How to Create Sugar Cookie Paintings
A while back I was in charge of a youth activity, and we decided to do sugar cookie paintings. Luckily I tested it out ahead of time, because the first set of instructions I found on the internet created a complete flop. I did some more searching and my second attempt worked much better.
Step 1: Create sugar cookies and cut them out as canvases.
I like this recipe on allrecipes.com. It has a 4.5 star rating with over 6000 reviews, and it worked really well for cookie painting.
I rolled the cookie dough rather thin–it rises a fair bit while cooking, and if you’re making a large canvas the thicker it is the more likely it is to crack and break.
If you want exact canvas shapes you can measure with a rule and cut. You can also cut your canvas shapes in paper, set it on top of the cookie dough, and cut it. I made squares, rectangles, and circles of various sizes.
Note: Because it rises, the edges aren’t going to be quite as crisp as you originally made them. But that is part of the charm of a cookie painting.
One of the most useful things you can do is roll your dough out on parchment paper. This makes it so you don’t have to peel your cookies off your surface and then lay them back on a cookie sheet (doing so can cause tears or stretching). Once you’ve rolled and cut the dough you just pick up your parchment paper and set it on the cookie sheet. Once you pull your cookies out of the oven you can pick up the parchment paper (with cookies on top) and set it straight on a cooling rack. That way your cookies don’t overbake. If you try to remove a large cookie from a cookie sheet or from parchment paper before it’s completely cooled it breaks pretty easily.
Final note for this step: I baked the cookies for 8-9 minutes. I was less concerned about super soft cookies than with having a canvas that would really hold together.
Step 2: Create paint-like frosting.
A lot of frostings don’t work well for painting–you want the consistency of acrylic paint, that dries fast.
This frosting from bon appetit worked great.
Step 3: Color creation
As with any paint mixing, you can get a full range of colors if you have red, yellow, blue, white and black.
If you’ve made your frosting, you already have white. I bought a basic box of liquid food coloring, with red, yellow, blue, and green. Surprisingly, in my grocery store it wasn’t next to the cupcake holders or the sprinkles–they had the gel food coloring there. The normal box was actually next to the spices. I also bought a box of black, so I could make darker colors.
The Food Network has a great page with instructions on how to make a huge number of colors. You can follow their directions, or just use the page for inspiration. What you’ll notice is that for minor color variations, sometimes you need to work with a large amount of frosting, because a single drop of color will change it drastically. Also, don’t be afraid to add a completely opposite color to create your final color.
When I painted my Van Gogh inspired cookie, I made a bunch of colors, and then to create slight variations in blues I mixed some of my colors together.
Step 4: Create a base for your painting
You need to create a base of paint for your cookie. A white base is a nice standard color, but if you know what colors you’re going to be working in you can use something different. I painted the whole cookie a dark blue since “Starry Night” is largely dark blue. That made it easier later on–if there was a tiny bit I didn’t paint, it was still a good color.
Tip: buy new paintbrushes that have never been used for anything else. Because seriously, you’ll want to eat this.
Step 5: Imitate a famous painting or create your own design.
I had Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” up on my phone. First I made some lines for the major designs, and then I hopped around between different sections of the painting, letting one part dry while I worked on another section.
Tip: Use a toothpick for the super small details.
Most people at the activity created their own designs: a watermelon, a smurf, a quilt, abstract paintings, etc.
My Van Gogh cookie canvas was about 5 inches by 6 or 7 inches, and it took me about an hour and fifteen minutes to do. A less complicated painting will take less time.
Step 6: Display your cookie
Because seriously, it’s going to be awesome.
And Van Gogh’s original painting, for comparison’s sake:
And a picture of me holding my cookie, so you know I didn’t just find a cool picture on the Internet and pretend that I made it:
Step 7: Eat your cookie before it goes bad.
Just like sandcastles, sugar cookie paintings can’t last forever. And that’s part of the joy. Confession: I’ve always wanted to eat a Van Gogh.
My 3 Year Old Took Pictures of Our Beach Trip…. And They Are Awesome
A few weeks ago, I took my daughters with me to Oregon to visit relatives. We spent four days at the beach, mostly in the Newport area. While we were at Nye Beach and Seal Rock beach, I gave my 3 year my cell phone and let her take pictures.
It was pretty cool to look through her hundreds of pictures afterwards and get a three-year-old’s perspective.
I was surprised by how many pictures there were of feet.
There were also dozens–yes, dozens–of pictures of my back side. Apparently, I am primarily made up of long legs. I’ll spare you all but one.
Sometimes my daughter decided to focus on more than just lower body parts. She wasn’t particularly interested in heads though.
I promise I do have a head though!
My daughter also took one lovely picture of her younger sister:
She was really good at noticing shadows, footprints, and patterns in the sand:
And I have to admit, my daughter took some of the prettiest pictures of anyone in my family:
And to finish, here’s her shadow self-portrait:
Writing Powerful Emotion Beats in Fiction
An emotion beat is what makes the novel or short story distinctive—we can be inside a character, experiencing the emotion with her, and that makes the reading experience powerful. For it to work, the right emotion beats must be used in the right spots.
In Part 1 of my series 10 Keys to Writing Story Beats in Novels, I discussed the story beat, the beat sheet, and the pause or inaction beat. In Part 2 I discussed the action beat, the dialogue beat, and beat variation. In this post, with keys 7 through 10, I will discuss the emotion beat in depth.
Key 7: Use Emotion Beats to Connect Readers to the Characters
I heard someone say that we can’t really understand any of the people around us, and that is why we love reading. Only through reading can we can truly grasp the emotions, desires and perspective of someone other than ourselves. The emotion beat is what creates this connection between reader and character.
Image by Kevin Conor Keller, Creative Commons License
There are four basic types of emotional beats:
1. Internal Physical Sensations
“I didn’t get the job,” said Russ.
Irene felt sick to her stomach. It was their last chance—they had needed that job desperately.
2. External Physical Sensations
“I didn’t get the job,” said Russ.
Suddenly, the warm air blowing from the heater felt too hot, stifling even. Irene opened the window, letting in the cold of winter.
3. Physical Actions (including hand gestures, facial expressions, and larger physical movements)
“I didn’t get the job,” said Russ.
Irene pressed her lips firmly together, trying not to say something she would regret later.
4. State the Emotion
“I didn’t get the job,” said Russ.
Irene was frustrated. He could’ve at least visited the company’s website before going into an interview. But as always, he insisted on doing it blind.
A great resource for physical sensations and actions that show emotions is the book The Emotion Thesaurus. You’ll notice that there is overlap between emotion beats and action beats; I’d categorize something as an emotional beat if conveying emotion is the most important function. Stating the character’s emotion should always be the last resort, though it can be used effectively.
Key 8: Use Emotion Beats that are Distinctive to your Story World or Character
The four basic types of emotional beats start to feel repetitive if that’s all you use in your story. Another type of emotional beat that’s extremely effective is using actions or thought patterns that are distinctive to your character or story world. A wizard in Harry Potter might reach for a wand or use magic in certain emotional states. A motorcycle rider may convey his emotions through how he rides his bike.
Photo circa 1980s, via Seattle Municipal Archives, Creative Commons license
All sorts of things can become an emotional beat that is carried throughout your story: habits or tics or possessions. How you vary them will then create a powerful emotional reaction for you reader.
The superhero novel Dangerous by Shannon Hale is full of examples of emotional beats that are distinctive to the characters and the story world. The main character, Maisie, is half-Latina, and her cultural heritage impacts her emotional beats. Here Maisie is listening to her mother on the phone, and emotionally reacting to her words:
“Maisie, you haven’t been…contenta lately.” She used the Spanish word for content or happy, as if it were too stark, too uncomfortable to say it in English. I hadn’t realized that she’d noticed. “Are you now? How do you feel?”
This emotional beat is distinctive to Maisie, her relationship with her mother, and her cultural heritage.
One of the other characters in Dangerous, GT, often chews gum. The way he unwraps it or the way he chews it is a point of emotional control for GT, and so the description of his gum (or other taste metaphors) it is often used as an emotional beat in connection with his character.
At one point in the novel, GT is holding another Maisie’s father hostage. He has set demands for Maisie, and a time for when her father will be killed if she doesn’t agree. Maisie asks how she can know if GT will keep his word.
“You don’t know,” GT said, snapping on his gum as if we were chitchatting about the weather. “But you have no other choice. Two minutes, ten seconds.”
If at all possible, use emotional beats that are distinctive to your character and storyworld. It will make all the difference in your storytelling.
Key 9: Use Advanced Emotional Beats to Better Convey Your Character’s Feelings
In addition to beat distinctive to your character and story world, there are a handful of other advanced emotional beats that can powerfully convey feelings:
1. Setting: Use what your character notices about the setting to convey emotion.
Example of using a setting that parallels emotion:
“I didn’t get the job,” said Russ.
Irene forced her eyes away from him, out the window. The last leaf that had hung onto the tree all winter long fluttered to the ground.
2. Metaphor or Simile
Example of using a setting that contrasts emotion + a simile:
“I didn’t get the job,” said Russ.
Irene forced her eyes away from Russ, out the window. The green on the tree was oversaturated, like a poorly-made Technicolor film, mocking her with its cheeriness.
3. Mini Flashback
“I didn’t get the job,” said Russ.
Irene had known this could happen, yet his words still shook her, the way the doctor’s words had shook her when IVF had failed for the third time. She knew what would happen now—the sinking despair, the gradual recovery, and all the while the knowledge that this had been the last chance.
4. Mini Flashforward
“I didn’t get the job,” said Russ.
Irene looked at the floor. One of these days she would leave him, take her terry coat and walk right out the front door.
5. Surreal Images
“I didn’t get the job,” said Russ.
She had expected this, but that did not stop the rush of despair. The couch swallowed Irene whole.
Image by James Tworow, Creative Commons license
Using these techniques well will create a distinctive style and voice, in addition to conveying emotion. Of course if you overuse any one of these types it will probably backfire.
Here’s a passage from Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler that uses almost of almost all of these emotional beats. The main character has spent his life working for a totalitarian regime. Now he is a political prisoner for that same regime. Here is his emotional reaction when he finds out that one of the other prisoners has been tortured by steambath:
He lit his last cigarette and with a clear head began to work out the line to take when he would be brought up for cross-examination. He was filled by the same quiet and serene self-confidence as he had felt as a student before a particularly difficult examination. He called to memory every particular he knew about the subject “steambath.” He imagined the situation in detail and tried to analyse the physical sensations to be expected, in order to rid them of their uncanniness. The important thing was not to let oneself be caught unprepared. He now knew for certain that they would not succeed in doing so, any more than had the others over there; he knew he would not say anything he did not want to say. He only wished they would start soon.
His dream came to his mind: Richard and the old taxi-driver pursuing him, because they felt themselves cheated and betrayed by him.
I will pay my fare, he thought with an awkward smile.
Note: credit for coming up with these categories of emotion beats needs to go to author Janci Patterson, whose new book Everything’s Fine is an excellent example of emotion beats.
Key 10: When Something Important or Shocking Happens, Use a Complex Reaction Beat to Show the POV Character’s Interpretation of Events
Most of the time you can follow an action beat with another action beat, or a line of dialogue with another line of dialogue. Yet that’s not always enough.
If there’s an action beat or a dialogue beat that is shocking to the viewpoint character, then to take advantage of the moment we have to follow this with a fleshed out reaction beat, that includes a feeling/thought, a physical action, and speech. Otherwise something like this happens:
“I quit my job,” said Russ.
“I’m sure it will all work out,” said Irene.
We have no idea how Russ or Irene feel about the situation. This could be devastating to them. This could be an everyday thing. This could be the breaking point for Irene, yet she’s trying to put on a hopeful face. We have no idea, and because there aren’t any emotional beats, we feel disconnected from the characters. And if the dialogue or the action is truly shocking or important to the characters, a one sentence emotion beat is probably not enough.
Shocking action or dialogue must be followed by a series of beats that create the reaction—a standard way to do this is use a physical reaction beat, an emotion/thought reaction beat, and then a dialogue reaction beat.
“I quit my job,” said Russ.
Irene coughed her coffee out of her mouth, sending flecks of brown liquid across the table. She sucked in a deep breath, stood, and wiped off the table. Worry gripped her. This could not have happened at a worse time. Finally she found the courage to speak.
“I’m sure it will all work out,” said Irene, putting on a brave face.
We now understand this dialogue and what it means to the characters because a fleshed-out, complex reaction beat has been used.
Authors Janci Patterson and Heather Clark provide this formula for complex reaction beats:
In describing what he calls “Motivation-Reaction Units” Dwight V. Swain thinks the order should be reversed, with the feeling or thought coming before the physical reaction. (Also see Heather Clark’s and Janci Patterson’s posts on the subject.) Regardless of the order, if it’s a key emotional reaction, you probably need thought/feeling, action, dialogue, and potentially another powerful emotion beat.
In the classic novel Howards End by E. M. Forster, a character named Helen becomes engaged to a man, Mr. Wilcox, that she has only known for a few days. Her Aunt Juley goes to try to break off the engagement. Unfortunately she broaches the subject with the wrong Mr. Wilcox.
Writing Exercises
Complex Reaction Beats Exercise
Here’s a passage of dialogue without any emotional reactions to accompany some rather big statements:
“I’m having a baby,” said Tessa. “You should’ve told me earlier,” said Mark. “Would it have made a difference?” asked Tessa.
Now rewrite this dialogue from Mark’s POV, with physical reactions and internal reactions.
“I’m having a baby,” said Tessa. (non-POV character)
[Write Mark’s physical reaction] [Write Mark’s internal feeling/reaction]
“You should’ve told me earlier,” said Mark. (POV character)
[Write Tessa’s physical reaction] [Write Mark’s interpretation of her reaction]
“Would it have made a difference?” Tessa asked.
If you need to, you can switch the order of the beats, sub out an emotional beat, or add additional emotional beats. My writing group did this exercise and came up with a wide variety of reactions for the characters.
Beat Mania Exercise
Take the line of dialogue “It won’t be ready in time.” (Or you can choose a sentence from one of your stories.)
Now write ten different possible emotional beats, using each type of emotion beat discussed in this post:
- Internal Physical Sensations
- External Physical Sensations
- Physical Action
- State the Emotion
- Emotion Beat Particular to Character/Story World
- Setting-related Emotion Beat
- Metaphor or Simile
- Mini-Flashback
- Mini-Flashforward
- Surreal Imagery
(This should turn out like the “I didn’t get the job” example used throughout this blog post.)
Of your results, which emotion beat do you like best and why?
Revision
Print out several pages from your novel. Highlight and label each of your beats (physical sensation, setting, flashback, stating the emotion, internal sensation, physical action, etc). Are you doing all one type? Ignoring one type altogether? Skipping places that need beats? Now that you’ve analyzed, revise!
Check out my new novel!
If you enjoyed this post, please consider learning about my new spy novel, The Secret Life of Miss Mary Bennet, coming in April 2021 from Tule Publishing.
Read More:
Original drumming at the beach image by Jason Turgeon, Creative Commons license
Action Beats, Dialogue Beats and Beat Variation
In Part 1 of my series 10 Keys to Writing Story Beats in Novels, I discussed the story beat, the beat sheet, and the pause or inaction beat. In this post I will go in depth on action beats, integrating dialogue and action beats, and the importance of beat variation.
Key 4: Use Action Beats to Forward the Story
Action is movement, the process of doing something, often with a goal or aim in mind. Action is core to having a plot or building a novel. Action beats are born from character desires. (For a great article on character desires and roles, read The Prism of Roles by Sarah Blake Johnson.)
Here is a list of 10 major types of action beats or, to extend the metaphor from my first post, action molecules. This list is not meant to be comprehensive, but rather provides a way to start thinking about how action beats work. Examples of each action beat are taken from the first scene of Brandon Sanderson’s epic fantasy novel, The Way of Kings. Following the list is an example of multiple types of action beats from a short story with a contemporary, realistic setting.
- The Summary Action Beat: while everyone says “show don’t tell,” there are times when it is appropriate to tell or summarize. We don’t need to see every moment of breakfast, unless it’s essential to the plot or to character development.
“He rounded the creature, picking his way more carefully across the battlefield.” - The Habitual or Recurring Action Beat: similar to the summary action beat, the description of an action that occurs multiple times.
“Taln had a tendency to choose seemingly hopeless fights and win them. He also had a tendency to die in the process. He would be back now, in the place where they went between desolations. The place of nightmares.” - The Long Shot or Extreme Long Shot Action Beat: borrowing a term from cinematography, this is the big picture view of the overall action. This can overlap with a setting beat but action should be occurring.
“Many of the bodies around him were human; many were not.” - The Medium Shot Action Beat: the standard view on action, focusing on the action of one or two characters.
“The figure in white and blue glanced toward him.” - The Close-Up or Extreme Close-Up Action Beat: a very close shot of a character’s action, such as a tear rolling down a cheek.
“Kalak frowned as he stepped up to the base of the spire.”
This is a chart of basic cinematography shots. Any of these shots could be used as a metaphor for different types of action beats. - The Flashback Action Beat: this refers to an action that is not physically present, but that occurred in the past.
“As always, the ten of them had decided upon it before the battle.” - The Future Action Beat: an action that will happen in the future.
“The survivors would make their way here.” - The Sensory Action Beat: action that focuses on the senses, or the lens through which the character is noticing the action (seeing, feeling, hearing, tasting, smelling). Thus, the focus of this action beat is on the POV character’s body and experience as a lens for the outside action.
“Though none of the bodies around him stirred, an indistinct haze of sounds hung in the air. Moans of pain, cries of grief. They did not seem like the sounds of victory.” - The Internal Action Beat: an action beat of something that occurs within the main character’s body (i.e. teeth chattering, stomach clenching).
“Even after all these centuries, seeing a thunderclast up close made Kalak shiver.” - The Mental Action Beat: A decision or the process of thinking can be an action itself, We’re most likely to see this action if it’s the point of view character doing the thinking.
“What if he just decided…not to go? Perilous thoughts, perhaps traitorous thoughts. He hastened on his way.”
You can see Pulitzer-prize winning author Jhumpa Lahiri seamlessly mix different types of action beats in her short story, “Unaccustomed Earth”:
Key 5: Integrate Dialogue and Action Beats Together
Dialogue beats and action beats go hand in hand. Often characters use their bodies while speaking. Sometimes physical actions aren’t essential to the words characters are speaking, or can be left implied. At other times it’s useful to weave dialogue and action beats together, which allows them to build on each other.
An easy way to integrate dialogue and action beats is to use an action beat instead of a dialogue tag. For example,
“I didn’t want to,” said Lil. “It just happened.”
becomes
“I didn’t want to.” Lil dropped her cigarette on the pavement. “It just happened.”
If I were to turn this photo into a scene, the small, physical actions of the characters would be just as important as their dialogue. (Photo by Pedro Ribeiro Simões, Creative Commons license.)
A great example of integrating dialogue beats with both action beats and pause beats comes from Ray Bradbury, in Fahrenheit 451:
Montag stopped at the door, with his back turned. “Millie?”
A silence. “What?”
“Millie? Does the White Clown love you?”
No answer.
“Millie, does—” He licked his lips. “Does your ‘family’ love you, love you very much, love you with all their heart and soul, Millie?”
The writing here is so brilliant – the licking of the lips sends a shiver down my spine, and I know exactly how the character is saying his lines.
Side note before we move on: I’ve written more about dialogue beats in my post 10 Keys to Writing Dialogue in Fiction.
Key 6: Vary Your Beats
If you have too many of one type of beat in a row, you risk boring your reader. This is especially true of setting beats and dialogue beats. Variation (while maintaining your writing style) is key to keeping your reader hooked.
Image by Lynn (Gracie’s Mom), Creative Common license
Using setting beats requires description, and description automatically halts the forward pace of the novel. Older novels like Lord of the Rings could get away with pages of description with no character action, but for the most part that won’t sell today. It’s better to choose a few key setting descriptions and intersperse them throughout action or dialogue. You can also describe setting without slowing the pace by having a character take action within the setting, talk while observing the setting, or have an emotional reaction to the setting.
Too many lines of dialogue from one character can also cause problems. Cynthia Whitcomb and Anne Warren Smith advocate the Three Beat Rule of Dialogue, arguing that you should at most have three sentences of dialogue before you interrupt that with an action beat or an emotion beat. They also recommend pruning down your dialogue to get it to three beats—often your characters can say something more powerfully in three sentences than they can in six.
Here’s an example from The Great Greene Heist of breaking up five beats of dialogue into smaller groupings with action beats in between:
“Look on the bright side—you can always join the Gamer Club.” Keith checked the time on his phone. “I have to go. Got a lot of planning to do between now and the election. Have to get my acceptance speech—I mean, my campaign speech—ready.” He slipped his phone into his pocket. “I would tell you to call my cell if you wanted to discuss this more, but I almost forgot—you aren’t allowed to carry one.” (50)
Of course, the Three Beat Rule has been broken a lot. Take this passage of dialogue by the character Clarisse, in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451:
“Sometimes I’m ancient. I’m afraid of children my own age. They kill each other. Did it always use to be that way? My uncle says no. Six of my friends have been shot in the last year alone. Ten of them died in car wrecks. I’m afraid of them and they don’t like me because I’m afraid. My uncle says his grandfather remembered when children didn’t kill each other. But that was a long time ago when they had things differently. They believed in responsibility, my uncle says. Do you know, I’m responsible. I was spanked when I needed it, years ago. And I do all the shopping and housecleaning by hand.”
This paragraph is just one portion of several pages during which Clarisse speaks, almost uninterrupted by any other sorts of beats. As Bradbury shows, you can break the three-beat rule of dialogue as long as the writing is good.
When it comes to action beats or emotion beats you don’t have to worry quite as much about overkill with too many beats in a row. Novels will often contain page after page of action beats, though you’ll notice that emotion beats will need to be inserted regularly, or the reader stops caring about the action. Conversely, you can have a number of emotion beats following each other—taking the reader in depth into your character’s psyche—but ultimately you’re going to need action beats to carry your reader forward.
See the third post in this series for an in-depth look at emotion beats.
Writing Exercises
Image by Glen Scott, Creative Commons license
Action Beats Exercise
Write one paragraph in which a character takes a trip to the grocery store. Use just ONE type of action beat (for example, only long-shot action beats, only extreme close-up action beats, or only future action beats).
Then write a new paragraph in which a character takes a trip to the grocery store. This time use as many different types of action beats as possible.
Dialogue Revision Exercise
Take a passage of your writing and try to apply the three beat rule, either by cutting lines or breaking up the dialogue with action or emotion beats.
Check out my new novel!
If you enjoyed this post, please consider learning about my new spy novel, The Secret Life of Miss Mary Bennet, coming in April 2021 from Tule Publishing.
Read More:
Part 1: Intro to Story Beats
Part 3: Writing Powerful Emotion Beats
10 Keys to Writing Dialogue in Fiction
Original soccer image by Steven Damron, Creative Commons license
10 Keys to Writing Story Beats in Novels (with Exercises)
Key 1: A Story Beat is the Smallest Unit in Fiction
The definition: A beat is the smallest story unit in fiction. Individual words are like atoms. Story beats are the molecules, the real building blocks of the story world. There are different categories or types of story beats including a line of dialogue, a moment of action, a moment of reaction, a moment of inaction, a visual image, an emotion, a setting, a theme, or an instance of meta-storytelling.
A beat is often a sentence long, though sometimes it will be half a sentence or two to three sentences.
A group of beats together builds a scene; a group of scenes builds a chapter; a group of chapters builds a novel. But if the beats aren’t working right, the novel will crumble.
A metaphorical depiction of molecules, from The Golden Book Encyclopedia, 1959. Image Credit: cori kindred, Creative Commons license
We use story beats naturally, but when we analyze them consciously it allows us to improve them. For example, dialogue beats often follow each other, and if we just have a series of dialogue beats it speeds up the pace of the scene. It’s also useful to interrupt a series of dialogue beats with an emotion beat or an action beat, and sometimes doing so isn’t optional, or we will lose or frustrate our readers.
I’ve tried to create a comprehensive, yet in-depth look at beats in this three-part blog post series. Each blog post includes several writing exercises.
Part 1: Intro to Story Beats (this post)
- Key 1: defining a story beat
- Key 2: the beat sheet.
- Key 3: the pause or inaction beat.
- 2 Writing Exercises
Part 2: Action Beats, Dialogue Beats, and Beat Variation
- Key 4: in-depth on action beats.
- Key 5: integrating dialogue and action beats.
- Key 6: varying your beats (and the three beat rule).
- 2 Writing Exercises
Part 3: Emotion Story Beats
- Key 7: using emotion beats to connect your reader to the character.
- Key 8: using emotion beats that are distinctive to your story world or character.
- Key 9: advanced emotion beats.
- Key 10: complex reaction beats.
- 3 Writing Exercises
Key 2: Use a Beat Sheet to Outline your Story
What is a Beat Sheet? A beat sheet is a sort of outline or sequencing of your story, using a list or bullet points. The term is used primarily in screenwriting that has been borrowed by novelists.
You can think about a beat sheet as your story skeleton. The beats referred to in the beat sheet are actually bigger-picture than the beats I’m discussing in this blog post. If you’re interested in creating a beat sheet, I strongly recommend the Save the Cat. The book focuses on screenwriting, but it works great for novel structure as well. Another useful resource is novelist Dan Wells’ seven point plot structure, which you can view in a series of youtube videos.
Key 3: Incorporate the Pause or Inaction Beat to Imitate Life, Build Tension, and Give Reaction Space to your Reader
As writers, we want our characters to always be doing things. Yet sometimes a pause can be powerful, or is the natural reaction of a character.
There’s a great example in The Life of Pi by Yann Martel. The main character, a young Indian boy named Piscine (nicknamed Pi), decides that he wants to be Christian, Muslim, and Hindu. As luck would have it, all three of his religious leaders run into Pi and his parents at the same time.
Pause beats are used masterfully throughout the passage:
The intensity increases throughout the passage with each pause. Sometimes conflict in dialogue occurs at a machine gun pace, but often it’s in little spurts, with pauses in between.
The most common type of pause is actually the use of a dialogue tag. Now admittedly, a lot of dialogue tags aren’t actual pauses—they’re just orienting the reader, telling us who is speaking. Yet sometimes dialogue tags are used to create a short pause, a short beat for either the characters or the reader, simply by where they are placed.
For example, take The Great Greene Heist by Varian Johnson. It’s an awesome heist/political intrigue novel set in middle school:
Here the dialogue tags are performing their basic function: letting us know the speaker. Yet both tags also create a pause. In part this imitates the natural pauses in human speech. By adding a dialogue tag, it implies a longer pause than a period would create. In the above example, both pauses show a progression of thought, and add emphasis to key parts of the dialogue.
Exercises
Image by Tommy Wong, Creative Commons license
Exercise 1: Pauses
Write a dialogue between two characters (your own or someone else’s) where the pauses are as important as what is said.
Exercise 2: Analyze a Scene
Choose a scene from one of your favorite books and analyze how the author uses beats. Does she use lots of action beats? Do they always follow dialogue with emotion beats? When are setting beats used and to what effect? Etc.
Check out my new novel!
If you enjoyed this post, please consider learning about my new spy novel, The Secret Life of Miss Mary Bennet, coming in April 2021 from Tule Publishing.
Read More:
Part 2: Action Beats, Dialogue Beats, and Beat Variation (Keys 4-6)
Part 3: Emotion Story Beats (Keys 7-10)
10 Keys to Writing Dialogue in Fiction
Thoughts on Working with a Translator
A few weeks ago I received a random email from a professional translator, Gabriel González Núñez, who had fallen in love with a play I wrote, “In Which Eve Names Everything Else.” It placed second in the 2013 Mormon Lit Blitz contest, and the piece really stuck with Gabriel, who wanted to translate it and publish it to his blog.
I was psyched. That’s pretty awesome to have one of my works translated to another language, and have it available to a whole new set of readers. So of course I gave him permission.
William Blake – The Angel of the Divine Presence Bringing Eve to Adam
I read Spanish fairly well, so I asked if Gabriel could send me a copy for it before he posted it. From the first read, I loved the translation.
When he sent me the translation, Gabriel mentioned a few of the tough choices he’d had to make. For one thing, in Spanish a word is shared for chipmunk and squirrel. Adam and Eve making a distinction between the two animals makes sense in English, but not in Spanish. I recommended choosing entirely new rodents that look similar, and Gabriel chose hamster/guinea pig (hámster/cuy).
The other problem was my use of the word hangnail. In my play, it’s one of the first things Eve names after leaving the garden. Yet in Spanish the word for hangnail is padrastro, which also means father-in-law. That’s problematic as neither Adam or Eve have a father-in-law, and it would be confusing for readers. Gabriel used the word elbow instead, but he wasn’t happy with it, so I had to think about why I chose hangnail in the first place.
What I realized is that I chose hangnail because it’s a defect in the body, something that couldn’t happen in the Garden of Eden. It’s also foreshadowing for when Cain kills Abel: if you can get a hangnail, you can also die.
When I sent him my thoughts, Gabriel chose the word moretón. It means bruise, and creates a nice, visual imagery. In my honest opinion, it’s is a better word than hangnail. If I were to revise the play in English, I’d probably substitute the word hangnail with the word bruise. It’s more evocative. So it turns out the Spanish version may in fact be better than the original English.
This was a fun experience for me. I know it’s rare for an author to be able to actually go back-and-forth with a translator and talk about meaning, intent, and influence some of the choices being made. And now I can say that my work has been translated to another language.
Read the original play, in English
Read the translation, in Spanish, by Gabriel González Núñez