Story Beats Presentation
I gave a presentation on Writing Powerful Story Beats as part of a free, online writing conference hosted by LDS Beta Readers.
You can now view a rerecording of the presentation:
The presentation slides:
Useful links:
I wrote three blog posts on this subject, which have additional examples and exercises: 10 Keys to Writing Story Beats, Action Beats, Dialogue Beats, and Beat Variation, and Writing Powerful Emotion Beats.
Also, you can learn more about dialogue beats in my post 10 Keys to Writing Dialogue in Fiction.
He couldn’t make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches the way Crystal did. Joey complained and whined when there was more peanut butter than jelly. The scent of bread took him back to the kitchen just months ago when his wife, Crystal stood in this exact same spot, smoothing the roasty-scented peanut butter with the strawberry scented jelly across the warm homemade bread. Peter started to cry and wet the bread.
Lisa smiled as the glass splintered against the expensive Italian marble tiles of the floor.
She wanted to leave it for one of the maids to clean up.
But that would mean her son, Michael might cut his foot. She ran to retrieve the broom. If only she could remember where the maids stored their equipment.