What stops most writers learning structure is not the names but the placement. Everyone grasps what a midpoint is; far fewer know what page it should land on. This note puts the placement of both structures into a table.
A word on terms first. A beat is the smallest dramatic unit of a story — a stretch after which the character no longer stands where they stood before. That is the unit both structures below are counting.
The word carries a second meaning in a screenplay: the short pause written into a line of dialogue. Where those two senses sit on the same screen, writers have to stop and ask which one is meant. In Korean, Movie Kick therefore uses a separate word (플롯포인트) for the structural unit and keeps beat in English. Same unit, one name per language.
One more convention, since placement is the subject here. A screenplay page reads as roughly one minute of screen time, so a 120-minute feature runs about 120 pages. To read the table below in pages, take the number in the minutes column as it stands.
Blake Snyder set this out in 2005. The engine is the protagonist's inner change — the gap between what they want and what they need, and the closing of it. It suits stories where that gap is the plot.
| # | Beat | 한국어 | Placement | On 120 min |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Opening Image | 오프닝 이미지 | 0–1% | 0~1 min |
| 2 | Theme Stated | 테마 제시 | 5% | 6 min |
| 3 | Setup | 설정 | 1–10% | 1~12 min |
| 4 | Catalyst | 촉매 | 10–12% | 12~14 min |
| 5 | Debate | 논쟁 | 12–25% | 14~30 min |
| 6 | Break into Two | 2막 진입 | 25% | 30 min |
| 7 | B Story | B 스토리 | 25–30% | 30~36 min |
| 8 | Fun and Games | 재미와 게임 | 30–50% | 36~60 min |
| 9 | Midpoint | 미드포인트 | 50% | 60 min |
| 10 | Bad Guys Close In | 악당의 접근 | 50–75% | 60~90 min |
| 11 | All Is Lost | 모든 것을 잃다 | 75% | 90 min |
| 12 | Dark Night of the Soul | 영혼의 어두운 밤 | 75–85% | 90~102 min |
| 13 | Break into Three | 3막 진입 | 85% | 102 min |
| 14 | Finale | 피날레 | 85–99% | 102~119 min |
| 15 | Final Image | 파이널 이미지 | 99–100% | 119~120 min |
Three placements get quoted most. Midpoint sits at exactly half, 50% — a false victory or false defeat, and the stakes rise from there. All Is Lost sits at 75%, the lowest point in the story. Break into Three is 85%, leaving the last 15% for the finale.
Against the familiar three-act shape: everything up to Break into Two (25%) is act one, everything from Break into Three (85%) is act three. The 60% between them is act two, which is why act two is the part that collapses.
Christopher Vogler arranged Joseph Campbell's argument into twelve screenwriting stages in 1992. It suits stories of departure and return, where outer adventure and inner growth run alongside each other.
| # | Stage | 한국어 | Placement | On 120 min |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ordinary World | 일상 세계 | 0–10% | 0~12 min |
| 2 | Call to Adventure | 모험으로의 부름 | 10–12% | 12~14 min |
| 3 | Refusal of the Call | 부름의 거부 | 12–15% | 14~18 min |
| 4 | Meeting the Mentor | 멘토와의 만남 | 15–20% | 18~24 min |
| 5 | Crossing the Threshold | 관문 통과 | 20–25% | 24~30 min |
| 6 | Tests, Allies, Enemies | 시험·동료·적 | 25–50% | 30~60 min |
| 7 | Approach to Inmost Cave | 가장 깊은 동굴 접근 | 50–55% | 60~66 min |
| 8 | Ordeal | 시련 | 55–65% | 66~78 min |
| 9 | Reward | 보상 | 65–75% | 78~90 min |
| 10 | The Road Back | 귀환의 길 | 75–85% | 90~102 min |
| 11 | Resurrection | 부활 | 85–95% | 102~114 min |
| 12 | Return with Elixir | 영약과 귀환 | 95–100% | 114~120 min |
The middle is where it differs from Save the Cat. Tests, Allies, Enemies covers 25–50% on its own, and the Ordeal falls at 55–65% — later than the midpoint. The weight of the crisis sits slightly further back.
Do not read these percentages as page counts. “Midpoint 50%” does not mean the midpoint occupies half the film. It means the window in which that beat may open is somewhere around the halfway mark.
So windows overlap with their neighbours, and stretches remain that no beat claims. A placement written as a single point with no width (50%, 75%) is a beat that resolves inside one scene.
Fixing placement in advance is not there to tell you what to write. It is there to make the empty stretches visible. A draft that has to hold two hours will often play its first thirty minutes well and then circle for forty — and the person writing it is inside it, so they cannot see the circling.
Movie Kick asks you to pick one of five structures at the plot stage. Alongside the two above there are Situation-Driven 11, Relational Arc 10 and Time Variation 6 — the last three built for stories the first two do not hold well.
Once a structure is chosen, the slots it asks for open as blanks, each with a suggestion of what it needs to become in your particular story. Slots can be moved or deleted at any point. What matters is not the filled slots but the empty ones.
To compare the structures side by side, see Beats and five plot structures. For the layer that reads beats in groups, see What a treatment is.