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Using the Story Structure Tool

Plot your story's beats on a visual canvas before you write a single scene.

The Story Structure tool is a visual canvas for plotting your story's beats, acts and turning points before — or alongside — writing your script.

Getting there

Open a project's Project Home page, go to the Development tab, and choose the Story Structure tile.

The Development tab's Story Structure tile.

Creating a structure

On the Story Structure Hub, click New Structure, give your framework a name in the Create New Framework dialog, and click Create. A project can hold more than one structure — useful if you want to try different frameworks (three-act, Save the Cat, your own) side by side.

The Story Structure Hub, showing the "New Structure" button and any existing framework cards.

The structure board

Creating (or opening) a structure takes you to its canvas. Use the toolbar to add:

  • Sticky note — a quick annotation, not connected to anything else
  • Beat card — a heading plus description for plotting a story beat; beat cards can be connected to each other to show sequence
  • Free text — an unstructured note that floats freely on the canvas
  • Group — a container that clusters nodes together and moves them as one

The structure canvas toolbar, showing the Sticky note / Beat card / Free text / Group buttons.

When you pick a node type, choose a colour from the swatch palette before placing it on the canvas — useful for colour-coding acts, characters, or plot threads at a glance.

The colour-swatch palette shown after selecting a node type, just before placing it.

Saving and help

Use the Save button in the top bar to save your board. Next to it, a short help video walks through the tool if you'd rather watch than read.

The structure board's top bar, showing the Save button and the help video button beside it.

What's next

Once your beats are in place, start visualizing them shot by shot — see How to use Storyboard.

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