Plot Point Mapper
Structure
A line whose name does not match a beat is ignored, so keep the beat names as the sheet lists them.
Coverage
coverage: 29%
next open beat: First plot point
The sheet
- Hook (0%)mapped
Mara alone on the pier before dawn.
- Inciting incident (10%)mapped
the letter from the harbour master.
- First plot point (25%)open
The character commits to the journey; the door closes behind them.
- Midpoint (50%)open
A reversal or revelation that changes what the story is about.
- Second plot point (75%)open
The last piece of information arrives; the final push begins.
- Climax (90%)open
The character faces the story's central conflict head on.
- Resolution (100%)open
The new normal is shown; the story's promise is answered.
Map as markdown
# Three-act structure 2 of 7 beats mapped (29%) ## Hook (0%) Mara alone on the pier before dawn. ## Inciting incident (10%) the letter from the harbour master. ## First plot point (25%) _The character commits to the journey; the door closes behind them._ ## Midpoint (50%) _A reversal or revelation that changes what the story is about._ ## Second plot point (75%) _The last piece of information arrives; the final push begins._ ## Climax (90%) _The character faces the story's central conflict head on._ ## Resolution (100%) _The new normal is shown; the story's promise is answered._
Scope and limits
The beats and their percentages are the conventional placements from the structures named — the three-act and four-act shapes, Save the Cat’s fifteen beats and the hero’s journey’s twelve stages. They are guidance from those traditions, not rules.
Placement is not stored: the map reports which beats have a note, not where your drafted pages actually land. It does not read your manuscript or judge whether a structure suits your story; the notes are yours.
The plot point mapper lays a named structure — three-act, four-act, Save the Cat or the hero's journey — over your story's own events and reports which beats are still open.
What is Plot Point Mapper?
A plot point mapper is useful when a structure is the thing in doubt. Choose a beat sheet — the three-act structure, the four-act structure, Save the Cat's fifteen beats or the hero's journey's twelve stages — and the tool lists that structure's plot points with the share of the story where each typically lands. You then attach your own event to each beat, one line per beat, and the map reports how much of the structure you have covered and which beat comes next.
That last number is the one that keeps a draft moving. If everything is mapped except the midpoint, the map has told you what the next writing session is for, and it does so without reading a word of the manuscript. A writer working through a beat sheet can fill the map in as a planning exercise and then watch the coverage climb as the draft takes shape, which is a more useful signal than a blank page and a feeling.
The percentages are conventions, and the tool is careful to say so. The placements come from the traditions the structures are named for — the three-act shape, Blake Snyder's fifteen beats, Campbell's stages — and none of them is a rule a story must obey. A literary novel may have no inciting incident at twenty per cent, and a short story may hit its midpoint on page two. The map reports where a beat conventionally sits, and the writer decides whether to move the scene or ignore the placement.
Working beat by beat also changes how a plan gets written. Instead of an empty document and a blank page, the mapper offers a short list of named slots, each with a description of what belongs there, and the writing becomes a matter of answering one slot at a time. The same structure is as useful for a critique as for a first draft: mapping someone else's story onto a sheet shows where one beat is doing the work of two, or where a placement is so far from the convention that the story is deliberately bending the shape.
Nothing is generated in the sense of prose. The tool does not invent plot points and does not suggest what your midpoint should be; you supply the events and it arranges them against the sheet, marking each beat mapped or open. The map exports as a markdown outline with a heading per beat, so it can sit beside the draft in the same folder as the scene board.
The mapper reads notes, not pages. It does not analyse a manuscript, cannot tell whether a plotted beat survived into the draft, and keeps nothing beyond the current session's text in the page. The structure is a lens, the events are yours, and the coverage figure is a count of how many of the sheet's beats you have written down — useful, and honestly limited. It is a planning aid for a story that is still taking shape, and it is happy to stay one.
How to use Plot Point Mapper
- Choose a beat sheet: three-act, four-act, Save the Cat or the hero's journey.
- Read the sheet: every beat, its conventional percentage and its description.
- Write one line per beat as Beat name: what happens in your story.
- Watch the coverage figure and the next open beat as you fill the map.
- Copy or download the map as a markdown outline.
When to use Plot Point Mapper vs related tools
Use the plot point mapper when a named structure is the frame you want and each beat needs an event attached. When the question is how far through a beat sheet the drafting has actually reached, the Story Beat Builder is a progress board over the same structures.
For a non-fiction or essay plan rather than a story, the Outline Builder numbers headings instead of beats, and when the mapped events are scenes that need their own tracking, the Scene and Chapter Organizer boards them with word counts.
Privacy & Security
This tool runs entirely in your browser — no data ever leaves your device. There is no server round-trip, no upload, no logging, and no account required. Your input is processed locally using client-side JavaScript and is never stored, transmitted, or accessible to anyone else. When you close the tab, everything disappears.