE(a book and a blog). It's the best book I've read on theme/character arc. I'll be using its terminology. I use a simplified version of it in my beat-sheets. Here's the website the website. I'll try to post a simple Moral Premise Primer before I get started : http://moralpremise.blogspot.com/

Periodically, I'll post other things at my whim. 

First up is JAWS. Check in when you can.