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Work with Acts and Beats

Goal: Add, edit, reorder, and delete acts and beats in the Story Arc panel to shape your narrative structure.

Acts and beats are the scaffolding of your story. An Act is a major story division — most films have three, some have five. A Beat is a turning point or emotional shift within an act: the moment the hero refuses the call, the midpoint reversal, the dark night of the soul. Once you understand the hierarchy, the Story Arc panel makes it fast to reshape your story at any scale.

If you haven't built your initial structure yet, start with Build Story Structure first.

Steps​

  1. Open the Story Arc panel. In the left sidebar, click Story Arc. The panel opens and shows a collapsible tree: Acts at the top level, Beats nested inside each Act, and Scenes nested inside each Beat.

  2. Understand the hierarchy. The structure reads top-down as: Act → Beat → Scene → Shot. Acts contain beats. Beats contain scenes. Each level has its own add, edit, and delete controls. Changes made at the Act level (like renaming or reordering) do not alter the scenes inside — only the structural labels change.

  3. Add a new act. Scroll to the bottom of the Story Arc panel and click + Add Act. A new act card appears with a placeholder title such as Act 4. Click the title field to rename it. In the Description field, enter one or two sentences describing what this act accomplishes narratively — for example: The protagonist discovers the truth and must decide whether to act on it.

  4. Add a beat to an act. Expand an act by clicking the arrow next to its title. At the bottom of the expanded act, click + Add Beat. A beat card appears inline. Enter a title for the beat — for example: The Point of No Return — and a brief description of the story event.

  5. Edit a beat's description. Click on any beat title to open the beat detail panel on the right side of the screen. Edit the Title and Description fields directly. Changes save automatically as you type.

  6. Reorder beats within an act. Hover over a beat card until the drag handle (six dots) appears on the left edge of the card. Click and drag the handle up or down to move the beat to a new position within the act. Release to drop it in place.

  7. Set a beat's emotional tone. In the beat detail panel, locate the Tone dropdown. Choose from: Rising tension, Comic relief, Revelation, Climax, Resolution, or Custom. If you choose Custom, a text field appears where you can describe the tone in your own words. The tone tag is used by the AI when suggesting camera style, lighting, and music for scenes in that beat.

  8. Link a scene to a beat. If a scene already exists in your project but isn't connected to a beat, open the beat detail panel and click Link Scene. A picker shows all unlinked scenes in your project. Select the scene you want to attach. The scene will now appear nested under that beat in the Story Arc hierarchy.

  9. Move an act by dragging. To reorder acts, hover over the act header card until the drag handle appears. Drag the entire act (and all the beats inside it) to a new position in the list.

  10. Delete a beat. Open the beat detail panel and click the ... overflow menu in the top-right corner of the panel. Select Delete Beat. A confirmation dialog warns you if scenes are linked to this beat. Deleting a beat does not delete linked scenes — it only removes the structural label. Scenes become unlinked and remain in your project.

Tips​

  • Keep beat descriptions action-oriented: write what happens in the story, not how you feel about it. For example: Elena finds the forged letter and confronts Marcus is more useful than A tense moment.
  • The Story Arc panel supports the Primary vs. AI Recommended toggle. Use it to see what structure ACT3 AI would suggest without committing to it — a useful sanity check after major restructuring.
  • If you find yourself with many beats in one act and few in another, that often signals a pacing problem. Each act in a feature film typically contains three to six beats.

Next steps​