Writing Guides

How to Write a Logline

A practical guide to writing a logline that sells your story: the four ingredients, the classic formula, common mistakes, and worked examples.

What Is Script Coverage?

Script coverage explained: what studio readers actually write, what Pass / Consider / Recommend mean, and how writers use coverage to revise before submitting.

Screenplay Formatting Basics

Screenplay format explained: the six core elements, why one page equals one minute, and the formatting rules readers expect before they read a word of your story.

Best for: Hollywood feature films, especially genre and comedy. Blake Snyder's 15-beat structure, popular in film. Paces a two-hour screenplay with clear turning points.

Best for: writers who want both the granularity of Save the Cat and the arc clarity of Harmon's Story Circle. Fifteen Snyder beats nested under nine Harmon segments. Adapted from the community template — write here and view as either framework.

Best for: half-hour TV episodes and short character arcs. An 8-step distillation of the Hero's Journey for episodic storytelling. Used in Community, Rick and Morty, and countless half-hour TV. Protagonist starts comfortable, breaks out, struggles, and returns changed.

Best for: hour-long network/cable drama and procedural TV. The multi-thread episode structure where an A-story (main plot), B-story (emotional thread), and C-story (comic/tertiary) interweave across the act breaks and converge at the climax.

Best for: novel-length genre fiction, especially fantasy and sci-fi. Dan Wells's 7-beat scaffolding, reverse-engineered from Brandon Sanderson and popular among genre-fiction novelists. Tight, prescriptive, and easy to outline in an afternoon.

Best for: romance novels of any heat level and subgenre. Gwen Hayes's beat sheet — the romance plot IS the relationship, structured as two halves: falling in love, then fighting for it. Plot beats serve the emotional arc.

Best for: whodunits, detective novels, and crime fiction where the puzzle drives the plot. A 12-beat scaffold pacing the investigation — clues, suspects, red herrings, and the reveal — while keeping the reader one step behind the detective.

Best for: memoir, travel writing, and personal-essay-length true stories. A 10-beat arc that turns lived experience into narrative — an outer journey carrying an inner transformation.

Best for: commercial and genre novels across every category. Jessica Brody's adaptation of Blake Snyder's 15-beat structure for novelists — the same proven turning points, retuned to novel pacing and interiority.

Best for: novelists who want a chapter-by-chapter outline before drafting. Three acts, nine blocks, twenty-seven chapters — each block a mini-arc of reaction, action, and consequence, with a turn at every block's end.

Best for: literary and genre short stories (roughly 1,500 to 7,500 words). A compact single-arc shape: one central character, one turn, one change. Enter late, leave early, and let a single decisive moment carry the whole piece.

Best for: very short fiction (under about 1,000 words). Maximum compression: one situation, one turn, one resonant ending. Every word earns its place and the power is in what is left unsaid.

Best for: any first draft when you don't yet know what shape your story is. The classic setup / confrontation / resolution. Flexible enough for any medium; light enough to adapt.

Best for: adventure, fantasy, sci-fi, and myth. Christopher Vogler's 12-stage adaptation of Joseph Campbell's monomyth. Star Wars, The Matrix, and Lord of the Rings all walk this path.

Best for: literary fiction and stage plays where the climax is revelation, not action. Gustav Freytag's classical model of dramatic structure, formalized from Shakespeare and Greek tragedy. Lighter scaffolding than Save the Cat.

Best for: slice-of-life, mood pieces, and atmospheric work without antagonists. A Japanese four-act structure that does NOT require conflict. Common in anime, manga, and literary work. The story's engine is contrast and revelation rather than antagonism.

Best for: short stories, treatments, pitches, or gut-checking a longer outline. Emma Coats's six-sentence story spine, popularized as Pixar's internal pitch tool. Tiny but rigorous; forces causality between beats.

Best for: prestige drama and serious feature screenplays. Robert McKee's classical structure from his book Story. Built around the obligatory Crisis scene and the principle that every story is a series of progressive complications driving the protagonist to an unavoidable choice.

Best for: character-driven stories of self-actualization and creative awakening. Kim Hudson's 13-beat arc — a counterpart to the Hero's Journey where the quest is inward: claiming a dream the world told the protagonist to suppress.

Best for: novelists who want a load-bearing structural blueprint. Larry Brooks's 'Story Engineering' model — four parts, each with a distinct mission for the protagonist, separated by five fixed milestones.

Best for: understanding the deep archetypal shape under any story. Christopher Booker argued the seven plot types share one underlying five-stage arc. Use these five beats as the skeleton beneath whichever plot type you are telling.

Best for: thrillers, suspense, and any story that should start fast. The Fichtean Curve drops exposition almost entirely — open near the inciting incident and drive through a chain of escalating crises straight to the climax.

Best for: character-driven and literary fiction about wholeness and reconciliation. Maureen Murdock's 10-stage arc — a psychological counterpart to Campbell's monomyth — moving from achievement toward integration of the inner self.