How to Outline a Screenplay: Acts, Sequences, Beats and Scenes

0:04An outline is the map of your story. Before you write the scenes, you decide the road, where the story starts, where it turns and where it ends. Writers who skip the outline often write 60 pages and discover the story doesn't work. Writers who outline find out in an afternoon.

0:25In Screenweaver, the outline isn't a separate document. It's built into the script as structure elements. From the biggest to the smallest, the episode, or for a film, the title, the act, the sequence, the story beat, and the scene.

0:43An act is a big movement of the story. Most films have three. The setup, the confrontation, the resolution. A sequence is a chapter inside an act, a series of scenes with one goal, like the crossing or the fog. A story beat is one moment where something changes. And a scene is a single place and time, the unit you actually write.

1:09In a feature film project, Screenweaver hides the act level, so your structure goes straight from the title to sequences, beats, and scenes. In an episodical project, every level is there, because a series needs episodes and acts.

1:25Each structure element has an outline line under it, a short description written in plain words, what happens here and why it matters. These lines are your notes to yourself. The eye icon in the toolbar shows or hides them, so you can read the clean script when you want.

1:43Now switch on the outline view in the sidebar. Above the page, your structure appears as rows of cards, one row per level. The title, then the sequences, then the beats, then the scenes. Each card shows its title and its outline line. It's your story on one screen.

2:04And the outline and the script are the same thing, seen two ways. Add a beat in the outline, and it appears in the script. Write a scene heading in the script, and a scene card appears in the outline. Drag a card, and the script follows.

2:19What's the difference between an outline and a synopsis or a treatment? A synopsis tells the story in prose, in a page or two, for someone who will read it. An outline is a working tool, for you. Short, structured, easy to move around. You can write a synopsis later, from the outline, in a few minutes, but the other way round is much harder.

2:44Here's what the outline of a classic adventure film might look like. Three acts. In Act 1, two sequences. The Ordinary Life and The Call. In Act 2, four sequences. The Journey, the First Trial, the Betrayal, the Darkest Night. In Act 3, two. The Final Battle and the Return. Eight sequences. And under each one, three or four beats. Thirty beats, and you can see the whole film before writing a single page.

3:17That's why we'll build the outline first. Changing a card costs one second. Rewriting 20 pages costs a week. In the next lecture, we learn the most powerful tool of the outline. Story beats. And the labels that tell you where you are in the story. And the other one, three. Story beats.