BLOCKING–LAYING OUT THE BEATS OF YOUR STORY
Novel writers can benefit greatly from an understanding of the blocking process, used by screenwriters. A really good story will take your reader on a fictional heart-stopping ride, flying along as if on a high-speed bullet train, rising and falling, until your story finally crescendos in a climax and slows with a satisfying conclusion and denouement.
If the term “blocking” is unfamiliar to you, it might be because it’s a word used more in the world of screenwriting than in fiction writing. Blocking means choosing which beats of a story best reveal what happens and then arranging the beats in a way that provides the greatest drama for your story.
Paul Lucey, teacher, screenwriter, and author of Story Sense (McGraw Hill 1996), concluded that blocking is one of the two master skills that screenwriters must have. Dr. Lucey noted in his book that the other is the ability to imagine both characters and scenes in the mind until the characters through action and dialogue in scenes become interesting and entertaining.
Characters with contrasting personalities when in the same scene tend to create conflict, rising tension, and drama. When characters have different needs and desires and want different outcomes for situations, they can take the plot in different directions.
The plot of the story rises and falls as a result of the scenes, each having a beginning, middle, and end. Scenes can be filled with varying degrees of tension. Scenes can create story questions, present choices, push forward or pull back or shift the direction of the story. Once you know the beats of your story, you can decide the best way to write those beats into scenes.
So how do you block out the beats? It’s pretty simple, really. Think about all the incidents involved in the totality of the story you want to tell. Now create a master list of those incidents.
Dr. Lucy notes that the blocking doesn’t come until after you have not only the basic idea for your story and the other elements: theme, concept, conflict, problem, etc. The plot beats can take the form of a list, an outline, or prose.
What you want to avoid is a flat plot where nothing really happens, the characters are happy, and life is wonderful. Conflict creates drama. How much better it is to create conflicts with villains who are tightly wound or problems that are not easily solved or characters who are on a collision course.
Try plotting a story using the blocking method and see if it works for you. The three-act story structure that movies and television shows follow works well for novels, too. Likewise, a good rule of thumb to follow for a novel is to write three scenes per chapter with major action-packed or tension-filled or “big” scenes scattered appropriately along your rising and falling plot line. When you know where you are going with your story, it’s easier to work with the plot. And blocking is a great tool.
