How these work
Every template is a shape Tabularia can open a book on. The page gives you the parts in order, where each one falls at a typical length, and a short invented story worked through it.
Open it in Tabularia, where the parts become the chapters you write in, or take it away as a Word file or a printout.
Story structures
General plot structures that fit most novels, whatever the genre.
-
Three-act structure template
Setup, confrontation, and resolution, with the five turns that hold them together.
-
Hero's Journey template
Twelve stages out of the known world and back again, carrying something.
-
Story Circle template
Eight steps down into the unknown and back up again, changed.
-
Seven-point story structure template
Seven points from the hook to the resolution, planned from both ends inward.
-
Fifteen-beat sheet template
Fifteen beats from the opening image to the closing one, for a novel or a script.
-
Three disasters plot template
A premise, three disasters the hero causes, and the ending they force.
-
27-chapter outline template
Twenty-seven named chapters, nine to an act and three scenes in each.
Genre beat sheets
Shapes a genre changes: a mystery needs a wrong answer, a thriller a clock, a romance two arcs.
-
Romance beat sheet template
The romance arc in sixteen beats, from the meet to an ending that earns itself.
-
Cozy mystery outline template
A small world, a body, the suspects, a wrong answer, and the right one.
-
Thriller beat sheet template
A threat, a clock, a chase, a twist, and a showdown with seconds left.
-
Epic fantasy outline template
Many threads scattered across a world and brought back together for the end.
-
Romantic suspense beat sheet template
A love story and a threat, rising together and resolved in the same scene.
-
Paranormal romance beat sheet template
A romance across the line between the everyday world and a hidden one.
Classic formulas
Older methods, from a pulp writer’s plan to a five-act pyramid.
-
Lester Dent's pulp formula template
A 6,000-word story in four quarters, each ending on a twist.
-
Freytag's Pyramid template
Five acts rising to a turn at the peak and falling to the outcome.
-
Kishōtenketsu template
Four movements, with a twist in place of a conflict.
Screen
Features and television, marked in pages instead of words.
-
Screenplay beat sheet template
The feature shape: two act breaks, a midpoint, and the images that frame it.
-
TV drama act structure template
An hour of television: a teaser, four act-outs, and a tag.
Nonfiction
Outlines where the sections are the method.
-
Memoir outline template
A life told as a story, from an opening scene to what it left behind.
-
Biography outline template
Another person's life, from where it began to what it left behind.
-
Nonfiction book proposal template
The sections an agent or publisher reads, in the order they read them.
-
Self-help book outline template
A problem, an idea, the steps that apply it, and what gets in the way.
Articles
Shorter pieces, built from headings rather than chapters.
-
Inverted pyramid news story template
The news shape: the whole story first, then everything that supports it.
-
Feature article template
Open on a scene, widen to the question, and close on the scene again.
-
Argumentative essay outline template
An argument: the claim, the evidence, the objection, and the answer to it.
-
Review article template
A review: what it is, what it does well, what it does not, and the verdict.