Hey Story Crafters,
I mentioned last week that I planned on watching some of the replays from ProWriting Aid’s Science Fiction Week. Though I couldn’t watch all of them, I’m happy with the few I did manage to watch. 😊
One was a replay of a workshop called Save the Cat! Writes Science Fiction. As the title suggests (if you’re familiar with the book), author Jessica Brody spent an hour or so breaking down two science fiction novels using her beat sheet story planning method from her craft book, Save the Cat! Writes a Novel: The Last Book on Novel Writing You’ll Ever Need. I haven’t read her book yet (though I have seen photos of it on Twitter), but the webinar has convinced me it’s a book that needs to be on my shelf of craft books.
Just like how the topics of story vs. plot and character exploration (or character profiling) before plotting from Lisa Cron’s Story Genius resonated with me, Jessica Brody’s beat sheet method struck a chord with me as well.
Most authors are familiar with the major narrative beats that need to happen in an effective story (e.g., the inciting incident, progressive rising (or gradually intensifying) action, etc.), and roughly where those beats need to happen. They’re beats you learn to identify after reading a lot of books and recognizing similarities between story patterns (though you might also have the added benefit of reading craft books, taking writing workshops, or being an editor). Brody goes deeper by identifying fifteen essential plot points, or beats, that make up a novel, and pointing out where those beats should happen in a novel.
My Thoughts on Beats
This isn’t the first time beats have been mentioned in the context of writing craft in this newsletter. If you remember way back in Let’s Talk Dialogue, Part 3, we covered dialogue beats.
The main difference is that narrative beats are big picture beats, and dialogue beats are small picture, within each scene. Dialogue beats are actually a subset of the narrative beats within scenes, since scenes often follow a similar pattern of rising and falling tension that the larger narrative arc of a short story or novel follows.
Narrative beats = Events that happen at the macro-level (for the short story or novel overall), where the tension rises or falls.
These events usually give a sense of progression—that the protagonist is a step closer to their external goal, and/or has taken another step in their internal transformation (i.e., character growth through “victory”). The protagonist might also experience a setback preventing them from reaching their external goal, but still undergo an internal shift as a result of this setback (i.e., character growth through “failure”), and find a (usually creative or unexpected) way to continue towards their external goal.
Scene beats = Micro-level, within individual scenes. These beats can also span several scenes over the course of a chapter.
Similar to the macro-level narrative beats, scene beats follow a pattern of rising and falling tension. The difference is that the goal (external or internal) of the scene is more of a mini-goal the protagonist achieves or fails to achieve on the path towards the big external goal of the novel.
It’s important to note that scenes may not follow the complete rising-and-falling tension path of the big picture narrative arc. A scene can start at a point of low tension and end at a high point of tension (a cliffhanger) or the other way around. A scene may even be stagnant, and act like connective tissue between two, more emotionally-charged (or tension-charged) scenes.
Dialogue beats help with the rising and falling tension in scenes.
Dialogue beats = Micro-level, within individual scenes.
Dialogue beats can be body language or physical gestures, or internal dialogue that change the pacing in a scene. They break up long sections of external dialogue, increase or decrease tension, and anchor the reader to characters (by identifying who is speaking and moving) and setting (by showing how characters are moving in a scene). In other words, dialogue beats provide context that help ground the reader to a scene.
(Dialogue beats are the most fun to write and edit. Who doesn’t love character interaction, laced with lots of juicy, often underlying tension?)
Why circles? I used to think of the different elements of story as “building blocks,” and the overall structure of a novel as the goal that the story elements build towards. I’ve since found this thought process to be too rigid, and that it fails to account for the fluidity (or “messiness”) of the creative process. I now prefer to think of the different levels as being part of each other, like a circle within a circle. Each level grows outward into the next, influencing each other. (When looking at it during the editing phase, it’s like looking at an object under a microscope to see how the smaller parts make up the whole object.)
I was tempted to reference Benoit Blanc’s donut hole theory that he used when solving the murder-mystery case in Knives Out, but it doesn’t apply to this diagram. Still, the scenes are fun to watch, so I linked a video here. (Also, the beats in this movie are fascinating to watch.)
By breaking down the novel writing process into fifteen essential beats like Brody suggests, there’s more of a roadmap to follow to get from Point A (the beginning) to Point B (The End); making the process less daunting, in my opinion. But what really resonates with me is the idea of being able to plan out a novel scene by scene, while also identifying the importance or relevance of those scenes. Mainly because it’s the writing technique that works for me. 😊
A Brief Aside: My Writing Style
My enthusiasm for the beat sheet roadmap doesn’t mean I’m promoting either side of the pantser vs. plotter writing style. Each author is unique, and should follow the approach that works for them—it might even change over time! But for me, personally, I like having a general idea of what needs to happen at certain points of the story, even if I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen.
(Anyone else in support of the hybrid pantser-plotter writing style?)
So after I’ve figured out the story I want to tell and the characters needed to tell that story, I figure out how my protagonist gets to Point B. I make a list of the scenes that need to happen (or that I think need to happen) for my protagonist to get from Point A to Point B (i.e., the “plotter” phase).
This list is not an outline. It’s literally a bullet-point list of scenes, put in the order I think will help the story progress. I use bullet-points because numbers or other labels give a sense of rigidity, like the dreaded outline format a lot of us learned in school. This scene list is fluid—the order can change as the scenes get fleshed out and the story develops (i.e., the “pantser” phase). And I let them.
Okay, back to beats.
If we consider the beat sheet as a roadmap from Point A to Point B, the type of story that’s being told (e.g., self-discovery, falling in love, developing friendships, etc.) will inform the kind of scenes that need to be shown for the protagonist to reach Point B.
For example, in a romance novel, one of the earliest narrative beats will be the “first meeting” beat. How this looks will depend on whether the story is:
a sweet, first love kind of romance (in which case the first meeting will be a “meet-cute” of sorts), versus
a gentle kind of romance (e.g., a more subtle first meeting, like Character A bumping into Character B and causing an accident of spilled coffee, scattered papers, etc. They may not fall “madly in love” and go the slow burn route instead, but they can’t help being aware of when their potential love interest is nearby), versus
a more dramatic romance (e.g., the rivals-to-lovers trope, where the first meeting is less about the two romantic leads meeting and more about the reader seeing their rivalry and unresolved attraction to each other).
Deciding which type of “first meeting” that happens will set the tone for the kinds of scenes that need to play out in later beats.
Basically, there are several possibilities for how each “beat” can play out, depending on the story type.
In case the example above wasn’t enough of a clue, I love helping authors figure out the scenes that most effectively tell the story they want to tell, during a developmental edit. The possibilities may seem endless, but if you know your characters and their circumstances—where they are, mentally/physical/emotionally at Point A, and where they’ll (roughly) end up at Point B—there are actually just a few paths your protagonist can logically take (and scenes they can experience) to stay true to who they are and who they’ll be at the end of the story.
Part of my job during a developmental edit is to make sure the author is aware of the relevant possibilities for beats that already exist in their manuscript; beats that, when developed effectively, will also help develop their characters further, and create a more compelling story.
Until next time!
Leah
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