I was trying to use the blake snyder beat sheet to get back on track with my script (ive sort of faltered and not written anything past 8 pages), but im having some difficulty interpretting some of the "beats". what do you guys read "debate", "break in two" and "b story" as meaning?

Snyder's beat sheet is his interpretation of other structures which have been around for quite a long time (provided I am interpreting him correctly, that is)

Step three is the setup and is showing normality, and possibly whatever is going to come into the life of our hero heading towards him.

Step four is the catalyst, and this is when something happens to kick our hero into action, even if he tries to get out of it at the beginning.

Step five, the debate, is hero (either internally or to other people) wondering what he should do, if he should do it, how he should do, when he do, why he should do and so on.

At the end all this, he makes a decision. The rest of the story is what happens because of that decision. He may decide to do nothing, and all hell breaks loose. Usually, though, he decides to do something because heroes are proactive people in the main.

And this decision and the first tiny steps of putting it into action are step six as you 'Break Into Two' - that is, you leave Act One and you head off into Act Two.

The B-Story is another story in your story which is not the A-story. It is your main subplot, and as Act Two kicks off, you give yourself and your audience a break, and the chance to recover, as you develop your main subplot.

At least, that's how I see it.

Ian

PS, there are some structure-summaries here, if you're interested: http://write.roughian.com/structures.html

Ian your Roughian.com site looks like a terrific and potentially useful round-up of all the different outlines, paradigms, templates out there...but I couldn't open any of it! tried clicking on the little triangles to the left of each topic, and nothing happened...

is this just a normal glitch, a temp website hiccup? or am I doing something wrong?

DMac

Mmm.

IE and FF work for me in Windows, but I've just tried Opera and Safari, and they don't seem happy. I don't have a Mac to try it out from one of those, but I bet with your handle, you're on Safari.

What I'll do is set up something where they panels are all open and get back to you with a URL.

The whole site was just me playing about wasting time but trying not to lose interest while I waited for April :-)

I'm planning on setting it up properly with real menus (like http://examples.roughian.com which is a site for programmers - same look, same feel, different content)

Can you contact me by email if you'd like to help with an article or two and I'll put up a demo for that and tell you where it is - I don't really want people seeing it until it's half-decent)

Cheers,

Ian

OK try here - http://write.roughian.com/open/ - shows up in the four previously mentioned browsers - but you'll see why it needs to be collapsed unless you *decide* to look at some sections - it really doesn't read well in some areas - if you can get to see it in IE or FF, it'd be better.

Unfortunately I can't do much about it, it's a 3rd-party thing I was trying out. Bin that, then, eh? After April, it will be like the examples site.

Ian

Great, thanks Ian! I use Internet Explorer and I was able to read all the sections you opened up via this link http://write.roughian.com/open/

What a great idea. I've bookmarked and copied many of the paradigms/templates/outlines etc. I like best, but it's hard to keep track of them. This is organized in a very handy way :-)

DMac

Hi DMac,

There's a new version of the site at http://write.roughian.com - it works in IE/FF/Opera and Safari from Windows, but I'd really appreciate it if you could click the link and tell me if it comes up in Mac - as long as you can move to another page, that's all I need to know, I don't expect you to check it all out for me :-)

(Or anyone else who can help...?)

Thanks

Ian

EDIT:
Just seen a Mac/Safari combo who seems to be OK

I'm on a Mac with Safari and the site is all working fine, I'm reading the beat sheet article/guide right now. So I'm able to go onto another page, obviously.
----
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Chamberlain: What's wrong with it?
Housman: It's half Greek and half Latin!

Hi

Thanks. Much appreciated.

Ian