In screenwriting, a **beat** is the smallest unit of story movement—an action, decision, reveal, or reversal that **changes** the situation. If nothing changes, it’s not a beat yet. Beats stack to make **scenes**; scenes stack to make **sequences/episodes**.
### What’s a beat sheet? A **beat sheet** is a bullet-point map of those beats, in story order. Each line is a short, active sentence (“Probe detects briny plume; team must retarget flyby”), not prose. It’s faster than a full outline and concrete enough for directors, artists, and producers to plan.
**Typical contents** - Logline + premise (1–2 lines) - 12–30 beats (one line each), grouped by act/sequence - Stakes & tone notes (short) - Running time and key assets (optional)
# How it differs from an outline or treatment - **Beat sheet:** terse list of *changes*. - **Outline:** paragraph summaries of *scenes*. - **Treatment:** pages of flowing prose (tone, imagery, emotion).
# Using beats in our AI-augmented workflow - Write **actionable beats** (“Seismometer registers 0.4 Hz tremor → move landing zone 3 km”) with **IF/THEN variants** tied to real data. - Let AI propose alternates, check continuity, and auto-tag required assets; humans accept/edit. - One click → **animatic** or **storyboard stubs** per beat.
# Mini example (Europa short) - **Inciting:** Clipper radar hints at 7–10 km ice over Chaos Bay. - **Decision:** Ops trades radiation margin for a lower perijove pass. - **Reveal:** Magnetometer spike ⇒ salty ocean confirmed under site. - **Complication:** Plume detection false positive; comms window shrinks. - **Turn:** Thermal map shows warm fracture; team locks next flyby. - **Button:** On-screen card: “Next data drop in 14 days.”
**Rule of thumb:** every beat = **cause → effect** in one line, written so any teammate can imagine the shot and know why it matters.
# See - Beat Sheet Examples