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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
I wrote my first book when I was 5. It was titled The Turtle That Got Too Close To The Sun. Here’s my 5-year-old author picture (aka my kindergarten school picture): I wrote the story, and then my mom helped me lay it out in multi-page form. I drew the illustrations in black ink, and then […]