Save The Cat Beat Sheet Amelia Gray is Almost Okay Published by Penguin Random House. Jessica Brody   Opening Image: 12-year-old Amelia on her last day of school before summer break She feels invisible Setup: Amelia and her single-parent dad travel to another new town They move around a lot for Dad’s job (what is the job???) Amelia really loves their “life on the go” Introduce “Biscotti,” Amelia’s dog who is her best and only friend What does Amelia want??? Theme Stated: Something about not running away from your problems but staying and facing them??? Amelia has always used her “life on the go” as an excuse not to make friends and figure out who she really is Catalyst: After arriving in the new town, Dad announces that he wants to stay there…maybe forever! Amelia is completely blindsided!   …you get the picture. As you can see, this is super rough. The ideas are just starting to take shape. There are questions I still have to answer and I haven’t even figured out what the Theme Stated will be! I just have a rough idea of the kind of transformation I want my character to have, so I wrote that down. Then, as I brainstormed more and the idea and characters started to flesh out, I added more details. Here’s a look at the same beat sheet, a few weeks later…   Opening Image:12-year-old Amelia sits in the classroom of her latest school, thinking about how many schools she’s attended in the past few years since she started traveling with Dad. It’s the last day of school before summer and yearbooks have just been handed out. Three girls sit in front of her, swooning over a picture of a cute boy from their class. They notice the name “Amelia Gray” in the yearbook and the absence of a photograph. They wonder who she is and why they never met her. In the four weeks she’s been sitting right behind them, they never even noticed her.   Setup:Dad picks up Amelia from school and Biscotti jumps out of the car to greet her. The same three girls from the classroom notice Biscotti and start fawning over her. Amelia remarks how easy it is for Biscotti to make friends, a trait she does not share. On the road, we get a glimpse of Dad and Amelia's “life on the go,” as they drive to their next stop. Dad works as a hotel makeover consultant and travels from small town to small town renovating old hotels. Amelia loves her life on the go with Dad and Biscotti and doesn’t feel like she’s missing out on anything. Who needs friends? They’re just a messy complication that she doesn’t want in her life. Biscotti is her best and only friend and she’s fine with that. She just wishes she knew what breed Biscotti was. She’s a supermutt who looks like a hundred breeds mashed together. Once again, Amelia begs her dad for a DNA test for Biscotti (wants) but he tells her it’s too expensive. They arrive at the new hotel (a real dump that’s going to need a lot of work) and Dad gets a tour from Annabelle, the owner, while Amelia and Biscotti perform their routine “inspection” of the grounds. While inspecting, they overhear Dad talking to Annabelle. He says he’s worried about Amelia and wonders if this life on the go is the best thing for her. Amelia is shocked. She thought Dad loved their life just as much as she did. But then, Annabelle says…   Theme Stated:“Maybe it’s not life on the go, Jonas. Maybe it’s life on the run.” The statement is directed toward Amelia’s Dad but it hints at the life lesson Amelia will learn as well. She needs to stop running from the hard stuff in life (like making friends and figuring out who she is) and face up to it instead.   Catalyst:Amelia tries hard to forget the conversation she overheard, convincing herself that Dad would never listen to this nosy Annabelle woman. But then… Dad announces that Annabelle has offered him a full-time job at the hotel and he’s thinking of taking it. Amelia is blindsided. Stay here forever??? Give up their life on the go??? He makes Amelia a deal. They’ll stay for the summer, as a test run, and see if they like it. Then, at at the end of the summer, they’ll decide together if they want to stay permanently. Amelia is convinced she’ll never want to stay… So, now the beat sheet (and the story) is starting to take more shape as I sketch out more details. But even if you don’t want to get into this much detail before you start writing, a rough beat sheet (like the one I started with above) is perfectly fine. You don’t have to have it all figured out. Keep in mind too that nothing is set in stone in a beat sheet. Beats will often change as more ideas and details pop up. And they will definitely change as you start writing and discovering the story, which is what happened for me as I wrote and revised this book. So don’t expect to have a fully fleshed out beat sheet when you’re first getting started with an idea. Just jot down your ideas as they come to you, no matter how rough, and keep updating it as you go, with as much—or as little—detail as makes sense to you in the moment.