"The point is, I'd like to help out but I can't. I'm an idiot. I don't have the vocabulary." So I'm reading many of the Articles on the forum and came across this one on the writing process, which I really enjoyed. https://www.writingforums.org/articles/follow-your-bliss-find-your-process/ Except what the heck is: 1) The Beats format 2) VERB-ING, Etc. ?
From my quick search, it appears the OP of your linked article is describing this for the beats format: "There’s an action or stimulus, and a character reacts. Then another action to which the character reacts. Each action/reaction constitutes a beat, and a series of them creates a scene." And then I'm going to guess verb-ing is something similar, where action is accentuated and further explored. I hope this helps.
I was not sure if it was a specific process and Beats and VERB-ING were shorthand for that process. Yes, thank you, your explanation helps.
i wouldn't recommend the process described, i think the larger point was to find a process that works for you (personally i pants with only a rough idea of where i want to go) as everyone is different. On point verbing usually means either , creating gerunds (that is words that end ing where the verb is used like a noun as in singing) or conversely verbing can mean the action taking a noun and using it a verb (as in "we need to architect ourselves a plan") the latter is a bullshit thing to do (I did that deliberately), the word they are looking for in the example is 'design' However since neither of those fits what the OP was saying, i think he probably means fleshing out the 'beat' with verbs to describe the action reaction.
Its worth noting that Beat doesnt normally mean what he is using it to mean either - thats motivation reaction unit or MRU, a beat is normally a dialogue term where you use an action instead of a tag (A tag being he said, he whispered, he shouted etc), so a beat in usual sense would be something like "blah blah blah" Bob slammed the door
Oh my gosh, that makes perfect sense. I have a terrible habit of using to many tags in dialog and am working on that. Also terrible habit of starting every sentence with a pronoun, He did this, she did that, I went there.... Working on it. Thank you.
I follow a general rule that I identify who is speaking approximately once every three lines, give or take. That'll either be through a dialogue tag, or an action beat, and occasionally both.
I tend to leave them in when i write and clean them up on the edit. Also i'm from the school that mostly only uses 'said' as a tag unless theres a stronger verb than 'said adverbly'... as in whispered instead of said softly. It looks very amateur to use way too many synonyms for said and interupts the flow where as the readers eye ignores said most of the time that's something you see in beginners all the time because the school system encourages it
I'm with you. I like my tags invisible. There's 90k-ish other words to decorate. I will occasionally use the "softly" or "slowly" or whatever but very rarely. It's always been my belief that if you feel the need to dress-up the tag to better convey the nature of the dialogue, then you need to better convey the actual dialogue.
I tend to use action beats instead of said, but I deliberately used "said" and "said adverbly" more in my Fael short story, because it's an older writing style, and I think it was invisible most of the time, like it should be.
Thank you so much! This is fantastic. This thread had sort of disappeared ( I think it was the title) with no response so I had reposted the question with a more apt title. So sorry for the duplicate posts but I am thrilled with the Beats article.
Your welcome. While story grid is out to make money, there is alot of free content. Shawn Coyne, the founder, has thirty years in publishing, with twenty-five of them at the big five publishing houses. So in my opinion he has advice worth listening too. There is a lot of good information on their youtube channel as well.
