Outline vs. Freewriting, Structure in Narrative Writing pt. 3
Compulsive Writer's Support Group, on writing No Comments »Go directly to the other parts of the essay:
This is part 3 in my essays on writing. These will be on a podcast called The Compulsive Writer’s Support Group starting November-ish. You’ll be able to get links to it from here, as well as my site, www.mindofbryan.com.
We can look at other structures from other Mediums as well when we think about giving structure to our pieces. If you have an idea and you have no idea of how to structure it, we can think about things in acts. Giving just this much structure might give the organic writer some better concept of how to outline without interfering with their organic process. One of my degrees is in theatre, and I’m quite glad I did it, because the intense work of analyzing character and creating movements from words on a page is what gave me a good understanding of character, voice and motivation.
Theatre has a number of structures, from Beats to acts. A beat is the smallest structural unit of theatre. The story goes that when modern acting method was brought over to England and the United States by Stanislavski, he wanted to say “bit” but in his thick Russian, it came out as “Beat” and the term stuck. I believe this is a significant structural element that can be used in constructing a book as well. If we write a conversation, any kind of dialogue, we can think of turning points. Any turning point represents a beat. These points can be moments where advantage is gained or lost, information is imparted, a character loses it, or calms down. The entry of a new character almost always signifies a beat change, as does the exit.
When we look at a conversation, we should look at beats, and if things feel aimless, often that is a sign that we wrote a conversation without thinking about the structure of it, likely we spouted a lot of information without thinking about what it meant to either of the characters that said it. Exposition is tough, especially when you have a lot of it, and you feel like you have two people just spouting it off without any real reason for it. We can change that by giving them a reason to say it, give each of them a stake in it. Every beat has a beginning, and a turn. These are my terms, so you might not find them in any other places. Beats can be long or short. The centerpiece of a beat is a motivation, which literally comes down to what is this character trying to accomplish right now? When the answer to that question changes, you have a new beat. These beats are what give a story momentum and direction.
If you look at a conversation, and it feels flat, it is probably worth looking at it, and breaking it down to points where the conversation turns. If it doesn’t turn, or more importantly, turn enough times, it may not be an important conversation, and maybe you could do without it. If there is crucial plot information, you’re probably going to have to work it, to find points where significant development can happen. We as writers can very easily get lost in information, and thinking about what has to make it to the page to get the plot moving, while forgetting about developing our characters for a scene. Thinking about breaking these scenes into beats is maybe the best way to inject that development back in.
Sometimes, a beat breaks with a pause. You know that five minute lull? That is a break in a beat where the author hasn’t written the next beat yet, and that can be a great way to develop a character. If there are pauses while nothing happens, it can indicate contemplation, boredom, any number of isms that make a character tick. Somebody who is socially awkward might let this pauses drop without thinking about it, others may use it as a tool to force the other character into saying something in the uncomfortable silence.
When you string together enough beats, you get a scene. Some plays have scenes, and some don’t. Some just have action for an act and then more for another act, and one of the main elements that will dictate this is setting. One setting, one scene is often the rule. Shakespeare moves things around quite a bit, and so he writes scenes. In Waiting for Godot, Becket has a tree as a setting, and there are no breaks in action, though there are a lot of beats. Scenes are very much like what we have in our books, screenplays or other writing projects. They represent fairly major actions and movements of the story, and may be spelled out, or may be interpreted by the director. Scenes are more widely used at this point in film and books, but scenes are used extensively in theatre with origins before the mid 20th century. Read the rest of this entry »
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