Story structure calculator
In a 90,000-word three-act novel, the inciting incident falls around word 9,000, the midpoint at 45,000, and the climax around 81,000. Choose a structure and a length to see where every act and beat of yours falls.
Where does each beat fall?
Setup, confrontation, resolution, and the five turns between them.
| Act or beat | Position | Word |
|---|---|---|
| Act One: Setup The world, the person, and the thing that goes wrong with both. | 0% | 0 |
| Inciting Incident The thing that happens to them and cannot be undone. The story starts here, not before. | 10% | 9,000 |
| First Turning Point They commit. Whatever they could have gone back to is now closed. | 25% | 22,500 |
| Act Two: Confrontation The long middle: trying, failing, and learning why it failed. | 33% | 30,000 |
| Midpoint The middle turns: what they wanted is revealed to be the wrong thing, or the cost of it is. | 50% | 45,000 |
| Act Three: Resolution The last attempt, and what the story finally says. | 67% | 60,000 |
| Second Turning Point The lowest point, and the decision taken from inside it that makes the ending possible. | 75% | 67,500 |
| Climax The confrontation the whole book has been arranging. Nothing is held back. | 90% | 81,000 |
Where do my chapters start?
| Chapter | Starts at | Word |
|---|
Can I write on this outline?
The button starts a Book in Tabularia on this structure, with one chapter per beat or the count you entered, and each beat marked where it falls. Your target becomes its Total goal. Nothing exists until you give the Book a title and press Create.
How are the positions worked out?
Each beat sits at a fixed share of the book, so the position never changes and the word moves with your target. Marks are rounded to the nearest 500 words in a novel-length book, because nobody aims for word 23,847.
An act begins at an even share of the whole: a third of the way through for the second of three. Chapter marks assume chapters of equal length. Yours will not be, but the marks show which chapter a beat is likely to land in.
Which structure should I use?
Start with the one you already think in. Every structure here is a different account of the same turns, and the story shapes guide lists each act and beat with what it is for.
- Templates for every structure, to download or print
Try it on your own manuscript
Nothing is metered: as many projects as you like at any length, the outline and minimap to move through them, drafts and markup mode for revising, snapshots to return to, sheets and timelines beside the page, and export to DOCX, PDF, EPUB, HTML, Markdown, plain text and Fountain. Bring in what you have already written and read it back as a book.
The Cloud plan is $18 a month, or $172.80 a year, and adds backup, sync across your devices, sharing a manuscript for review, and publishing your work as a web page — the readers and collaborators you invite do not need a paid account of their own. Tabularia is in Public Beta and shipping steadily; the release notes record what has landed.