Questionable: Beats

Dre Sanders asked:

I would love for you to expound on beats, and how you arrange your scenes with them. Do you track every beat? How do you use them to raise the stakes? What exactly do you consider a beat? I ask this because I’ve read a half dozen different descriptions of beats.

Beats are one of those writing terms that mean pretty much whatever people say they mean. The closest I can come to a universal definition is that they’re a unit of storytelling, but what kind of unit depends on who’s talking. Since I’m the one talking, here’s what I mean by the term:

A beat is unit of conflict. A scene is made up of beats, in the way that a novel is made of scenes. That is, each unit of conflict has a protagonist with a goal and an antagonist who blocks that goal; that dynamic creates conflict and the two characters struggle and at the end of the unit of conflict, one of them wins which either throws the story into the next unit of conflict or ends the narrative. That applies to classic linear novels, acts, scenes, and beats, all units of conflict.

Look at the scene from Moonstruck where Ronnie and Loretta first argue, the first part of which is here:

Protagonist: Loretta

Antagonist: Ronnie

Loretta and Ronnie have come upstairs after his emotional outburst about his brother Johnny causing him to lose his hand many years before. Loretta’s goal is to get Ronnie to agree to come to her wedding to his brother. Ronnie has already refused because he blames Johnny for ruining his life; his goal is to make Loretta go away and tell Johnny that he still hasn’t forgiven him. To get her goal, Loretta has to calm Ronnie down, so she feeds him a steak.

Beat One: Sharp Words

When he’s calm, Ronnie says his girl was right to leave him. This train of thought is not going to get him to the wedding, plus practical Loretta has no time for dramatic self-pity. She tells him he’s stupid. He tells Loretta she doesn’t know anything about him. She tells him he cut off his hand to escape a bad relationship because he’s a wolf who needs to be free, and that the reason he’s alone now is not because of Johnny but because of he’s afraid of what he’ll do to himself if he ends up with the wrong woman again. Ronnie says “What are doing?” Loretta says, “I’m telling you your life!” Ronnie says, “Stop it!” because she’s telling him the truth.

Turning Point: Ronnie changes the subject because he’s just lost that beat conflict, and because he’s really looking at Loretta for the first time: “Why are you marrying Johnny?”

Beat Two: Shouting

Now Loretta’s on the defensive and tells him she’s doing what she has to, and he calls her a fool. They yell at each other about each other’s mistakes, the tension escalates from sharp words to shouting : “A bride without a head!” “A wolf without a foot!” until Johnny knocks the table over.

Turning Point: Set free from his self-pity and misery, Ronnie kisses Loretta.

Beat Three: Physical Passion

Both are overwhelmed by the kiss—Ronnie: “It’s like I’m falling!” Loretta: “I have no luck!”—so Ronnie sweeps her off her feet and tells her he’s taking her to bed.

Turning Point/Climax: Practical Loretta who’s engaged to Ronnie’s brother says, “I don’t care about anything. Take me to the bed.”

Each beat is a unit of conflict, Loretta vs Ronnie, each beat escalates in tension and raises the stakes of the conflict, and the final beat ends the conflict with an act whose consequences will throw the story into the next scene. The scene changes the plot of the story which was about Loretta getting ready to marry Johnny, and it changes the characters in it who are not the same people at the end of the scene that they were at the beginning.

Most of your scenes won’t be this high in emotion, and most of the time, you don’t need to worry about beats; if the scene is working, don’t mess with it, even if it doesn’t have escalating beats. All that matters is that it works on the page, not that it conforms to some abstract set of rules. But when you have a scene that you know is broken, analyzing its beats can be a way to find the broken places.

So how do you use beats to fix a scene?

First of all, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. I know I said that before, but people tend to obsess on this stuff, so if you like the scene, even if you can’t identify any beats, leave it alone.

But you don’t like the scene. Something’s wrong that you can’t put your finger on, but it is definitely not working. Look, not all scenes are worth saving; some are so bad that trying to fix them is just washing garbage. So the first thing you ask yourself is, “Do I need this scene?” If the answer is, “No,” cut it and move on. The second thing you ask yourself is, “Since I need this scene because of X (fill in your own reason), is there another way I can accomplish X by folding it into a scene that is working or writing a brand new scene?” If the answer is “Yes,” do that. If the answer is “No,” you’re stuck and you’re going to have to fix that scene. That’s when beats come into play.

So you go back to the classic, basic conflict questions:

Who is my protagonist? What does she want?

The protagonist is the person who owns the scene and what she wants is her goal. If you’re not sure who the protagonist is, pick one of the characters and give her the scene. If you’re not sure what her goal is in the scene, give her one based on your best guess from what’s there.

Then you go back to the second basic question:

Who is my antagonist? What does he want?

Ninety percent of the time, this is where your scene went south: No antagonist. You have people in the scene with your protagonist, but there’s no conflict. Scenes with no conflict are pretty much just Chat, that murderer of Story. So look at the scene and find somebody with motivation to block your protagonist in pursuit of her goal. If there isn’t one in there, seriously consider cutting the whole thing. No? Okay, put in an antagonist with a clear goal that blocks your protagonist.

NOW you’re ready to look at beats. Figure out the steps of your conflict (Arguing, Shouting, Kissing) and divide the scene into those parts. Then treat each part as its own unit of conflict. The protagonist wants this and does this, the antagonist responds by doing this, the interaction grows more heated until one or the other is pushed into doing something he or she wouldn’t normally do, like Johnny questioning Loretta about her life instead of moaning about his own: “Why are you marrying my brother?”

That broken barrier turns the story/scene in a new direction, leading to the next beat, which continues to build the escalating exchange, just at a higher level: arguing escalates to shouting.

Lather, rinse, repeat for each piece of the scene. Each beat should have greater tension and higher stakes, pushing the protagonist and antagonist toward the final moment, the climax, when one wins and one loses and the story changes (because every scene in your story should move the plot and impact character).

Obviously if you do a beat analysis for every scene in your story, you’re going to lose your freaking mind, so again, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

So how do I do it? The opening scene to a story I’m writing is not working. That’s okay, it’s a first draft, it’s not supposed to be great, but I’m not sure I should even keep it because it mainly serves to move the main character across a street and into a house where she sees the antagonist. Please note, she’s not in conflict with him, she just sees him. Intellectually, I know I should just cut this scene. Emotionally, I want to keep it, I just don’t know why. So first, I break it into beats:

1. Zo and Gleep are across the street from Dark House, Gleep explaining the situation. No conflict, just exchange of information.

2. Zo follows Gleep into the house and notices significant details. No conflict.

3. Zo looks through a doorway, sees the story antagonist, and evaluates the situation and telling Gleep what to do. No conflict.

Usually when I break a scene down by beats, I find out that one beat has no conflict or that the conflict circles the drain instead of escalating in each beat, but this sucker has NO conflict. It should be cut.

I want to keep it.

So back to beats and conflict. This is Zo vs. Gleep. Zo is Gleep’s foster mother. Gleep is ten. Zo’s goal is to get the rest of her foster kids out of the house without drawing any attention from the police. Gleep’s goal is to get Zo into the house to solve a problem there. So Zo’s goal to get the kids out and Gleep’s goal to get Zo in aren’t in direct conflict. Crap.

First beat is Gleep getting Zo to go into the house. Zo says no, she’s not going to break and enter; Gleep refuses to explain what happened, just that the kids are inside and the cops have them. Zo has to go in to get her kids; she’s exasperated, but not afraid. Gleep wins this beat.

Turning Point: Gleep pulls Zo into the street and she follows. The scene/story turns from Zo insisting the kids come out of the house because she’s not going to break in to Zo crossing that boundary and agreeing to go in to get them.

Second beat is Zo at the door of the house which has a security spell on it, which shows her that there’s more going on than just kids breaking into a house. Gleep goes in before she can stop her and after an argument, soshe tells Gleep to invite her in.

Turning Point: Zo goes in and feels the evil that permeates the house and knows that this isn’t about saving her kids from the cops, it’s about saving her kids from the house.

Third beat: Zo looks through a doorway and sees that the cops that have the kids are high level and smart. Caught between the dangers of the house and the cops, she makes and implements a plan to get the kids out, overruling Gleep’s insistence that she has to go into the room.

Turning Point/Climax: Gleep shoves open the door and walks in, blowing their cover, and Zo is discovered, too. The story has changed from Zo trying to get her kids out of the house and away from the cops to Zo talking the cops out of arresting her kids as fast as possible to get them all out of the house.

That’s still not good, I still don’t know why that scene can’t be cut, and it’s still too much description, most of it lousy, but now I have a plan that at least has escalating action and emotion, which means I can do the rewrite and then leave the first scene there until I have the entire story finished, then go back and sharpen it to foreshadow the ending. Or cut it which is probably what I should have done a long time ago.

That’s how I use beats.

Standard Disclaimer: There are many roads to Oz. While this is my opinion on this writing topic, it is by no means a rule, a requirement, or The Only Way To Do This. Your story is your story, and you can write it any way you please.