Remember how one of your favourite songs starts, before the riff or whatever really kicks in, and imagine continuing it in that vein for a few minutes.  It doesn’t work, does it?  Sure, there are genres of music I know and like where minimalism and repetition works, but where favourite songs are concerned it’s all about the build-up, the contrasts, the wait for some bits to come round again, and the extra sweet part that comes just once and makes it super-special.

Scriptwriting needs to function in the same way.  And the key to being able to write scripts that have the pace and urgency of music is mastery of the beat.  A lot of authors on screenwriting waffle about story beats without actually providing a useful definition of what they are, which is kind of critical if you want to have a technical vocabulary that’s shared among people who use its terms.  So, here’s my definition:

A BEAT IS THE SMALLEST UNIT OF STORY

Meaning, that a beat is what advances your story in some way.  Quite often this means choices by characters.  Or revelations of character.  Ideally, those chunks will be one and the same.  And that’s what a beat is.  Get it? 

The substance of the beats you’re working with will vary according to the nature of the story you’re writing.  In a soap opera, it’s fine to see people buy milk and converse with shopkeepers before sitting down for a cuppa with a neighbour.  You’re unlikely to see that in a film, any more than you are to see a gun run out of bullets in an action movie, or an inventor deciding not to use their time machine in a science fiction story. 

Beats are shaped by genre then.  Big beats make for big stories, in many cases.  But big here does not equate with physical enormity.  Sure, the monster ripping through buildings in Cloverfield is a screen-filling presence from what I hear, but what I’m getting at is what I term the DEPTH of a beat.  That is, its resonance within the story.

Magnolia is full of deep beats that move the story on.  There are numerous scenes with real emotional power: the relationship of Tom Cruise’s character with his father.  William H. Macy’s ongoing desperation.  Pretty much everyone in that film is caught up in matters of real weight.

So, beats can have depth through their emotional richness, especially where that connects with the film’s theme and isn’t just random catharting, which is what soap operas do too often.  I’d say that beats can also have depth through the way they echo or mirror the beats of other stories. 

This is where we get into the realm of incorporating myth into film.  Look at The Descent for instance.  A group of women friends go pot holing together with tragic consequences.  To begin with, they’re easily identifiable types.  As the tension ratchets in the film, they’re pushed into decisions that polarise the group – physically as well as emotionally, since they’re split up.  And things enter the realm of the mythic when one of the women, who has narrowly avoided death on numerous occasions, rises from a bloody lagoon.  The image is powerful, and carries associations of birth and rebirth, painting her as a woman who’s been reborn as a goddess of vengeance.  Even if you don’t think that consciously and literally, the image is strong enough to stay etched on your mind as evidence that the character’s nature has profoundly changed.

In planning a story then, get your beats right and the script will be a dream to write.  Tackle them ahead of time rather than as you go along, to ensure that you’ve got a story that moves smoothly and carries your audience with it.  Good advice, which I increasingly follow in developing my own projects: it really does make the whole process of writing easier and more enjoyable.