It’s confusing. As if there aren’t enough hero’s journeys and snowflakes to follow in putting together your novel, there is also the matter of beats. Commonly used in screenwriting, the concept of beats sometimes creeps into thinking about fiction writing. What exactly are beats, and do they have any utility in fiction?
In screen and stage plays, a beat is most commonly used to mean a pause in dialogue. Think the pregnant pause in plays by Harold Pinter. A short silence makes a deliberate space for the audience to digest a shift in circumstances or to take in the meaning of what’s being said.
However, a beat has come to mean more than that. It also means moments in a story that are plot pivots or emotional shifts. Palpably and perhaps invisibly, the story takes a step. Things change: outside, inside or between people. The story marches forward in a marked cadence. The felt impact of each step is a beat.
Robert McKee describes a beat as the smallest element of story structure. There are acts, sequences, scenes and beats, which are noticed when characters adopt distinctively different behaviors, showing a clear change in their actions or reactions. That makes sense in movie, TV and stage stories since those are performed by actors. Rather than reading words on a page, on the screen we watch actors’ faces, read their body language and hear their tonal shifts.
In screen and stage plays, beats mark the audience’s sense of progress through a story. So critical are beats that they can even be formulized. There should be a beat, it’s said, every five minutes. In a drama (typically 120 pages) there should be twenty-four beats. In a comedy (typically 90 pages) there should be eighteen beats. Fifteen is a good number regardless. Obviously, such formulae have less application in the context of a novel, but are beats nevertheless important to identify and chart? Should you create a “beat sheet”, like screenwriters do?
I somewhat disagree with the idea that beats are the smallest element of structure, at least in fiction. To me, the macro-plot and scene dynamics are followed, in conceptual order, by micro-tension, which is the line-by-line, moment-by-moment, under-the-surface uneasiness or tension experienced by the reader which forces the reader to inexorably read the next thing on the page. Micro-tension is like the cosmic background radiation pervading the universe: lingering and never-forgotten evidence of the Big Bang that started it all, as well as the ever-present hum that tells us that space is not empty but always alive with activity.
But really, that’s a quibble. Wherever beats may figure into the hierarchy of story structure, it is nevertheless useful to look at what produces that deliberate sensation in readers that we, as writers, wish readers to feel: a feeling that at this very moment in the story a shift of some kind—and there are many kinds—has taken place.
Shifts Big and Small
Shifts can happen in characters’ expectations of what is coming or what they must do. They can be in the arrival of new complications, new information, or new realizations about anything big or small. A false hope can arise or a reversal of fortune can befall. A character’s role can change. A relationship can alter. An outcome can surprise. Resolve can be found or hopelessness descend. A punch can be thrown or a flower can be laid on a grave. Stories are about people and changes in people produce beats.
Shifts, however, aren’t always produced by what actually happens on the page. Shifts can occur in the reader’s minds, hearts and understandings, as well. What was supposed to be true might turn out to be false. Right could veer wrong. Bad might become good. When doubt arises, hope is dashed, a silver lining is discovered…when there is any emotional shift at all in the minds or hearts of readers, that too is a beat.
A beat, as I said, is a deliberate effect. The reason that I raise the topic today is that most manuscripts have too few of those. Naturally, we hope that plot itself will produce those beats. But does it always? Oftentimes, a fumbling handling of story developments blunts or even loses the sought effect. Scenes wander, fishing for their drama and missing opportunities for changes to cut with a sharp sting or sing a song of soaring beauty.
Above all, a beat is something that we experience in a moment. It’s a stab of fear, a twinge of shame, a shout of encouragement, a shot at prediction, a tremor of doubt, a punishing verdict, a roar of rage, a tear of grief, a nod of satisfaction, or anything that causes us to feel a way that we didn’t a moment before.
There are many ways to make that happen but the simplest may be to start not with what’s happening in the story but with the shift you want readers to experience, and then find the places in the story where those shifts can be most deliberately demonstrated through your characters and provoked in readers.
Practical Beats
The following are some of the emotional shifts that I’m talking about. Where in your current manuscript can you find opportunities to shape and provoke the following responses in your readers:
Ooo…burn!
Take that!
Zing!
Truth!
(Fist pump)
Ouch!
Grr…
Hooray for you!
J-accuse!
Curiouser and curiouser…
The plot thickens…
Uh-oh, that’s not good!
Whoa, creepy!
Yikes, didn’t see that coming!
Goodness, what next?
You’re kidding!
Ah-ha, I knew it!
What are we going to do now?
Hold on, I have an idea…
Watch out, he’s right behind you!
Run!
Hurry, hurry, hurry!
Don’t go in there!
Too late!
Damn, damn, damn!
Oh-no!
Say it ain’t so!
Oh, shiiiiiiii….!
Guilty!
Not guilty!
Forward into battle!
Baby, I got this!
Booyah!
Wha-wah…
Well, it was worth a try…
Don’t give up!
Give it one more shot!
There’s still hope!
No good deed…
How dare you!
He’s lying!
She’s covering up!
You’re going to regret that!
Shame on you!
(Cringe)
Ain’t that ironic!
Huh, I never saw it that way before…
You’re not who I thought you were…you’re less!
You’re not who I thought you were…you’re more!
Someone’s got a crush, eh?
Aww, so sweet!
Mmm, tasty!
Ha-ha-ha, we’re rich…rich, I tell you!
Easy come…
(Sigh)
Farewell and God speed!
This is bigger than the both of us…
You deserved that!
That’s just desserts!
Well now, that’s the end of that!
Finally!
Phew!
You get the idea. If you, as a reader, are so engaged in a story that you’re having an inner dialogue with it—commenting, judging, pondering, laughing, telling off or falling for—then you are experiencing it in the way that we want. The progress you feel isn’t coming from the plot, it’s coming from your mental and emotional steps as you read.
In short, if your readers are feeling it happen, moment by moment, scene by scene, season by season, from beginning to end, either in the soft flow of experience or the sharp blows of struggle, then what your readers are feeling is the beat. It’s the beat of change. It’s the beat of our hearts and hopes. It’s the beat of life. It’s the beat of your story and when it’s there, we dance.
In reading this post, did you think of one new beat to add to your story? Tell us about it!
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About Donald Maass
Donald Maass (he/him) is president of the Donald Maass Literary Agency. He has written several highly acclaimed craft books for novelists including The Breakout Novelist, The Fire in Fiction, Writing the Breakout Novel and The Career Novelist.
I remember watching the first season of The Crown and thinking how Claire Foy was acting with her eyes. I began taking my emotional cues from how many crinkles appeared at the corners. In a quest to cut 10,000 words from my first novel, I discovered that the more flab it lost, the more those subtle emotional turns (or the opportunities for them) began to show up. Recognizing them and working to reveal them felt like a turning point (no pun intended) for me. Thanks for a wonderful post, Don!
The beats in each scene in “The Crown” are very strong. Another thing I like about the scripts is how the A-B-C storylines always closely parallel each other, giving each episode a distinct theme.
When I took screenwriting classes, I learned all about Snyder’s Beat Sheet and how fifteen of them structure a screenplay. Back when I was learning how to write a novel, I used them as a loose guide. But I like your definition of beats to get a reader’s reaction within chapters or scenes. A novel’s success depends on a reader’s engagement, emotional response, and the element of surprise — every writer’s dream.
The song, And The Beat Goes On, just popped into my head. LOL!
Thanks for another great post, Don.
Charleston was once the rage, uh huh
History has turned the page, uh huh
The mini skirts, the current thing, uh huh
Teenybopper is our newborn king, uh huh
And the beat goes on, the beat goes on
Drums keep pounding a rhythm to the brain
La de da de de, la de da de da
Now I can’t get of my head, either. Thanks a lot!
I’ve been humming it all day, thanks to your title! Dang earworm. LOL!
Abso-frickin’-lutely. (Is that a beat with an extra beat inside it?)
These are the little milestones, and sometimes twists, that keep us reading. We cheer, boo, and gasp, and we want to know that the writer hasn’t brought us there by accident and they’re right there with us giving us just enough nudging. We’re fans of the same thing.
One common use of the word “beat” is a particular type: a bit of gesture or action that’s usually in the middle of dialog. “John sipped his tea.” Those are often used as much to replace a dialog tag as anything else, but they’re still legitimate beats in the microtension sense, and they still need to work on that level.
While “John sipped his tea” may provide a pause in dialogue or substitute for a dialogue tag, I don’t find that incidental action by itself adds tension…although it’s *placement* may provide a beat. If you see what I mean.
Right, that was a weak example. It’s more of a beat if it gives a sense of John pausing to think between important words, or if it makes him look smug or resistant to hurry-it-up pleas or something else. Many dialog beats are *very* minor in how they tweak the flow as an actual beat.
The clearest beat I’ve seen on screen was in the film ROBIN AND MARIAN, when Audrey Hepburn as Marian sees Robin Hood (Sean Connery) for the first time in some twenty years. He’s in the courtyard calling for someone and she leans out and upstairs window to say, “You there – what in hell do you want?” She stares down and without moving a muscle there is a beat, a shift in her eyes or expression – the shock of recognition. In that moment, that silence, the story takes a leap into a whole different stratosphere.
In a book, one of the most powerful beats I can recall came in Chaim Potok’s MY NAME IS ASHER LEV, when Asher, who is about 12 or 13, arrives at Jacob Kahn’s studio to discover a nude model Jacob wants him to draw. Potok creates the beat so that the reader almost stops breathing right with Asher, and the moment propels him into an entirely new world. That, too, is depicted brilliantly when Kahn shows Asher the first, tentative, self-conscious drawings of the nude he made and compares them to the ones at the end of the day which exude confidence and the beginnings of mastery.
Thanks for the reminder, Don, it’s not easy to craft those moments, but when I think of the ones I mentioned and other as well, I know how important they are to loving the story.
Great examples, thanks!
Writing becomes genius when only the character’s eyes reveal panic or the silence in a room is penetrated by action, or one word of dialogue–the beat is felt and yet you are not boldly told to feel it. The masters know how to do this. Your post raises many questions, can I do this? Maybe reading and reading some more provides a subtle background to help us see and learn.
Of course you can do this! And there are scads of examples of how-to on your shelves right now.
Once again your post comes right when I need it. Screenwriting techniques have been an inspiration to my writing. From presentations at conferences (Lou Anders had an awesome one on structuring a novel using the structure of blockbuster movies), the book Writing for Emotional Impact by Karl Iglesias, and then, just last night, watching a video on youtube about using post-it notes to storyboard.
I’m a visual person and I think the screenwriting perspective fits well with how I perceive the world and so is easier for me to use and learn from. I can see the example and then better utilize it in my story.
I’ve pretty much written the first Act of my wip, but am starting to get lost in all the abstract thought trying to keep track of the different threads of suspects, clues, red herrings, my protagonist, what I’ve already addressed and what I need to start hinting at for inclusion in future chapters. Which is why I started trolling through youtube for visual methods of plotting.
I’m thinking now that the clues and red herrings are really the beats to the story, so I appreciate the explanation of what beats are and having some guidelines. I’m buying post-it notes this afternoon and I’ll be sure to get a distinctive color for the beats of the story. Hmm, now I have a question–if the general guideline at least 15 beats, is that per story total, or for each plotline? Would you share the beats, like ten for the main plot and 5 for a subplot?
Now I’m really excited to be done with my job so I can get my post-its and go work on my story!
The great TV shows currently streaming have moved to multiple plot lines per episode (A, B, C and sometimes D and E), and shorter, sometimes very short, scenes to unfold each.
In a very short scene, there is time for just one beat and most scenes are built around that. Thus, the number of beats in a hour-long drama is, by my count, up dramatically.
So how does that relate to fiction? Directly, it doesn’t. It isn’t about how many beats are ideal but whether there are beats at all. And, ask me, most manuscripts need many more.
Great! Thank you very much. I’ll add beats with abandon and then evaluate them upon editing! :D
Just what I needed to hear today as I’ve been trying to inventory and organize a mass of scenes and snippets of dialogue – wondering how to push them against each other into a full first draft.
I’m realizing this is what I am most after – to stir the reader the way that I, when a reader, want to be stirred. To feel the beat of life – because a rich life is full of unexpected plot twists, revelations of our false beliefs, giving up, succeeding, defining our own success, doubting ourselves, sharing our journey, finding love, learning to trust and to forgive.
Today I’m going to use your advice to find “the shift you want readers to experience, and then find the places in the story where those shifts can be most deliberately demonstrated.”
You’re not who I thought you were…you’re more!
is a beat I realize I need to be sure the reader feels about my heroine, Belladonna. I want them to realize it before Cochi, the hero sees it.
Yay! I’m excited and inspired today.
Thank you, Don!
Hi Ada. Bella is a cypher, and so in revealing more and more about her–or deepening her mysteries– you have many opportunities for beats.
Cochi, I think, could be the opposite: a character whom we think we know but who, step by step, surprises us. More beats.
Oh yes! Everyone must have a surprise. Thanks!
One of the things I believe my writing has lacked is actually THINKING about what I’m doing. Now, maybe things worked out after all in my books that are ‘literary character-driven’ works, but maybe not so much for one that sort of tip-toed in to ‘genre-type’ (though those two lines are blurred more and more now and that’s a good thing).
But, to think about structure and beats and … DANG! LAWD! Good Gawd! My weird wonky brain fights against structure and the very way my brain processes things (apparently, it’s a thing and I didn’t even know I had a thing) makes it extremely difficult to find structure in my work, to look at structure, plot, the whys and hows, etc etc.
But perhaps there’s a back-door way. Need to order your books and get-me-to-readin’ – right? right!
Well, you know, don’t let me stop you from ordering my books. Just sayin’.
And as a “back door” way to think about “structure” in a character-driven novel and outline-averse process, yes, looking for the beat in each little patch of story you write is a great way to think about it.
I finished reading the sequel to a popular novel and it had a very effective story beat.
Late in the novel the love symbol appeared. The glyph that Prince changed his name to in 1993 when he was fighting with his record label (talk about a Whaa? moment). It signaled a new focus for the novel that I wasn’t expecting and it made me pause as a reader. A real gift.
Happy Holidays Don
Huh. I wouldn’t have thought of that as providing a beat, but maybe so!
I really appreciate this post, Don. It expands my thinking on what “beats” truly mean in a story. And it makes me realize that in my exploration of dialogue beats in my craft book that I was unknowingly guiding writers to do what you’re talking about by using them to add nuance and meaning, the kind of meaning that can lead to the kinds of shifts you talk about. (I’ve included that chapter in today’s Flogging the Quill post). Many thanks, my friend.
So welcome, Ray, good to see you!
Back at you!
Great exploration/explanation of beats, Donald. It took me a while to wrap my head around the concept when studying screenwriting books, and I still don’t necessarily think in terms of beats when I write. But I definitely focus on the reactions I want to elicit.
To get better at evoking emotional responses in readers, I pay attention to how other writers evoke them in me. I read fiction mostly in ebook format, and I love how my Kindle devices allow me to take notes. Looking at your list of reader reactions, I see several I frequently use, along with handy succinct comments like whoa, NICE, I hate this guy, yikes – that was freaking DARK but it raised the stakes, killer scene, awesome description, and of course the ultimate homage: Damn, I wish *I* had written that!
Some of these are admittedly more about writing technique than emotion, but the bottom line is that when something strikes me while I’m reading, I stop and make a note of it. Later, I can go back and easily pull up the notes, and study how the author pulled off whatever noteworthy thing she did. But your article today will prompt me to also consider the overall beat that made me respond. Thanks for offering yet another way to look at writing!
If anyone is qualified to opine on beats, it is Keith Cronin. I wonder if certain beats on the page have a tom-tom effect or a crash cymbal smash. Might a novel be plotted as a drum solo?
Hi, Don:
When I was studying acting, I would have given anything for as clear a definition of beat as you have given here. It was maddeningly vague among my instructors, who seemed to just “know it when they saw (or felt) it.”
I came to think of it as the shift that occurs when, in the course of a character’s pursuit of their objective in a scene despite the obstacle(s) in their path, they realize the action they’re using isn’t succeesful, and so they try another.
That realization always has internal, interpersonal, and external elements, but the result is always either a change in action or a change in the character’s understanding of the same action should they continue employing it.
Your statement that “something has changed” gets at that nicely.
But by far, for the fiction writer, I think your invocation of the reader’s response is invaluable. It reminds me of your lecture, “Your Thriller Isn’t Thrilling,” and how you explained that you need to set up moments of terror with the prospect of hope. In trying to create one of the emotional turns you list in your post, it’s imnportant to remember you need to create the expectation that something very different may happen, or is about to happen.
Love the mention of Pinter. Speaking of microtension: “the ever-present hum that tells us that space is not empty but always alive with activity.” He once remarked all his plays are about silence and the nakedness it evokes. That silence may be an actual absence of sound or filled with a barrage of words to conceal the nakedness, but the point is always that charged atmosphere in the background.
I’ve shared this post with my Litreactor class. It’s a keeper.
Hope you had a lovely Thanksgiving, and that the remainder of the holiday season is warm, safe, and rewarding for you and your loved ones.
Hey there, David, good to see you.
“…you need to create the expectation that something very different may happen, or is about to happen.”
Yes, I’ve been recommending a one-two-three reader misdirection technique in classes on scene structure. When the scene outcome reverses our expectations–when the hammer falls–handled right it can become a distinct beat.
Looking forward to rye-in-person with you when the All Clear claxon at last sounds!
Thinking of a beat as that which creates an emotional response in the reader, has helped me understand them far better than other advice I’ve read on this topic. Thank you.
The stronger the emotional response in the reader (FIST PUMP! Booyah!) the stronger the beat.