In this tutorial we’ll dive deeper into Stencil’s “key steps worksheet“, which is one of the prewriting tools we have built into Stencil to help screenwriters better plan out their stories.

Within Stencil, way before you ever get to use our screenwriting tools, plot visualization tools or shot-list tools, we have a pre-writing tool within our software called the key steps worksheet. You can find this page within Stencil, by clicking on the project you’re working on, then head over to storybase (in the left sidebar) and then click on the “key steps worksheet” tab.

After creating a new project within Stencil, you should fill out this page first before you begin writing your script, because this page will help you solve many story problems early on, which can save you enormous amounts of time in the future.

Essentially, the key-steps worksheet contains over 100 different questions which were designed to act as a sort of controlled brainstorming exercise for filmmakers looking to transform a basic idea into a full fledged story.

We created this tool for a few different reasons:

1: First, because we believed that many screenwriters experience writer’s block, simply because they haven’t shaped their story idea properly in their mind before they start writing. The key-steps worksheet was designed to give you lifelines out of writer’s block by giving you multiple paths forward if you ever feel stuck. It’s meant to help you find new or fresh ways to think about your film or documentary or to confront narrative problems when they arise.

2: Second, it was designed to get you to answer tough, point blank questions, the answers to which, the success of your story will hinge on.

3: Third and perhaps most importantly, the key steps worksheet was not designed as any type of commercial story formula or template. Instead it was designed to help you go deep into your thinking, look for connections where you might not have known there were any.

And we’ve tried our best to keep the key-steps worksheet story paradigm agnostic. So it doesn’t matter how linear or abstract your story telling preferences are, the key steps worksheet was designed to help you tell whatever type of story you’re trying to tell in the best way it can be told, regardless if you’re creating an experimental art-house drama, or a commercial blockbuster. We’ve designed it to be flexible enough to accommodate a wide range of storytelling and artistic preferences.

4: Fourth, another reason we created the key steps worksheet was to help filmmakers and storytellers follow their story logic, in skeletal form from beginning to end. That said, we understand that things change and new ideas are stumbled upon halfway through, so we wanted our pre-writing tool to be able to accommodate those changes. The key-steps worksheet was not designed to be rigid. It was designed to be a document that you can come back to whenever necessary and change when you see fit.

5: And this brings me to my last point, which is that the key-steps worksheet was meant to help you map out your story from beginning to end in a quest to help you avoid the dreaded second act slump, where things tend to fall apart.

Using this worksheet you’ll give yourself guidance through those tough times before you even get there, by mapping out scene options and ensuring you have a sufficient number of scenes to get you through to the end of your story.

These questions, as well as your answers, will help you map out your screenplay from beginning until the end and will ensure you have considered all of the narrative elements which are required to tell great stories.

Want to Follow Along?

In the next tutorial in this blog series we’ll look at the first questions under the first act which look at the moral and psychological weaknesses of your protagonist.

Again, if you want to follow along, be sure to sign up for a free trial of Stencil here.