Guest Blogger Jan Pezarro shares what she learned about beats, using her experience with lung cancer to illustrate physical, emotional, and setting beats. I hope you enjoy this entertaining and informative writing about different kinds of beats as much as I did. — Marlene
Jan Pezarro:
“A few beats missing here.”
In the first year of my MFA program, after 40 years in business and on my way to fulfill a long-held ambition to write a book, my mentor added this comment to my submission. I was pretty sure she wasn’t referring to golden or purple beets, but neither did I know exactly what she meant by “beats.”
My knowledge gap of storycraft tools and techniques was formidable. Lectures on structure, place, scene, and character sent me repeatedly to the internet for supplemental tutoring. The process reminded me of trying to read a text in the original Greek by translating each word in turn.
My mentor’s margin note sent me scurrying back online, where I learned there are several kinds of beats.
You may be familiar with the “Blake Snyder beat sheet,” a method for sequencing screenplay scenes, which Snyder describes in his groundbreaking book, Save the Cat! His fifteen beats offer screenwriters a template for tracking their heroes’ pursuit of their goals, from “Opening Image” to “Final Image” and all the plot events, wins, losses and subplots in between. Jessica Brody has since adapted Snyder’s beat sheet for novelists and memoirists in Save the Cat! Writes a Novel.
But the kind of beats I’m focusing on these days relate to smaller units of storytelling—sentences or phrases—that help plunge readers into the scene. Action beats, for example, depict what the character is physically doing, emotion beats reveal the character’s feelings, and setting beats provide context and depth.
Action seemed like a suitable jumping-off place. I went hunting for a place in my draft memoir where I could replace a dialogue tag (he said, she said) with an action beat.
Original:
If I was not sufficiently recovered from surgery, we would have to cancel the trip. “I should be OK with a September date,” I said. “That leaves two months for post-op recovery.”
Revision:
“I should be OK with a September date.” My shoulders slumped as I sighed in despair. But in the next moment, I straightened and looked at Andy. “It still leaves two months for post-op recovery.” I would just have to heal faster.
Just writing the action beat took me back to the moment. I could feel the hopelessness that I would be unfit for travel, and the moment of resolve that I would make it work. The beat added to the wordcount but made the narrative more interesting and moved the plot forward.
Next, I looked for opportunities to replace an emotion (sad, happy, angry, etc.) with an emotion beat that would reveal more about my character’s internal state.
Original:
“Have you ever experienced stigma because you have lung cancer?” Linda asked sadly. “It really hurts.”
Revision:
“Have you ever experienced stigma because you have lung cancer?” Linda hugged herself as her eyes filled with angry tears. “It really hurts.”
The emotion beat disposed of a dreaded adverb and added insight into the motivation for Linda’s next action.
A setting beat avoids halting the forward pace of the story by having a character take action within the setting, talking while observing the setting, or emotionally reacting to the setting.
Original:
The operating room looked like an ordinary room: four white walls with just a few cabinets and a long table covered with a gleaming array of medical instruments. The surgical team stood around a narrow bed in the centre of the room.
Revision:
The orderly wheeled my gurney into the operating room, maneuvering around a long table covered with a gleaming array of implements that looked like a buffet carving station. I didn’t recognize the room from what I’d seen in television medical shows.
I turned my head to look at him. “It looks like an ordinary room, not an operating theatre.”
The orderly arched a tweezed eyebrow and waved a hand at the assembled surgical team of ten. “What do you mean by an ordinary room?”
Adding action beats and dialogue to the setting picked up the pace while providing additional detail about the orderly.
Understanding and using beats with purpose has enriched my storytelling and breathed life into my characters. Best of all, I can’t wait to begin the revision process—to find places and spaces to achieve different effects and improve my scenes.
All I had to do was get the beats in.
Originally posted as “I Have The Beat,” in Brevity’s Nonfiction Blog, June 28, 2023
Jan Pezarro uses the power of storytelling to entice consumers, influence politicians, and motivate employees. She is currently querying a series of essays exploring the psychological impacts of illness caused by personal behaviour. Jan is an MFA student at the University of King’s College in Nova Scotia and is 40,000 words into her first book, a memoir called Breathing Lessons: How To Outlive Lung Cancer With Medicine And Mindset. Read more on her website.
#justwrite #iamwriting #iamawriter
