{"id":7182,"date":"2010-03-30T16:45:54","date_gmt":"2010-03-30T20:45:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=7182"},"modified":"2018-10-20T14:36:31","modified_gmt":"2018-10-20T18:36:31","slug":"beating-yourself-to-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2010\/03\/beating-yourself-to-death\/","title":{"rendered":"Beating Yourself to Death?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

[Image above: Peter Kubik’s UFO shaped electronic drums, as featured<\/a> at the Yanko Design site. The Yanko site says, “This electronic drum produces lighted impressions of your hand in psychedelic colors as it strikes the surface.”]<\/em><\/p>\nW<\/span>hen it comes to storytelling, are you a mechanic or a gardener? A little of both? Or something else entirely? Does it depend, for you, whether the story in question is a first draft or not? Do you draft the thing in a huge undisciplined rush, and go back over it with a scalpel and yardstick? Or vice-versa?<\/p>\n

All these questions beset me now that I’ve read Roz Morris’s latest post<\/a> at her Nail Your Novel<\/em> blog. In it, she shows an example of a technique she’s described before, something called a “beat sheet” — applied to the first four chapters of Harry Potter and the Philosophers<\/em> [USA: Sorcerer’s<\/em>] Stone<\/em>:<\/p>\n

I’ve had a number of requests for close-up examples of a beat sheet — my method for assessing an entire manuscript in summarised form to analyse its strengths and weaknesses, and make a detailed plan for revising — and you can find full instructions here<\/a> and here<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In rough outline, I’d describe a beat sheet as a page or more of highly condensed, color-coded annotations on the structure and rhythms of your novel’s scenes. As such, it’s not a tool for mapping out a story before you start it (although, hmm, I guess it might be…?). It’s a retrospective tool: something like one of those ultra-photogenic blacklights used in CSI<\/em>-style television shows — when you flick the switch, the signs of life in your story will either glow noticeably or, well, not<\/em>. (Only here, of course, that’s a good thing!)<\/p>\n

<\/p>\nI<\/span>n one of those earlier posts, Roz says:<\/p>\n

My first drafts are dreadful; clumsily written splurges of description, overwrought emotions, half-baked characterisation. Some scenes go on for ever; some are far too brief. I’m not a good writer; I’m a rewriter.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This made me extremely uncomfortable to read. By no stretch of the imagine could I be called a rewriter. Not that my first drafts are perfect, by any means — I think the main problem is that I like to write<\/em>, to fiddle with words and phrases at the micro level, during the first draft… as well as hurry-up-and-get-the-story-told, in perhaps something like the way Roz describes her “dreadful” first drafts. So when I hit the revision stage, I’ve got writing<\/em> which satisfied me to produce, as well as a sorta-kinda story. Because at this point I’m already invested in the words themselves, I subconsciously resist fiddling with anything (like — oh, let’s say — a story<\/em>; like dramatic values<\/em>) which might put the words at risk.<\/p>\n

A horrible state of affairs.<\/p>\n

Anyhow, when I come across a technique like Roz describes — or like some of those in Donald Maas’s Writing the Breakout Novel<\/em>, for example — I get these stars in my eyes which convince me, briefly, that I am going to be able to feed the unruly story into a machine of some kind. Turn the crank and presto, out the other end comes an incredibly well-crafted story<\/em>, with rising action, true suspense, all the rest.<\/p>\n

(And, of course, exactly the same words. For some reason reality never works like this. They say in an infinite universe, all things are possible. But they’re just being short-sighted. They’re not allowing for me<\/em>, damn them!)<\/p>\n

So then I started thinking of the whole idea of beats<\/em>. Roz’s posts weren’t the first references to a plot’s beats that I’d ever read, but I did wonder how, exactly, one goes about identifying them. And this got me thinking about the other use of the term, maybe its source: in music.<\/p>\n

My dad — who, not incidentally, played drums — absolutely loved swing jazz, in numbers like (say) Benny Goodman’s interpretation of “Sing, Sing, Sing.”<\/a> His taste never did grow to include, say, bepop<\/a> jazz (let alone “jazz” as practiced by rock bands like Blood, Sweat, and Tears). As I think about the difference between those two styles of jazz, I think primarily of their rhythms — their beats<\/em> — as you move from beginning to end of a given number.<\/p>\n

The beats of swing jazz are regular, despite the chaotic sense a given song can radiate (as in “Sing, Sing, Sing’s” tumultuous conclusion), and once you “understand” a song’s structure you almost “know” (at least subconsciously) when to expect a drum or bass to go whoomp<\/em>. Yes, true: once a soloist starts improvising there’s a lot of room for unpredictability. But for the most part, it seems, swing jazz is a product of mechanics<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Bebop, on the other hand, favors unpredictability — surprise. Although you can sense a song’s movement from beginning to end, where exactly the beat or the individual notes will “hit” can be just a matter of conjecture. Bebop is a product of intuition — of organics<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Do you write your stories in an orderly form? Do you revise them that way?<\/p>\n

______________________<\/p>\n

P.S. A link in this post pointed you to another post where you could hear the three “panels” in a “Sing, Sing, Sing” triptych. I may as well let you hear some bebop, too. This is Charlie Parker’s “Bird of Paradise”:<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Image above: Peter Kubik’s UFO shaped electronic drums, as featured at the Yanko Design site. The Yanko site says, “This electronic drum produces lighted impressions of your hand in psychedelic colors as it strikes the surface.”] hen it comes to storytelling, are you a mechanic or a gardener? A little of both? Or something else […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[410,247,5,36,324,372],"tags":[141,1661,1708,1709,1710],"class_list":{"0":"post-7182","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-hearing","7":"category-ruminations","8":"category-06_writing","9":"category-reading","10":"category-researchresources","11":"category-style-and-craft","12":"tag-fiction","13":"tag-roz-morris","14":"tag-beat-sheets","15":"tag-swing-jazz","16":"tag-bebop","17":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-1RQ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7182"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7182\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20664,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7182\/revisions\/20664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}