---
title: "Story Structure Planner: Beats & Word Counts | Fresh Fable"
description: "Plan a story with three acts, a 15-beat sheet or the hero’s journey. Enter a word count to get beat targets and chapters, then export Markdown."
url: https://freshfable.buzz/story-structure-planner/
---

The shape of the tale

# Story structure planner

Choose a structure and a target length to see where every beat should fall, in words and chapters. Add your notes beat by beat and take the outline away as Markdown.

## Three ways to shape a story

The **three-act structure** splits a story into setup, confrontation and resolution, roughly a quarter, a half and a quarter, with turning points where one act becomes the next. The **15-beat sheet** is a finer version popular with screenwriters and novelists, naming the key moments from the opening image to the final one. The **hero’s journey** follows a hero who leaves home, is tested and returns changed.

Enter a target length and the planner turns each beat’s place in the story into word numbers. The ranges add up exactly to your total, and single moments such as Theme Stated, starred on the bar, happen inside a longer beat. Add a chapter count to see which chapters each beat covers. Treat the numbers as guides rather than rules: plenty of good stories wander from them.

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## Sources

Beat names and positions follow these books; the descriptions and questions are Fresh Fable’s own. Save the Cat! is a trademark of its owners, and Fresh Fable is not connected with them.

- Syd Field, *Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting* (1979): the three acts and their plot points.
- Blake Snyder, *Save the Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need* (2005), and Jessica Brody, *Save the Cat! Writes a Novel* (2018): the 15 beats and their approximate percentages.
- Joseph Campbell, *The Hero with a Thousand Faces* (1949), and Christopher Vogler, *The Writer’s Journey* (3rd edition, 2007): the 12 stages of the hero’s journey. The percentages for those stages are our estimate.

## Questions

**Which structure should I choose?**

Three acts if you want a light frame, the beat sheet if you like knowing exactly what each stretch should do, and the hero’s journey for quests and coming-of-age stories. Switching keeps the notes you wrote for each one.

**Does this work for short stories?**

Yes, though short stories often merge beats. At 5,000 words a single scene may hold the catalyst and the debate.

**Where are my notes stored?**

In your browser’s local storage on this device, never on a server. Clearing your browser data or pressing Clear notes removes them.