What is a story beat, actually?
When you look at a book from afar, you see a lot of words. Or maybe chapters. Or, if you’re a more experienced writer, you might see scenes.
But what are beats?
To answer that, we have to go back a step.
What is a story?
That might seem obvious, but it really isn’t. A series of cute scenes between your characters isn’t a story. Your character going on adventures isn’t a story.
Here’s how the Cambridge Dictionary defines it: “a connected series of events.”
So a story needs two things:
- events
- that are connected.
The definition doesn’t say connected how, so I’ll add my own take: they have to be connected toward a point. The cute scenes become the story of how two people fell in love despite their differences. The adventures become the story of how your character managed to get back home even though she’s just an average girl thrown into a fantasy world.
Which brings us to the events themselves.
What is a beat?
A story beat is an event that advances the story. Meaning, it’s connected to the story as a whole: after it happens, the story is somewhere it wasn’t before.
So what counts as connected, and what doesn’t?
Not connected:
- Your character gets into a series of fights. Each fight is its own event, and she walks out of every one the same person, heading for the same place.
- Your character has a cute conversation with her friend about the friend’s new boyfriend. It’s the friend’s story, not hers.
- A description of a cool city your character is visiting.
Story beats:
- Your character is kidnapped, and decides she needs to get home. (The inciting incident.)
- Your character discovers the cute guy she fell for is the son of her worst enemy, and breaks up with him. (The breakup.)
- The main suspect dies, and the detective has to question everything. (The twist.)
Notice what the second list has that the first doesn’t: a consequence. Something happens, and because of it, something else has to happen. The consequence is where the connection lives.
That’s also how a “not connected” event can become a beat. The fight where she loses her sword, and has to go find a new one. The conversation where she realizes her friend is dating the enemy’s son. The city she’s passing through, where she’s recognized. Same event, but now linked with the others to form a story.
Is a novel all story beats?
Yes and no.
The beats are the skeleton of a novel. If you have chapters that aren’t connected to any beat, it’s like having an extra arm with no bone in it, dangling off the side.
But if you only have beats back to back, with no breathing room, the novel won’t feel fleshed out. The reader needs the cute conversation and the cool city too, as long as they hang off the skeleton. They’re where the reader gets to know your characters.
So it’s a balance: beats to hold the book up, and room around them to live in.
Seeing the skeleton of your own book
Once you’ve written a draft, the skeleton is hard to see: it’s buried under the flesh, which is the point. That’s what Mara → Cards → Fill from your book is for. Ghostkey reads your manuscript and lays it out on a board, one card per beat, telling you which scene each one lands in.
From there you can see both sides of the balance at once: where the beats crowd each other with no room to breathe, and where a long stretch of chapters sits between two of them.
If you want to try it on your own book, Ghostkey is free to start.