Story Templates

The Templates menu on the outline board holds ten structures, grouped by what they are written for: Feature, Television and Short. Each one loads a full board wired into one flow from Start to End: act headers across the top, scene cards in the lane below, and, in the structures built on sequences, a middle rung of sequence headers over the runs they frame.

Every template arrives as a skeleton with a title and a description on each card. The titles are the standard names for each story moment, so the board tells you what belongs where. Then you rename, rewrite, add and cut until it is your story.

Beside each template the menu prints what it builds, so you can see the size before you commit: acts, sequences, scenes and the page estimate those scenes support.

Feature

Three-Act Structure

Setup, confrontation and resolution. Three acts, eight sequences spread two, four and two, and twenty-four scenes. The spine is threaded with a B-story that gets scenes of its own, a world scene early so later stakes land, and descriptions that push the consequences up a notch each time. The best starting point if you are not sure which to pick.

Eight-Sequence Structure

The film-school method: eight sequences of ten to fifteen pages, each with its own objective and its own turn. Three acts, eight sequences (A and B, then C through F, then G and H), and thirty-four scenes, four or five to a sequence. The most granular of the feature templates, and the one that builds the longest board.

Save the Cat! Beat Sheet

The fifteen-point sheet with its conventional page placement. Three acts, six sequences and twenty-two scenes: the famous milestones arrive as scenes with their page numbers in the description, and the spans between them (Set-Up, Debate, Fun and Games, Bad Guys Close In, Dark Night of the Soul, Finale) are the sequences that hold them.

The Hero's Journey

The twelve-stage mythic structure. Three acts, twelve sequences, one per stage, and twenty-five scenes underneath, so every stage has scenes the script can be written from rather than a single label. The ally subplot and the inner arc are surfaced as scenes of their own. Suits epic, fantasy and adventure.

Story Circle

The eight-step character cycle, a streamlined version of the same journey, built around want against need. Three acts, eight sequences, nineteen scenes. Compact and character-first, which is why it travels well in television and in small, personal stories.

The Paradigm (Plot Points and Pinches)

Setup, confrontation and resolution measured by turning points. Three acts, eight sequences named for what they drive toward (Toward Plot Point I, Toward Pinch I, Toward the Midpoint, and so on), and twenty-three scenes. Useful when you know your landmarks and want the runs between them laid out.

Television

TV Hour Drama (Teaser + 4 Acts)

Network hour shape: a teaser, four acts and a tag, eighteen scenes across them. There are no sequence headers, because on a network hour the on-page acts are the episode's sequences. Every act ends on an act-out, teaser included, and the last card of each act is that act-out. A, B and C stories launch, collide and pay off across the acts.

TV Half-Hour (Cold Open + 2 Acts)

Half-hour shape: a cold open, two acts and a tag, with thirteen scenes. Again no sequence headers, and again an act-out on every act. An A-story and a B-story run side by side, cross in the second act, and the tag is one last button.

Streaming Hour (No Act Breaks)

An hour that runs without commercial breaks, so the sequences carry the structure instead of the act breaks. One episode container, four sequences and fourteen scenes: hook, complication, escalation and turn, each with one objective and each ending bigger than the last.

Short

Short Film

One dramatic question answered in one movement. A single container and eight scenes, no sequences and no B-story, because a short does not have the room for either. The container is a marker on the board, not a break on the page.

Applying a template

Pick a template from the menu and the board loads it. If your board already has cards on it, a confirmation says what is being replaced and shows the template's size line, and the current outline is saved to Version History first, so you can restore it.

Starting from a blank board is always an option. So is loading a template, taking the shape you wanted from it and rewriting everything else.

Making it yours

A template is a skeleton, not a rule:

• Rename any card. "Catalyst" becomes "Mara signs the clearance".
• Rewrite the descriptions. The description is what generation writes from, so replace the generic one with your specific event: who wants what, what pushes back, what is different at the end.
• Add the beats. Select a scene card and write the two to six moves it plays. This is the single biggest difference between a card that produces three pages and one that produces one.
• Add scenes where the story is thicker than the template expected, and cut the ones your story does not have.
• Change a card's kind. Promote a card to a Sequence header when a run of scenes has grown its own objective, or demote a header when it turns out to be one scene.
• Watch the stats line. It counts your scenes and sequences and estimates the length as you work, next to your page target.