Plotting beats, breaking them down, and character arcs… oh my!
A long title, I know, but with the last week of book planning fast approaching, I thought I’d jump into my blog and write a little bit about how I tend to write out my story beats, how I break them into story segments, and how I decide on character arcs.
Before I delve into my own process please let me point out that this is what I do right now. I have been writing for a long time and this works for me… now. It might not be the best approach, and you may have a better approach (which I welcome, please drop it in the comments), but all in all book planning is personal and often hard to wrap your head around if you’re a chaotic ADHD Gemini monster like I am - the fact that I can even sit down and do this is beyond what I would have thought capable a few years ago, so confusled (a real word in my personal vocab) was I with what a good story plan looked like!
So let’s get into it!
Writing Story Beats
What are beats?
Good question - the easiest, and probably not 100% correct, way I can describe them are the stand out moments that join everything in your story up - like a string of pearls. Your story is the wire which runs from A to B. The pearls are the delightful fancy bits that make the wire look good. Ok, that’s probably a terrible analogy but at the same time is it?!
If you were to describe your favourite book or movie to a friend who had no clue of the story, you’d hit all the points in the story you thought were interesting or important. They are the beats.
How do you come up with the beats? My personal favourite thing to do is have a good synopsis written first. When you have your synopsis at the front of your project, it gives you great direction with everything else.
If you want to be GOOD LAWFUL you could start by writing out the story beats from your synopsis first and then fill in any gaps in between for things you want to happen to lead your characters a particular way. Or, you could be like me, CHAOTIC LAWFUL and just start imagining the story from the start and then write down everything you imagine happening of importance in a linear manner. Or if you have a different way of determining your beats, do that!
How do you store/display your beats?
Personally I use the Trello app, which is probably very similar to a lot of planning apps you can get, but I love the flow of it. It lets you create cards which you can move around a board, which I find really helpful! My first port of call is always to just create a card for every beat and keep them in one long row, but I have, in the past, used post-its which is nice and tactile and if you have the ability to keep a clean desk space or planning space then go for it! It’s also fun to use different coloured post-its for different kinds of things like character-driven moments, relationship stuff, and whatnot.
Let’s break it down
It’s my personal choice to write out my beats first and only THEN break them down into parts.
Depending on the type of book you’re writing you might use a particular story structure, which I recommend Googling (or using whatever search engine you enjoy, Ask Jeeves if he’s still working!) so you can make an informed decision. Not only does this help keep your story clear and concise, but it helps you keep visual on where you are in your story and how well-balanced it is.
Personally I use the 5-act structure which is:
Exposition
Rising Action
Climax
Falling action
Resolution
But there are others out there which you can play around with. Don’t be afraid to subvert expectations, but also don’t forget to know what expectations people have (insert winky-face here).
Whether you’re using post-its or a planning app this is where I would move my cards into the acts they fit into. It’s really helpful to do this before you start writing because you can immediately see if your Exposition is overloaded, or your Rising Action / Climax are lacking and it gives you a chance to fix these points before you start writing. It’s not as fun to fix once your draft is complete! Trust me!
Have fun with this part and don’t be afraid to look at your acts and think they need more, or less, beats. If you don’t think the rising action is exciting enough now is the time to add more! Go wild!
Character arcs
I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again. I still fail to fully plan character arcs in a way I’m happy with, but this is purely a lack of experience in some respects. I have relied on my brain to keep track far too often, and yes it works sometimes but I have many a book that sits in its draft folder because I couldn’t quite marry the characters to the plot in a meaningful way. It’s not a huge problem because editing exists (gasp), but if you know up front what you want your characters to go through, plotting an arc - even if it’s really simple - can and will help you out.
This is where I tend to double up on my acts - as I keep the act and the arcs in a heading on Trello and then colour code my character arcs accordingly and keep the notes dotted between the beats.
Here is how I generally plot out the arcs per act:
Exposition / learning your character’s secrets or desires
Rising action / give your characters a taste of what they want
Climax / characters realise their goals are obtainable or unobtainable depending on your story goals
Falling action / characters are happy or unhappy at the outcome depending on story goals
Resolution / characters realise they learned something new (what they thought they wanted, what they actually needed), or they realise they have a new goal - depending on if you want a cliff-hanger or not!
I am sure many people would delve into character arcs a little bit better, but for me this is an easy and simple way to keep my writing goals in check and help me move things along.
If any of this seems difficult or complicated I would recommend just grabbing a pen and starting, or opening an app and starting if you’re like me. Before I start I always feel overcome with fears of ‘what if I can’t do it this time around’, but as soon as I start writing it all out I feel so much better!
Oh my!
That’s it for my Great Planning Advice. I hope it’s helpful in some way!
This Sunday will be my last live stream planning event where I’ll go over some of this in a more casual way - probably with a whisky in hand - so if you wanna hang out and chat about all of this you can catch me on Youtube. I will also be revealing my book premise for NaNoWriMo just for fun as well. Don’t miss out!
And if you happened to read this far - you’re a star. Share this with any friends you think might need some help this NaNo season!
Sam
