Choosing one of the four structure templates

In one line: the decision you make the moment a beat board is created — what each of the four built-in structures is good for, and whether you can change your mind later.

What an empty board offers you

The board is empty — Start from a template, or add your first act. Drag chapters and scripts in; a beat can be just an idea for now.

Three-Act Structure

• The most widely used shape: setup, conflict, resolution

Taiwanese TV (Three Acts, Six Beats)

• A rhythm common in Taiwanese drama: open, provoke, turn, push, peak, close

Kishōtenketsu (Four-Part East Asian Form)

• The classical East Asian four-part form, built around an unexpected turn

Freytag's Pyramid (Five Parts)

• The classical dramatic shape: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, denouement

Four buttons in a two-by-two grid, each with its name and that one line underneath. Start blank is the small underlined link below them — not a fifth button.

The template picker only shows on an empty board

Open a freshly created .beats and it's empty, with four buttons in the middle — one per structure template — and a small Start blank link underneath.

"Empty" is strict: no acts, no beat cards, no file cards. The moment the board has any of those, that set of buttons stops appearing. So the choice happens before you start working — not that it can't be changed (it can; see below), just that the buttons won't sit there waiting for you.

Start blank gives you no acts at all, only one beat card in the Unassigned column. It suits the case where you already have the shape in your head and don't want anyone handing you a grid.

The four structures

Template	Acts	Beat cards	Reach for it when
Three-Act Structure	3	14	novels and feature films; and whenever you're not sure which to pick
Taiwanese TV (Three Acts, Six Beats)	3	6	series where each episode needs a complete arc; micro-drama
Kishōtenketsu (Four-Part East Asian Form)	4	4	short stories and standalone episodes; the turn is the point
Freytag's Pyramid (Five Parts)	3	5	tragedy-shaped stories where the aftermath has to carry weight

Three-Act Structure — "The most widely used shape: setup, conflict, resolution." The acts are Act One (Setup), Act Two (Confrontation), Act Three (Resolution), and the 14 cards run from Opening, Setup and Inciting Incident through to Climax and Final Image. It hands you the most cells, which is exactly why it's the easiest one to spot holes in. Pick it the first time you use a beat board.

Taiwanese TV (Three Acts, Six Beats) — "A rhythm common in Taiwanese drama: open, provoke, turn, push, peak, close." The act names pair the six beats up: Act One (Open / Provoke), Act Two (Turn / Push), Act Three (Peak / Close). Six cards is about right for one episode's length, so on a series you can keep one board per episode, or one per season with each act as a stage.

Kishōtenketsu (Four-Part East Asian Form) — "The classical East Asian four-part form, built around an unexpected turn." This is the only template that gives you four acts, and they're named Ki — Introduction, Shō — Development, Ten — Twist and Ketsu — Conclusion, one card each. It doesn't run on conflict; it runs on the swerve in the third part, which is why plenty of short fiction, slice-of-life and standalone episodes sit better in it than in three acts.

Freytag's Pyramid (Five Parts) — "The classical dramatic shape: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, denouement." The five cards are exactly those, but there are only three acts, and the middle one is called Act Two (Rising / Climax / Falling) — because Freytag's whole point is that there is still road after the climax. If your story spends real time clearing up the wreckage, this shape is more honest than three acts.

Why only these four

All four are public-domain structures. Named, authored methodologies — Save the Cat, the Hero's Journey, the Seven-Point method and the rest — are deliberately not built in. Not because they don't work; because they are somebody's work.

Nothing stops you using them. A template is only act names and empty cards, so rename the acts to that method's stages, type the beats you want, and you end up with the identical thing. What a template saves is typing, not judgement.

What applying one actually does

Press a template and Slima does two things once: it creates those acts, and it creates those empty beat cards (a title and a one-line summary each).

• The text on the cards comes out in your current interface language. Once it lands it is your data, no different from what you'd have typed.
• A template carries no file cards. Chapters you drag in yourself — see Create and arrange beats and acts.
• Afterwards the app does not remember which template the words came from. It won't maintain the structure behind your back and it won't warn you that Act Two no longer fits three-act shape. It was a one-time seed from beginning to end.

Can you change your mind

Everything in it can be changed. Rename acts, add or drop acts, add or drop beats, rewrite titles and summaries, drag the order around — once applied, a template is indistinguishable from data you typed. Deleting a whole act is fine too: its beats become unassigned rather than disappearing.

What you can't get back is the picker. With anything on the board, the template buttons no longer show. If you genuinely want to start over from a different structure, there are two roads:

Two roads to a different structure

Remove every act, beat and card The board is empty again The picker comes back

Or: create a second .beats file and keep both.

The second road is usually the better one. A book can hold several beat boards — one for the whole thing, one per subplot or per character's line — and they don't interfere with each other. Emptying the old board also throws away every summary you already wrote.

And you don't have to start over for the sake of purity. Mixing is normal: take the three-act skeleton and add an "Interlude" act of your own, or take Kishōtenketsu's four parts and stuff three extra cards into Ten. The board exists to let you see clearly, not to grade you.

Which one Ink Tide uses

Story Skeleton.beats in the Ink Tide sample book was seeded from Three-Act Structure: three acts, 14 beat cards. But all 14 summaries have been rewritten into Ink Tide's own plot — Inciting Incident is about the letter from Shen Zhuoyan, not the template's generic "the event that upends the protagonist's world". The 12 chapter cards hang off 10 of those beats, and the remaining four read Not written yet.

That board is what this article's normal outcome looks like: the template gave the cells, the words are yours.

Related

• Docs: What a beat board is, and when to use one
• Docs: Create and arrange beats and acts
• Docs: Outline panel
• Docs: Writing a script in Slima