How to construct a beat to make an effective treatment for the purposes of revision & group revisions of a Novel?
Why this Question is Being asked
In a previous question it was suggested that I write a treatment to assist with revising & cutting. A treatment is essentially a multi-page, spoilerific summary of exactly what happens in a written work; but, the term comes not from the Novel, but from screenplay writing and is made up of beats. A beat is not standardly defined across the writing community and it is used in multiple ways.
Known Deficient Definitions/Examples/Uses of Beats/Treatments
At the time that question was asked, I had seen a couple examples of treatments or beat-sheets and I found the documents compelling and likely useful for revision process, but did not know how to convert an active work into one, which meant finding the beats and collecting them all in one place. That's because most of the places you read on the internet are going to contain partial or limited versions of one or two of the following:
- an example of a beat sheet
- an example of a treatment
- a loose definition of a beat as the smallest unit of any action (essentially every action in the movie)
- a loose definition of a beat as the smallest unit of plot (once every five minutes in a movie; a turning point for characters; or every swing of momentum within a scene, this could literally be nearly every second of staging)
- a very detailed definition of a beat: all of the character considerations backing any action in a scene of the film which is great for directing a movie or play, but not good as a summary for revision purposes if you're going for a smaller document.
This is further complicated because a script is a very different thing than a novel. A script is usually shorter (only providing dialogue and very minimal setting/action descriptions) and, due to the medium, is often simpler, in terms of complexity, than a book.
So the question is, which of these definitions is most useful when writing a treatment for revision of a novel? And once I've picked the definition I want to target, what is the right way to construct said beats? Which moments in the book should qualify for beat status and which should be discarded as superfluous? And the next level, even if it qualifies as a beat for the treatment, how do you know you need to cut it from the work anyways? The definition of a beat within the context of a revision treatment should make it obvious why you'd want to use beats & treatments for revision; and based on previous discussions I'd expect (but here's an opportunity to correct me) that the act of summarizing the important and/or extraneous moments in a novel lets you focus the book on what it is about and cut the superfluous chunks of text; but you can only get there if you can differentiate "superfulous-but-recordable" beats from "additional-details/happenings-that-aren't-beats."
And why this is different from other questions.
A good answer to this question will provide actionable steps to create useful beats and a useful treatment for the revision process; it will define the components to assist in the actionable desired end result result; and it will be clear how the construction and use of this document will lead to a better novel. An unhelpful answer would simply list examples or one of the myriad definitions without talking about why this is important and how its helpful in the revision process.
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1 answer
It should be easy for you to divide your book into scenes, a continuous segment of time in which your characters interact. By this definition, it is still a scene if it is in multiple locations, I have written a long and continuous conversation occurring as my characters make their way from one place to another. It may be interrupted briefly by getting on an elevator or looking for a room number, but I consider it a scene because they keep returning to the same conversation and it is all in a continuous time.
Then: What happens in this scene? Every scene should accomplish something. By that, I mean the reader learns something, the character learns something, something happens that is important to the story. A character is betrayed, or fails, or is successful, or gains a new understanding: Alice learns what Bob's mother is like. Or Bob understands something about what is driving Alice's previously inexplicable actions.
You need to figure out what the scene accomplishes, and those are the beats. (There can be more than one in each scene.) What did you do to advance a character, or the plot? Did you show a new character trait? Add more to a previous one? Is there some revelation or discovery (about a person or a plot point, a step closer to a goal or further away from it)?
It is also possible you are writing "fan service", which may be legitimate. Fan service is a scene that doesn't reveal anything new, but fans of your character might like it anyway, or expect it. So while some sex scenes are character defining or revealing, many are fan service. James Bond movies ending with a romp in the hay are fan service. The consummation of a romantic relationship is not, it is often the climax of the plot. Pun intended!
Since you studied treatment (synopsis is another good word for it), you should see the point is to capture what important happens in this scene, in as few complete sentences as you can.
What is "important"? New knowledge or events that have consequences. They must shape what comes next; they influence the characters in some way and the story would not make sense without them. You need to answer why did you write this scene? Read it, then without looking at it for three minutes (or reading anything else, go have a glass of water) what is the takeaway from it that the reader cannot do without?
On conflict: We like a lot of conflict in scenes, but some conflict is "local" to the scene and will have no impact outside it. A disagreement in dialogue that is explained and forgotten. We can forget that, it is scene dressing. Other conflicts do have consequences and it is important to note them. The more far-reaching the consequences, the more highly the conflict ranks as worthy of inclusion in the treatment.
Lunch with Bob's Mom: Alice learns Bob's mother is a manipulative bitch and he is apparently incapable of standing up to her. His mother forces him to take his sister to a dinner, using words nearly verbatim to words Alice used earlier, and she regrets it.
You can describe the restaurant and should, perhaps the waiter, the other patrons, the pricing, all to aid the reader's imagination in what is going on. Perhaps what our characters are wearing, and what they order. But it doesn't really have a lot of consequence or push the story in some direction or instigate new actions on the part of Alice. What she learns at the lunch does have consequences, she will behave and feel differently now, and the story cannot be the same story without this knowledge. That is the "beat" you are looking for.
The first thing to fall in my revisions (I am revising a first draft now) are scenes that I feel accomplish nothing, or are repeating (without expanding upon) stuff I already did earlier. I may only realize this when I am reading the story all at once. (I am a discovery writer without a plot plan or character arcs, so this happens to me frequently).
Yesterday I scrapped 1500 words completely and did not replace them with anything: Because when I analyzed the scene, I realized what I had accomplished in this scene was repeating a much early accomplishment (showing a defining trait of my main character). It was nothing new for the reader; I probably wrote it because it had been a month since I wrote the earlier scene, so I had seen an opportunity for a scene to illustrate this trait and wrote it. No big deal for a discovery writer, but between the two scenes, I thought my earlier one worked better, so, highlight, delete the second, and patch the transition to the next scene.
You want your treatment to be a concise synopsis. I'd recommend no more than 3% to 5% of the length of the story. For a first time novel of about 110,000 words, that would be 3300 to 5500 words. Obviously I don't mean select every 25th word; but we are talking about condensing 500 words to a few sentences.
Even if you don't follow the length guideline; try the part about stating concisely what each scene accomplishes for you, why it is needed. That kind of distillation is what will help you fix any story problems, character motivations, or out-of-character actions or implausible decisions.
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