Character Beat Sheet
Don't start by asking what happens to your character. Start by finding out who they are.
Build characters before you build the story.
When it comes to script development, many screenwriters and script doctors recommend starting with a beat sheet: a tool to organise the main events of a story. One of the best-known methods is Blake Snyder's Save the Cat! Beat Sheet.
I suggest starting somewhere else: the characters.
Create a Character Beat Sheet for each character in your synopsis or treatment.
The most important one, of course, is your protagonist's. But I encourage you to do this exercise with your supporting characters, allies and antagonists too.
When you know each of them better, you start to discover their contradictions, desires, fears, motivations and conflicts. The story gains depth, nuance and complexity. It stops being a string of events and becomes a story about real people, with their own human flaws and contradictions.
Use this tool to develop your characters and give them a life of their own in your screenplay.
Get to work.
Download your Character Beat Sheet here. Leave your name and email to get the template.
Josephine Landertinger Forero
Director, screenwriter and producer with more than fifteen years of experience in documentary and fiction. With a Colombian mother and an Austrian father, I grew up between Lesotho, South Africa and Portugal. I studied film in Berlin.
My work explores identity, migration, family bonds and gender roles from an intercultural, female perspective. Alongside directing, I write scripts, curate for film festivals and teach at universities, film schools and my own academy, Just Love Film Academy.
My films have been released in cinemas, air on television and stream on platforms such as Amazon Prime Video, Filmin and Flixolé.