Beating the Story

by Robin D. Laws

  This allows you to then introduce the karaoke club scene with a moment where the guy walks out as Jeff heads in. Jeff receives his pat-down, meets for a while with the mob boss, then excuses himself to head to the washroom. There waits the box, already open, with a pistol inside.

  Realizing that the audience will likely want to see Jeff’s mystery accomplice acknowledged in some other way, you follow up the assassination sequence with a quick moment in which he pays the guy off as he gets on a boat for parts unknown.

  Foreshadowing Dramatic Revelations

  Dramatic narratives frequently turn on revelations about the characters’ collective pasts, which exert a bombshell effect on their desires and unmet needs in the present.

  The emotional impact of such Reveals can vary depending on how you frame them.

  Reveals that come out of nowhere may cause your audience to withdraw from your narrative out of a sense of betrayal. They’ve formed attachments to the characters based on a presentation you now suddenly show to be false. The resulting sense of disorientation may add power to your story, if you can deftly perform the extra storytelling work required to draw the audience back in to your abruptly reconfigured emotional landscape.

  More often you’ll want to prepare for your story’s truth bombs to explode under more controlled conditions. Foreshadow the Reveal through the judicious use of Pipe or Question beats. When using this technique, the Reveal instead plays as the surprising satisfaction of an expectation you’ve already established.

  When you do this with a Pipe beat, viewers in retrospect see that you laid the groundwork for the Reveal without having thought much about it beforehand. When you do it with a Question, you create a sense of curiosity that will nag at them until the Reveal occurs.

  The difference between a Pipe beat and a Question is essentially a matter of emphasis. In the first case you foreshadow the eventual Reveal indirectly, perhaps while seeming to establish something else entirely. In the case of a Question beat you clearly invite the audience to wonder what’s going on.

  For example, in your dramatic story, perhaps you decide that your climactic pivot occurs when the great unspoken shame between Tom and Juliette comes out. When he was a kid, she abandoned him in a hot car, requiring a rescue from paramedics. After the incident betrayed child and neglectful mom both carried on as if nothing had happened—but Tom still looks at the world through the lens of that profound betrayal, and Juliette ended her career, afraid that continued notoriety would someday lead to someone digging up the story.

  You choose to set this up during Tom and Holly’s drive up to visit his mother.

  The subliminal, Pipe version of the beat might have Holly leave Tom in their car as she pops into a roadside convenience stop to buy a replacement charger for her phone. As soon as she gets inside the store, Tom jumps out of the car to the gas bar, where he grabs a squeegee and starts to clean the windscreen. This need to busy himself signals that he’s nervous about the upcoming visit, but doesn’t underline the fact that he never sits in a parked car alone. You portray it as a tic even he isn’t aware of.

  The Question version of the same beat plays out with the following differences: Tom gets out of the car and just paces around. When Holly emerges from the store, he furtively jumps back in the car. Here he appears aware of his tic and anxious to conceal it from his wife. This more overtly odd behavior invites us to wonder just what the heck is going on with him.

  Reiterated Question Beats

  In some cases, you may find it necessary to repeat a question at various points to keep it active in the reader’s mind, before paying it off with the corresponding Reveal beat. So you might write more than one Question beat, all of which culminate in a single Reveal. Any writer of any experience level, on any project, can expect to be vexed by the question of how much repetition your story requires or can stand. Too much and readers grow impatient; too little and they get confused. In general, dramatic storytelling, where the writer, director, and editor control the pacing and can assume the viewer watches the piece with few or no breaks, tolerates less reiteration than the novel, which the reader completes in multiple sittings, possibly with long breaks between them. Make reiterated Question beats more acceptable to readers who don’t need them by placing them in different contexts each time they appear.

  Recaps

  In serialized fiction you may need to revisit information already revealed in prior installments, as some time may have passed since your viewer watched the episode whose threads you are now picking up. You might do the same in prose fiction piece too long to be read in a single sitting.

  The urge to recap in a film or other work meant to be consumed in one go suggests an overcomplicated plot. You might be better off simplifying the burden of information the audience must bear than giving it to them all over again.

  Be doubly wary of the stock scene in which a character recounts not just the plot but comments on how outlandish and unlikely it all is. This suggests a lack of faith in the plausibility of your own plotting, which you are now hoping to wink your way out of.

  Recaps cause pacing problems when viewers don’t need them. Unfortunately we come to that problem again: different audience members take in and retain information at varying rates.

  To lessen the pacing tax you pay for introducing them, add something new to the reiteration of previous material: a fresh emotional reaction from one of the characters, or a previously unrevealed nugget of exposition that throws the rest in a new light.

  Climactic Reveals

  Often the Reveal introduces a new Question reflecting the changed situation or understanding it establishes. Reveals during the climax finally answer the biggest, most salient Questions raised by the core question.

  Loose End Reveals

  Reveals appearing in your denouement tie up loose ends, satisfying reader curiosity about unanswered Questions. The heavy plotting of a mystery novel often requires an extended passage of text in which loose ends are dispatched. As the reader’s emotional engagement drops to nearly zero after the resolution of a story’s central dilemma, you want to confine this to as few beats as possible.

  If you reach this stage of your outlining or mapping and see that you have a large number of loose ends to explain away, examine each with the mission of pulling as many as possible back into the main action. Better yet, see if you can streamline the details of your plot to so that you never need to introduce these Questions in the first place.

  If you still have gaps to bridge, you may find yourself able to see new beats that make perfect sense for your underused character or storyline. You might find inspiration from the scenes you want to bridge, looking for thematic parallels or ways to cross previously unconnected threads.

  Combination Beats

  Some beats serve more than one narrative purpose.

  A beat can be both Dramatic, resolving an emotional conflict between two characters, and Procedural, bringing about a change for better or worse in the protagonist’s external circumstances.

  When information is hidden, brought into question or revealed in a Dramatic or Procedural beat, you may wish to make a note of that as well, to more easily track the placement of exposition in your story. Some writers using the beat system will prefer to break these into two separate beats; others, to stack two beat icons on top of one another.

  An example of a combination beat occurs in The X-Files episode “Home” (see beat 19), where Procedural progress and an amusing Dramatic interchange between the two leads go hand-in-hand.

  To keep your map clear of visual clutter, note only the combination beats that really strike you as important. Otherwise, you can safely default to:

  (if the lesser beat is an information beat) the foundation beat

  (if both beats are foundation beats) a Dramatic beat, on the grounds that the emotional line of the story matters more than the logistica
l

  Flourish beats never combine with other beats. By definition, they mark moments that do not advance your story. Foundation and information beats always develop the story.

  Goal Shifts and Wavering Protagonists

  In real life, we tend to have multiple goals in life, and waver between them in a fitful, meandering way.

  Fictional narratives generally edit away those quotidian shifts in purpose, focusing on protagonists who want one thing and clearly pursue it. Maybe in scenes not shown they’re taking care of a miscellany of unrelated tasks, but in the story, procedural characters work to thwart an adversary plan and dramatic characters pursue the fulfillment of an emotional desire.

  Sequences in which the protagonists waver from their goals, pursue goals incidental to their main goals, or seem to switch goals cause audiences to draw away from your story. Adjust or remove them as early in the process as you can.

  Audiences take their sense of orientation in the narrative, and their understanding of what they are meant to hope for and fear, from the protagonists’ goals. When a story flies in the face of those expectations by altering a protagonist’s goal midway through, viewers will pull back from the story you’re telling.

  This may be your intent, in which case you want that reaction.

  Let’s say, however, that you wish to retain conventional audience investment in your story. You will need to either:

  remove moments where the protagonist abandons, temporarily or otherwise, the initially established or implied goal

  or revisit your opener to introduce the hero’s true goal

  Hamlet appears to waver considerably in the course of Shakespeare’s eponymous play. His dramatic poles are action vs. contemplation, so this is perfectly fitting. But although he agonizes over the burden he bears, he never actually abandons his goal of thwarting Claudius, whose adversary plan is: “Get away with murder.”

  Stories in which the protagonist acts aimlessly are usually ones in which the hero’s goal is to find a meaningful goal. Establish this in your opener and the audience may grant you the leeway to explore an existential narrative of this sort, provided you keep the emotional rhythm varied.

  Some people do behave arbitrarily in real life. If your story exists to explore the psychology of people like this, establish that expectation as early in the story as you can. We trust such people even less in fiction than we do in reality, a dynamic you may wish to give some thought to early, while refining your premise. You might address this, for example, by telling the story through a viewpoint figure acted upon by your unpredictable character.

  (More often, when someone we encounter in real life acts with seeming randomness, the failure is observational—we don’t have enough context about the person’s life to see what’s really driving them. As a writing exercise, you might spend some time contemplating the most enigmatic folks in your orbit and try to work out what makes them tick.)

  Your Closer

  Whatever structure you choose, eventually your narrative will move toward a resolution. Though the nature of that conclusion varies according to protagonist type, the shift toward it remains remarkably consistent through all stories.

  (Your experimental quasi-narrative may not move toward a resolution, but if you’re writing one of those you stopped reading this book long before now.)

  Escalation Point

  Some sort of ending probably came to you as part of your moment of initial inspiration. Even writers who work seat-of-the-pants style usually have some sort of provisional inkling as to where their characters might take them. As you worked out your outline or draft, you may have discovered a different conclusion that you now prefer.

  Regardless of how your ending occurred to you, when you are ready to write or outline it you will be able to identify an Escalation Point. This is the spot in your narrative where events converge to pull the lead characters to the resolution appropriate to their types. The Escalation Point puts into the place the conditions for the conclusive answer to your core question.

  Is Luke Skywalker a zero or hero? Bang, here’s the Death Star.

  Will Indiana Jones stop the Nazis from using the Ark of the Covenant? Bang, they’re about to conduct the ritual.

  Will Macbeth enjoy the fruits of his crime? Bang, Macduff’s forces are now advancing on Birnam Wood.

  In a world where she must marry to thrive, will Elizabeth achieve the right match? Bang, here’s Lady Catherine, having arrived to thwart her desire to be with Mr. Darcy.

  Will Jokerman maintain his carefully cultivated ironic distance from the horrors of war? Bang bang bang, a sniper is firing at his company and when he sees the shooter he’s going to find out.

  The restatement of the core question might be evident to the reader, or might not.

  Luke doesn’t know at the Death Star briefing that it leads to the moment that will mark his transformation.

  Elizabeth Bennet has a pretty solid idea that all will be for naught if Lady Catherine gets her way.

  Whether obvious or subliminal, however, the reader can detect a heightening of the stakes, a sharpening of hopes and fears.

  From the Escalation Point on, a well-wrought conclusion refers to nothing that does not move the character toward her final conclusion.

  Justifying Dramatic Turns

  The Escalation Point in a dramatic narrative generally arises from a decision made by a key protagonist. This choice may be one in which the character permanently embraces one of her dramatic poles and rejects the other. If so, ensure that this transformation occurs visibly, as the result of events in the story. This renders its emotional logic understandable to your reader. Otherwise this life-changing moment seems to occur on a whim, disconnecting us from the protagonist and the narrative. When big shifts occur for no apparent reason, readers lose the ability to read situations and predict their implications—and so can no longer reliably feel hope or fear as to their outcomes.

  In your dramatic story, Holly’s dramatic poles are empathy vs. control. Her empathy side leads her to wants to help Juliette. Her control side leads her to want to achieve dominance over her. If at the Escalation Point of your story Holly abruptly drops her empathetic side and spirals into the obsessive need to control both her mother-in-law and her husband, and we don’t see the incident that sparks that shift, we’ll lose our identification with her and likely feel that we missed a crucial step in the narrative.

  Later in the process you may find that editors, clients, or readers fail to follow the reasons driving a dramatic turn that you intended to be explicable. This indicates that you failed to give the events leading to the turn, or the turn itself, sufficient emphasis.

  Clearing Out Information Beats

  The conclusion may turn on a Reveal, but once escalation has begun, the time to introduce new information in the form of Pipe and Question beats has passed.

  If you see them in your map on the wrong side of the Escalation Point, find a way to move them to the other side of it.

  That’s why there’s a briefing sequence before the Death Star attack: to give the audience all the information they need and then get out of the way. (Note by the way that although it follows a classic lecture format, complete with galaxy-far-far-away PowerPoint, it does not play as emotionally inert. It is the Reveal to a Question beat posed at the very beginning of the film—what’s in those plans that Darth Vader wants so much? It lands as an up beat, in which we see the plans as reward for the group’s efforts throughout the long chase-and-rescue sequence inside the Death Star.)

  Clearing Out Flourish Beats

  Likewise, flourish beats go by the wayside after the Escalation Point.

  Gratifications and Bringdowns don’t advance the story. If you think you need one at this late point, you have misconceived your conclusion and need to rethink it.

  Don’t stop for Commentary
beats. In some modes, for example if you’re writing in a 19th century style, you might come back to these in a denouement or coda, but when you’re between the Escalation Point and resolution readers have no time for editorializing. They’ll skip through it on the page and sit in frustration during a performed piece, waiting for the declaimer to shut the hell up.

  Refining Transitions

  Economy has now become key, so keep the number of scene transitions to an absolute minimum. When you do jump between scenes, make them Outgrowths if at all possible and Meanwhiles or Continuations when not.

  If you’re stuck with a Break, first rethink the events of your conclusion in hopes of substituting a scene or scenes connected by a less jarring transition. Given no other choice, find a stylistic note allowing you to recast it as a Rhyme.

  Flashbacks accompany information beats, which ought to be on the other side of the Escalation Point divide. They may be the best way to convey Reveals, but don’t leave them in without asking yourself if the beat they transition into can be moved back. If you do leave in a Flashback, that means you’ll also be including its outgoing counterpart, the Return. That’s two shifts in time in the sequence that most thrives on forward momentum.

  If a Flash Forward makes sense in your conclusive sequence, and you are not following a stroke of weird genius unique to your premise, you have probably picked the wrong series of conclusive events entirely.

  The sight of a Viewpoint break in your conclusive sequence rings the loudest alarm bell of all. If you have to jump into the perspective of a character who has never before been the emotional focus of a scene to tell your story, you have built yourself a Jenga tower, not a coherent narrative.

  (Authors most often try to get away with this when they’ve established a first person voice and then realize they have to hide their protagonist’s actions from the reader during the climax—a huge cheat. Or they’ve just remembered that they’re killing off the protagonist and need someone to carry on the story after the dust gets bitten—also unforgivably sloppy.)