The Beat Goes On and On and On…Writing Fiction Dialogue
As I mentioned in my previous blog, the word beat has a cornucopia of meanings. For me, the definition of beat offered in Self-Editing for Fiction Writers , by Renni Browne and Dave King, makes the most sense. They defined beat as a descriptive sentence or sentences inserted before, after, or during the dialogue section. Keep in mind, it is not a dialogue tag such as “said,” that establishes who is talking. Instead, a beat comes into play after the reader knows who is talking and describes a character’s response or action. If dialogue is the audio, think of beat as the video. Renni Browne and Dave King go one step further by saying a beat is the “literary equivalent of what is known in the theater as stage business.” I love this definition because stage business refers to physical actions made by an actor on stage such as tucking a tendril of hair behind an ear. You see stage business all the time in plays, movies, and television shows. If you have trouble visualizing this conce...