Improving Beats
I've decided on a new format for planning and documenting story beats. This will help me; maybe you as well.
I’ve been spending a lot of time planning the first book of my space opera. At this point I have a journal/book full of notes, a complete story arc, and one for each of my five principal characters. Each arc comprises 100, or so, story beats. That’s a lot! One thing I set out to do was to work out how the characters interact with each other at an emotional level, more than I have done in past books. I want to improve how I describe emotions in my writing.
When I write, the descriptions of my character’s emotions are more clinical than visceral. I know this, (but I haven’t heard readers complain). I want to improve, so as a result, I created my character beats using the following format:
I have pages and pages of these. Here is an actual example for the First Officer.
This approach not only lets me plot out the character arcs, but the emotional arcs of each character.
Along the way, I realized there is a lot of sensory information going on in my story, so I went back and added five more bullet points to each beat:
I like this approach to laying out beats so much, I’m going to add this approach to the beat sheet portion of my writing app, Auteureist.
I'll make this my standard beat format:
I know this is a lot of work, especially for a pantser such as myself, but this approach allows me to focus on the parts of writing in which I want to improve. Maybe you can use a similar approach to improve your own writing.
When I write, the descriptions of my character’s emotions are more clinical than visceral. I know this, (but I haven’t heard readers complain). I want to improve, so as a result, I created my character beats using the following format:
- Beat
- Emotion(s) felt
I have pages and pages of these. Here is an actual example for the First Officer.
- Beat: Alien boarding party materializes [the human ship is blind and has no prior knowledge a ship has approached them.]
- Emotion(s) felt: Panic/disorientation. Quickly gives way to focus and training.
This approach not only lets me plot out the character arcs, but the emotional arcs of each character.
Along the way, I realized there is a lot of sensory information going on in my story, so I went back and added five more bullet points to each beat:
- Sound
- Smell
- Taste
- Touch
- Sight
I like this approach to laying out beats so much, I’m going to add this approach to the beat sheet portion of my writing app, Auteureist.
I'll make this my standard beat format:
- Beat
- Emotion(s) felt
- Sound
- Smell
- Taste
- Touch
- Sight
I know this is a lot of work, especially for a pantser such as myself, but this approach allows me to focus on the parts of writing in which I want to improve. Maybe you can use a similar approach to improve your own writing.