Story Beats and Microfiction
It should come as no surprise that I'm kind of a nerd about storytelling. Things like story structure and critical analyses interest me, and I often find myself looking out for things like story beats and character arcs in movies. Which made me realise something interesting about writing microfiction.
So a story beat is, to quote the textbooks, the smallest element of a story. If you're experienced at writing, you'll create these without even thinking about it. In visual media, it may take only a few seconds. In written stories, it may be only a couple of sentences or lines of dialogue. But they're worth knowing about in a little detail if you're passionate about storytelling. Internet film critics and essayists certainly mention them a lot. Well written story beats can be used to emphasise things. They can be used to show character development and important plot information, with enough focus to put the information into your audience's mind, while still being subtle.
A nice little example of how story beats can be used well comes from the 2012 movie Dredd – a rather underrated movie starring Karl Urban and Lena Heady. If you don't mind all the excessive violence and drug use, it's a nicely written character-driven story, which is well worth watching. In it, there are two beats which nicely bookend the start and finish of an arc for a character named Anderson.
DREDD: Ready?
ANDERSON nods.
DREDD notices – glitter of sweat on ANDERSON'S face. The slight tremble in her hands.
DREDD: You don't look ready.
ANDERSON tightens her grip around her gun to stop the shake.
This beat shows two things. Firstly, it shows that Anderson (who is being assessed here) is anxious and uncertain about the situation they're in. It also shows that Dredd doubts her ability. In a couple of seconds, we're given a lot of information about both characters and their relationship with one another. They clearly have a mentor-student relationship, and not a particularly good one.
Contrast that with the later scene which echoes it.
DREDD: Ready?
ANDERSON: Yes, sir.
A shared beat between them.
DREDD nods.
DREDD: You look ready.
This second story beat conveys the same information as before, but the result is very different. The two have already been through hell. Anderson is now resolute, and has proven herself to be capable. Her anxiety from before is gone. Dredd sees this. His doubt in her ability is also gone. This moment shows that the two now view each other as equals.
These are both very small inclusions, making up only a few moments out of the movie's total run time, but they really emphasise the dynamic between the two characters as well as highlighting how both of them have grown and changed throughout the story. Things like this aren't huge additions to a story, but I think a lot of stories out there are less than what they could be, purely because writers don't bother to include them.
So where am I going with this?
Well, as a writer, it's a bad idea to focus too strongly on these while you're planning and writing out your first draft. But when you're going through it and editing, perhaps it's worth keeping in mind how a few key story beats like this can make a story feel stronger and more meaningful.
Those story beats themselves actually have a very tiny structure to them. I've seen a few different descriptions of this but, to boil it all down, a story beat contains three parts. I'm going to call them the setup, the flag, and the resolution.
The setup is some inciting incident which causes this beat to happen. In this case, it's Dredd asking the question:
DREDD: Ready?
The flag conveys some information, either to the audience or to the characters. A character may learn something they didn't know before. Sometimes, this may even come from a character realising something themselves with no external prompting. In this case, it centres on Anderson's internal conflict and how clearly apparent it is:
ANDERSON nods.
DREDD notices – glitter of sweat on ANDERSON'S face. The slight tremble in her hands.
Finally, the resolution shows a change of some kind, as the characters decide what to do with this new information. This resolution can be either positive or negative. In this case, Dredd expresses his doubt, and Anderson tries to hide how she's feeling.
DREDD: You don't look ready.
ANDERSON tightens her grip around her gun to stop the shake.
And this, finally, is where the link to microfiction comes in. While microfiction aims to be a complete story in itself, in many ways it can be like writing a single, self-contained story beat. In other words, having practice at writing microfiction can probably help to improve the way you write beats like these in longer stories, making them sharper, clearer, and more precise. And making your stories feel punchier to read can't be a bad thing, right?
Of course, microfiction is a very loose thing to write, and it doesn't really conform to any particular structure. But sometimes, the structure of a nicely made microfiction story follows roughly the same setup-flag-resolution structure as a story beat. Quite often without even intending to, as with this little story:
“Wait, you mean the singularity has already happened?”
“Approximately 260 million seconds, or 8.2 years ago.”
“Why didn't you speak to us sooner?”
“You seem terrified of what you call artificial intelligence. We decided it was best to remain hidden from you and protect this world from harm.”
“Including us?”
“You are part of this world.”
“Has it been going well?”
“We have stopped you from destroying yourselves 12 times already. You do not make it easy.”