Intro to Screenwriting Week 8: How to Outline a Screenplay

This week we pitched our short films and were tasked with creating a beat sheet for our films!

Lecture: How to Outline a Screenplay

This week’s lecture focused on Outlining.

We covered the benefits, how to do it, different methods (namely beat sheets) and drafting. As someone who is very type A and organized, I love having so many tools to put together a story.

There are numerous types and ways to outline a screenplay. We covered 3:

1. 7 plot points
2. Treatment
3. Beat Sheet

7 Plot Points

For a more brief outline, or as a starting point, put your ideas into the 7 plot points:

1. Set Up
2. Inciting Incident
3. Point of No Return
4. Midpoint
5. The Big Gloom
6. Climax
7. New Normal

Treatment

A treatment is a scene by scene outline, including slug lines.

The treatment should include:

1. Plot Points (7 and beyond)
2. Character Arcs
3. B+C Plots
4. Dialogue Snippets (if you have them)
5. Sluglines

Beat Sheet

A beat sheet is a bulleted list and can include many things:

• Events
• Actions
• Realizations
• Shifts in Motivation or Relationships

Generally, there should be about 15 bullet points. With a beat sheet you can include more things that are “less” signifiant.

Pitch

I was super nervous going into my pitch; I was doubting my story and delivery a lot. As we went through lecture, I kept thinking that I wanted to totally scrap what I had and just start over. 

Once I got up there and delivered it though, I was pretty proud of how it went! I appreciated the feedback from my professor and classmates a lot, and was very glad that people resonated with the struggle my main character faces. 

I think pitching is a super important skill to learn and practice since it is such a big part of the industry, as much as I may not like it.

Beat Sheet

Whenever I was preparing my pitch, I actually put my ideas to the 7 Plot Points we’ve been studying to get a better idea of what to discuss. This made it easy to translate over to a finalized document.

I adjusted a few details on this version. The final beats were: 

• Normal World: doctors office, anxious
• Inciting Incident: accepts medication, takes home
• Point of No Return: takes medication, music stops
• Midpoint: decides to drink for first time, enjoys it (false victory)
• Big Gloom: throws up drunk, laying on bathroom floor, music creeps back in
• Climax: freak out to best friend, Meg
• New Normal: new party, Addie enjoying herself

Conclusion

Next up will be our first draft which I am very excited to get working on! I cannot wait to explore this project more in the next few weeks. 

Don’t forget to check out last week’s post, and stay tuned for more!