The Four Elements

In creative writing, we generally distinguish four different elements. These are pieces of prose with a different purpose, and therefore different advice for how to approach them. Some even have special punctuation, such as dialogue.

The four elements are:

• Dialogue
• Beats
• Description
• Introspection

These are sorted based on how active they are.

In this article, I give a very brief overview of what they are and how they combine. The next four chapters go in-depth on each of them.

Dialogue

This prose represents spoken words. It needs two parts:

• The dialogue. (What they’re saying, placed between double quotes, ")
• The dialogue tag. (Who says it, connected with a simple said or asked)

As always, you can go wild here, but that’s not the point (for now). Stick to this simple structure when getting your thoughts onto the paper. If you already try to spice up the dialogue prose, you’ll get stuck and hinder your own creative flow.

Beats

This represents something happening. It’s an action beat.

Usually, these are simple and short sentences. Adding two completely different actions to the same sentence is similar to adding two ideas to the same paragraph—it’s confusing.

Description

This prose describes what something is. Nothing should actually happen. That’s why this is “slower” than the other types, as the story doesn’t move forward.

Introspection

This prose describes someone’s thoughts. Their inner monologue, their deliberations and doubts. This is obviously the slowest of all: nothing happens and the thoughts don’t even need to be related to the real world around them.

This is unique to writing. In screenplays, for example, you’d always need to find a way to turn somebody’s thoughts into dialogue or action.

There are many different ways to write introspection, which I’ll discuss further in its own chapter.

Some writers like to place the thoughts inline with the other text.

Some like to italicize it (and perhaps add X thought if that isn’t clear).

Combining the elements

As you see, most of these elements use the exact same sentence structure and grammar. So why do I explain this categorization?

Because there’s a simple guideline for writing.

You want to vary between the four elements. They should be roughly balanced.

What does this mean?

For example, after writing some dialogue, you add description. After writing some more dialogue, you add a beat, and then introspection as your main character thinks about what just happened.

In fact, some describe this as the general cycle of every scene. It’s often called action/reaction or scene/sequel.

• Setup (what’s the current situation; description, maybe dialogue)
• Buildup (tension builds, more and more is revealed or set up; dialogue or beats)
• Action (something decisive happens, a new situation; dialogue or beat)
• Reflection (the main character reflects on what just happened; introspection)
• Change (the main character creates a new goal that leads into the next scene; introspection or beat)

As you write a scene, keep cycling through these four options. Constantly pick varying tools for delivering your next idea or thought.

Some ideas are easiest to express in dialogue. Some are easiest to express as introspection. Knowing the four elements, you can pick the best tool for the job.

If it helps you, use the structure above as a handhold for writing scenes (for now).

Example

Say you want to convey that your characters are in a magical room.

Objective elements (the color of the walls, the dimensions, etcetera) are best given through description.

More subjective elements (how the room makes them feel, how they are awed by it, etcetera) are best given through introspection or dialogue.

The things the room actually does are best shown, as expected, through beats.

Example: how to do it badly

It might seem obvious, spelled out like this. But this is another simple thing that many writers skip or don’t pay too much attention, and it really hurts their ability to turn great stories in their head into great stories on the page.

They would use stilted, unnatural dialogue to give facts about the room.

They would use description to explain what the room does, instead of showing it through action.

They would ignore introspection, which reduces immersion as we’re not really seeing this magical room through the eyes of our main character.

Most of all, they’d probably struggle getting it on the page. Similar to how you can know exactly what kind of table you want to build, but will have a hard time doing so without using the right tools.