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 […]
I attended the same religious theater event two years in a row. The first time I found it lacking and dull; the second time I loved it. Yet nothing changed about the event itself: the costumes, acting, singing, dancing, and special effects were exactly the same. The only thing that changed was me. The event […]