Beats
Beats are a bit special to me. Things that happen usually have a big impact. But our language is so efficient that big events can be described in very short sentences.
Take, for example, this sentence: “He shot the president”. A life was taken! The most powerful person in the country killed! All of that with a simple sentence containing four simple words.
At the same time, a beat can be something incredibly tiny: “He scratched his chin.” Similar sentence, just a minimal movement with no big consequences.
Supporting Beats
That’s why, to me, beats do not stand on their own.
- You should build towards big actions.
- Then show the aftermath of the big action.
If you don’t, readers might even miss this simple sentence and all its implications. I know I have! Many times I’ve been confused for half a chapter until I realized I missed some huge action beat. This was either because it was one short sentence or because the important action was hidden in an overly complicated sentence.
What does this mean for prose?
- As you write a scene, keep in mind the biggest event that will (or might) happen.
- Before that moment, spend paragraphs building up to it, with smaller actions.
- After that moment, don’t immediately end the scene or move on to something else. Stay focused on the event for a little longer, to make sure it pulls its weight.
Check the example below. Small actions leading up to the big action beat, then the aftermath. This aftermath might be in the same scene, but it might also be the start of the next chapter (to create a sort of cliffhanger).
The assassin took his position on the rooftop. He checked his gun and reloaded.
The president entered his street. He waved at the cheering crowd and smiled brighter than the hot afternoon sun.
The assassin pointed his gun. His heart rate slowed down, his eyes focused, his head counted the steps of the president. Three … two … one …
He shot the president.
At first, he stayed upright. The smile dropped. But the crowd kept cheering and shaking a limp hand.
Then his body fell over, face first into the pavement. The cheers turned to screams. One of his bodyguards tried to reanimate him, the other scanned the rooftops for the source of the gunshot.
Of course they’d find nothing. The assassin was gone, just like the stability of his country.
Practice sorting your thoughts this way. (Rising tension => climax => aftermath.) It will tell you what to write in the next paragraph, again and again, until the story is on the page.
Also, notice how I placed the big action onto its own paragraph. Just a single-line paragraph. That also helps to make it stand out.
Keep it short
Notice, in the example above, that it contains very simple prose. Subject, verb, details of the sentence. Each sentence only contains one action or related actions.
But it is clear and puts the scene onto the page. It’s not a huge leap from this towards something that flows a bit more smoothly.
If you overcomplicate a beat sentence, you risk burying the action. (Readers can miss it or misunderstand something important that happened.)
Similarly, if the beat is a small and insignificant action (such as scratching your chin), you don’t want to draw a lot of attention to it by writing a long sentence.
At the start of this course, I explained how our language was designed to communicate through action. That’s why beats can be very short and efficient.
So don’t feel the need to add more detail in your first draft. That’s the most common cause of first drafts with long sentences and way too many words: writers who told themselves that it was needed.
I remember emailing some author I liked, when I was a kid, asking for advice on how to “add more words”. My stories were much shorter than the books I read, so I thought I was doing something wrong and believed that I needed to explain every action in excruciating detail. I never got a reply.
In my first stories, I’d write sentences like this: “He lowered his left hand into his pocket and it stayed there for two minutes.”
This is a lot of words for such a small action! Do we need to know it was the left hand? Do we need to know exactly how long it stayed there? This takes a lot of mental effort when writing the first draft, while these are details I can easily add in the second draft (if I know they are needed).
I might rewrite to: “He put his hands in his pockets.”
When writing your first draft, just get the general idea on the page and move on to your next thought. Yeah, you’re allowed to be cliché and say things like “He released a breath he didn’t know he was holding”, but only in the first draft!
Alternating beats
In the chapter on The Four Elements, I told you to constantly vary your tools for writing the story.
Beats are at the heart of that. Because the sentences are short and simple, it’s easy to “pepper” a scene with action beats here and there for variation.
For example, maybe you have a dialogue scene. Two characters are going back and forth about some important topic. You want to regularly add a few beats in between.
Because the longer you go without that, the more you risk running into the “talking heads” problem. The reader imagines the scene as happening in a blank void with talking heads spewing dialogue. Why? Because you haven’t regularly reminded them about the environment and what’s happening.
Lastly, beats are the most concrete and physical of all prose types.
Introspection and description quickly get more “abstract”. Dialogue can be more vague as well, especially because humans aren’t that good at clear communication when speaking. To counteract this, use beats to ground the reader in this specific reality and setting.
Another reason to vary your prose types: to get a balance between specific events and abstract ideas on the page.
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