Understanding Story Beats And How They Relate to Scenes

Good news: if the scenes work, so do the beats.

Photo by Sophie Elvis on Unsplash

Yesterday afternoon during a co-working call with Ninja Writers, we started talking about ‘story beats.’ And I had to admit that I didn’t really understand them.

That’s embarassing. I mean, isn’t that one of those things that someone teaching fiction writing should know inside and out?

I associate story beats with the super fast paced publishing that some indie writers who put out a book a month (or more!) do. So, I guess I’ve just never taken the time to learn, since I don’t fall into either camp.

After doing some research today, though, I realize that I do, in fact, use story beats in my writing. I just don’t use the term. And that made me feel a lot better.

Here’s a definition from Story Grid:

So what is a beat?

A beat is an identifiable moment of change. And like all units of Story, the writer must have the raw materials to create a stable beat. There is an inciting incident, a complication, a crisis, a climax and a resolution inside each and every beat.

So beats are the stuff that scenes are made up of. The atoms of a story. And part of the reason why I’ve never paid…