That was the real engine behind this story.
Not all the time, obviously. We’re not out here questioning every single decision like it’s a life crisis. But enough times that it mattered.
We had a beat sheet. A good one. Structured. Thought-out. Sensible.
And then we ignored it.
Somewhere around the middle of Act Two, things went completely off the rails. The plan stopped making sense for the characters, so we stopped forcing it. What followed was… a lot of improvisation.
The beat sheet still exists. Sitting there. Full of notes, plot points, and character arcs that never happened.
And somehow? That’s exactly what made it work.
We let Rafi and Jude breathe, and they turned into far more complex, honest versions of themselves than anything we could’ve forced onto them. Nina took Jude and pushed him through his trauma in ways we hadn’t planned. I got to write Rafi reacting to that in real time.
It wasn’t tidy. It wasn’t controlled.
It was better.
So yes, beat sheets are great. They give you structure. Direction. Something to hold onto when the story starts slipping.
But sometimes?
Unhinged chaos does the job better.
The trick is knowing when to follow the plan… and when to let it burn.