In a post on ScreenCraft, Britton Perelman discusses the importance of understanding story beats and how to use them effectively. “Everything that can be measured can be broken down into several increments, and screenwriting is no different,” she says. The largest subunit of a script is the act, followed by the scene. Within each scene, you have multiple story beats.
“A story beat is a shift in the narrative,” Perelman explains. “Story beats can be emotional turns, incidents or events, actions, and reactions, or realizations. They can even be small shifts in narrative tone or a character’s emotional arc.” In other words, beats are how the story moves forward.
Perelman breaks down scenes from Glass Onion, Everything Everywhere All At Once, and The Fabelmans to demonstrate how scenes are broken out into beats and how beats work to move the story along.
