Beating the Story by Robin D Laws

Author:Robin D Laws [Laws, Robin D]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gameplaywright
Published: 2018-05-01T04:00:00+00:00

Building Incidents as You Map

Mostly, when outlining using beat maps, you’ll devise plot incidents the same way you would when working with a prose outline. You envision events, follow their logical consequences, and fold in previously envisioned story seeds as you move from premise to storyline. The outline records but does not alter your original choices.

Now and then, however, you might spot a rhythmic issue brewing and add, rearrange, or adjust beats to fix it. Too many arrows pointing in the same direction for too long points to a deadening rhythm that will cause audience members to check out.

A cluster of down arrows might suggest that your drama has become dourer than intended. Give your character a victory, whether it means altering the tenor of an existing Dramatic scene or inserting one in which her petition can be granted without breaking from the characters’ established desires and personalities. As always, see to it that inserted scenes develop the core question in some way.

Too many Dramatic up arrows in a row instead indicates that you’re being too easy on your protagonists, and that someone or something in your story ought to tighten the screws on them. Again, you can invent a new scene to do that, or adjust a current one.

Clusters of crossed arrows might point to a muddle, where no one ever suffers a clear emotional win or loss. Ambiguity loses its power when overused, introducing an untethered, meandering rhythm. Lean harder on some of those beats, forcing them to land with greater decisiveness.

On the procedural front, an abundance of consecutive down arrows suggests that your story has turned into something of a slog. Audiences expect more vicarious gratification from their procedurals than from dramas, and you don’t want them to pull away from your hero in despair, or come to question whether they’ve placed their trust in an unwise, unlucky, or incompetent hero. Throw your character a bone or two before re-invoking the impossible odds she still faces.

Too many triumphs in a row shows you where you’re losing suspense. Victories follow the law of diminishing returns when clustered together, each providing less uplift than the last. Fortunately, introducing beats that increase our hero’s problems, or simply threaten to do so, is the easiest task in procedural writing.

Ambiguous outcomes in Procedural beats are less satisfying in drama. Instead of invoking the eternal contradictions of the human experience, they simply make the literal progress against the adversary’s plan hard for the audience to parse. Every so often the classic, “Do you want to hear the good news first, or the bad news?” situation can land with enjoyable irony. But it doesn’t bear much repetition.

In either story type, keep an eye on your information beats. Where possible, avoid Reveals without preceding Questions to make us want the exposition they provide. Information thrives in your story’s setup. The further into it you go, the harder it becomes to introduce exposition without killing your momentum.

Answer any outstanding Questions before the story’s climax begins.

If you can’t do that, do it before it ends.

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