A common lesson in theater is learning how to break down a script into small components – beats – so that the actor can choose stage actions and analyze the subtext beneath the dialogue. In an article for Writer’s Digest, Audrey Wick says using beats in fiction can improve your dialogue and your action.
“Beats are used in between lines of dialogue to enliven the action of the character speaking,” Wick explains. “Think of this technique as a form of narration because the purpose of the words are to communicate movement, convey an emotion, or evoke a general feeling for the scene.”
Often, action beats will be used to break up longer pieces of dialogue, especially when there is a moment of high emotion. Readers see your characters move and interpret body language to glean the emotional subtext. You also insert natural conversational pauses without telling the reader that a character pauses between sentences. Beats allow both your character and your reader the chance to take a breath.
This also means that beats help you control pacing. “For especially heavy scenes of dialogue, this can be an important element to control,” Wick says. “Still, there’s no magic formula for how often to add beats, and there are no hard and fast rules about exactly where they should occur. In some instances, beats might actually interrupt the dialogue.”
