NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month, is in full swing. If you are participating and on par, today’s target word count is 28,333. If you’re behind, there’s time to catch up, but the hill to climb is getting steeper. If you’re ahead, awesome! If you wrote at all this month, and you wanted to, you’re already a victor!
Let’s check in on how we’re all doing:
Goals
Blueshift — 50k goal
Bonetti — 50k goal — at 42,500 as of 18 Nov
Clio — revise Fog — started
DConrad — 50k goal — at 17,000 as of 17 Nov
ElenaCarlena — 20k goal — will start after the election -- 2,000 as of 18 Nov
MettleFatigue — 1 short story — 12 words as of 10 Nov
NoBlinkers — 50k — at 1,722 as of 4 Nov
Reppa — just write! — 41,000 as of 19 Nov
RexyMeteorite — 80-100k goal — almost 70,000/100,000 as of 17 Nov
Strawbale — The Travellers — unk as of 4 Nov
TheRiversChild -- novelette to be 8500-10,000 words -- a few hundred as of 10 Nov
(I will continue to update the word counts from the comments.)
Last time I hosted a WriteOn, I discussed story beats, which was an attempt to provide a useful definition for a term often bandied about.
One of the common uses for beats is a “beat sheet”, or a specific set of beats to provide a particular story shape. Save the Cat is probably the most well-known example, and it’s used frequently in both novel writing and screenwriting circles. It provides a comfortable, predictable story shape.
Here’s an example (with explanation) of the beat sheet. And the Save the Cat website analyzes lots of media to show how it can be applied.
But that’s only part of the story.
I have tried to use a beat sheet before, and here’s the major mistake I made the first time I did: I treated it as the only thing the story needed. I carefully crafted enough to cover the beats, and I ended up with an unsatisfactory result in synopsis (and it was even more obviously deficient when I wrote it out).
The beats may be necessary to fill out a specific story shape, but they are not sufficient to create a full story. Maybe it works for movie scripts, which is what Save the Cat was originally targeted at (there’s even a novel-specific sequel book to address the different requirements for a book-length work), but it could also be argued to be the cause of movies feeling very paint-by-numbers since the book was published.
The beats make the story comfortable, but the space between the beats is at least as important as hitting the beats.
My enlightenment came when I was working out a paranormal romance story. Romancing the Beat is an excellent guide to a romance story shape (and author Gwen Hayes even works a novella-length example in the book) (here’s a blog post that lists the beats). I had tried a sweet romance, it didn’t work at all (again, the beats may be necessary, but they’re not sufficient), but when I used it as a guide for the A-plot (that is, the romance) in a paranormal romance while also ensuring a good B-plot (that is, events in the world), I could see my blind spot. You don’t have to hit only the beats, they’re just there to ensure your story fits the shape the beat sheet suggests — but there can be a huge amount of space between beats, if that’s what the story needs.
If you poke through Save the Cat analysis posts, you might see what I did, that while they can find the beats in the stories, there’s almost always skipped or discarded pieces because they’re part of the story without being beats to hit the story shape.
That’s the first point.
The second point I wanted to make is that the beats don’t have to take that specific form. That is, the suggested beats serve a purpose in the story, which is what gives the story its shape. Does the hero have to despair? No, not necessarily, it’s just success shouldn’t look certain at that point. But it doesn’t have to be howling in despair in the rain to make it work.
My favorite example is the betrayal trope. It’s a cheap and easy way to do a plot twist or story-changing reveal, and to get hero(es) and villain(s) back into conflict. It’s an excellent second act Midpoint “everything just changed” moment, or an excellent reveal at the Act 2/Act 3 transition to trigger the Dark Night of the Soul. It’s used a lot, and sometimes it doesn’t make sense.
It’s not the betrayal that’s important, nor that a friend is now an enemy. The important story shift is that it changes context and adds to or creates a fresh conflict. The betrayer doesn’t have to be an enemy, or a dupe of the enemy.
My favorite version of this specific trope is in the Marvel movie Guardians of the Galaxy (minor spoiler). Specifically, when Drax (team member) does a space call to Ronan the Destroyer (villain), it’s selfish and perfectly in character — and doesn’t mean he’s working for the bad guys. He’s still a team member, and stays one through the sequels. But it’s perfectly within character to issue the challenge, and it serves a similar purpose in the story. The bad guy shows up, the chase resumes, they don’t get away, there’s a fresh fight (that also keeps the villain relevant), and the team falls apart as a result — only to come back together for the third act. All the value of a betrayal, without Drax ever switching sides.
That’s my second point.
But I want to close with a thought: beat sheets are really just guidelines. They’re a handy benchmark to ensure a story matches a specific shape and feel. Nothing more, nothing less. To me, they’re more useful as a way to figure out why a story feels flat or seems to be missing something, and what it is, rather than a Mad Libs to fill in to craft the story.
They’re also a recent invention. Many, if not most, writers have never used or heard of a beat sheet, and the classics were definitely written without them. Like all forms of writing advice, they’re a tool to be used or discarded, depending on what you need, what you’re trying to accomplish, and what problems you need to solve.
Happy writing!
Exercise: a beat sheet is the scope of a story, which is too big for an exercise, so let’s pull back up the fight scene beats:
- A & B square off
- A establishes superiority over B
- the fight turns and B is now beating A
- B defeats or disarms A.
Pick two beats (say, “A&B square off” and “A establishes superiority over B”), and find the in between stuff that isn’t covered by the beats. What brief story can fit in between that isn’t just filler? (For instance, in The Princess Bride duel, Inigo and The Man In Black are demonstrating their mastery in action and in references to fencing masters.)
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