Drill story structure until you can see it
Reading about structure teaches you the vocabulary. Storydrills teaches you the recognition — the thing working writers actually have, and the only part no book can hand over.
Four frameworks. 2,048 beats from real films, television and literature. Flash cards, a quiz, and thirty-five guided lessons that run in a deliberate order.
Private beta · installs like an app · works offline
Lessons
Start with the shape, not the jargon
Every framework opens with a walkthrough that draws its own diagram and lights one step at a time, so you see where a beat sits before anyone asks you to name it.
Finish the walkthrough and that framework's lessons unlock. Each one runs a set of films in a deliberate order — the most legible sheet first — and a film only counts as done when every one of its beats has been answered correctly at least once.
- 35 lessons, grouped by genre and medium
- Complete arcs, never a scattering of beats
- Mastery is best-ever, so a bad session never costs you ground
Quiz
Read a beat. Name the step.
One beat at a time, described plainly, with the film named underneath. You pick the step it performs. Right or wrong, you get the reasoning — including which step it is most often confused with, and why.
Filter by medium, by framework, or down to a single film. Every beat in the bank is written fresh for this app: no quoted dialogue, no lifted synopses, nothing you can answer by recognising a famous line instead of the structure.
Flash cards
The deck itself, until it is yours
Name to job, job to name, number to name. Timed if you want it timed, weighted toward the steps you keep missing, and graded honestly by you — the only grading system that survives contact with your own memory.
Progress is tracked per step, daily, weekly and all time, so you can see which part of the map you actually keep losing.
Four frameworks
Taught as their authors wrote them
Not blended into one house theory. Each keeps its own deck, its own vocabulary and its own page targets — including the ones that only make sense for the medium they were written for.
8 steps · film · tv · literature
Story Circle
Harmon's loop. Order and chaos, clockwise, and the only one of the four that is a circle.
15 beats · film · tv · literature
Save the Cat!
Snyder's beat sheet, as a page map rather than a wheel, because that is what it is.
14 slots · film · literature
Story Maps
Calvisi's feature sheet, with its own act bands and its own idea of where the middle goes.
25 slots · television
Story Maps: TV
The pilot deck. Built for the job a first episode has to do, which is not the job a film has.
The bank
Written, not scraped
Every beat in Storydrills was written for Storydrills. Public-domain works are described in new sentences rather than quoted; everything in copyright is described structurally, in the app's own words, at 200 characters or less. You can add your own beats, and they live beside the bundled ones.
How it works
It runs in your browser and stays there
No account
Nothing to sign up for, no password, no profile. Open it and drill.
Offline
Install it and the whole bank comes with you. On a plane, on the subway, in a room with no signal.
Your data is yours
Beats, notes and every drill result live in your browser's own storage. Export a backup whenever you want.
One optional online feature
Analyze checks your own draft against a framework. It runs on your API key, and it is the only thing here that touches a network.
Access
Ask for a way in
Storydrills is in private beta behind an email gate. Tell me who you are and I'll send you a link — no password to make, just a one-time code to the address you give.
Schools and programs: if you're teaching structure and want a licence for a cohort, say so below and describe the group. That conversation is different from the individual one and I'd rather have it properly.