Writers are sometimes asked if they fall into one of two camps. First is the plotter: someone who outlines their work assiduously and only then begins their draft. Second is the pantser: someone who discovers the plot as they write. There is a third proposed faction called plantsers, which I may arguably belong to, but I do not identify as such. On the one hand, being a plantser sounds like a condition for which I should take medication. On the other hand, the first two camps are quite vehement that writers decide between them with Sharks vs. Jets urgency. And if you refuse to take sides, they accuse you of being Officer Krupke, which I will have none of, because Krupke and I think of beats in completely different terms.
I’m thinking of beats both familiar to playwrights where a ‘beat’ is a type of pacing you’ll put in scripts and beats familiar to screenwriters figuring out essential moments. The latter is more important here, but the former is never far from my mind as I write down the beats. For any story, I generally think of the end in mind. It could be a moment, a fragment of a scene, a feeling. Who knows? From there, other moments, images, and snatches of dialogue emerge. They coalesce. I will write out a scratch scene, perhaps mainly the beginning, perhaps only the decrescence. It’s all in service of the shape and the rhythm of the story. Eventually, enough of the story has taken shape, has taken enough structure, that I can begin to write a draft. Depending on how type A a given ‘plotter’ may be, they may not call it a proper outline, but the scaffolding is there enough for me to venture forward.
But here’s the thing: time and again, I feel no compunction to honor the scaffolding if the unfolding story doesn’t angle that way. For example, in recently working on my space opera series, I had an episode where one of the characters had an unexpected “action hero” moment. I’ve known about this beat for years. It’s a great way to see the character in a new light and should be pleasing to the audience. However, in the writing of that whole sequence, I realized I needed to connect their actions to some of the backstory I had just revealed in the past few episodes because it would further connect the dots on the relationship with another character. And once I did that, there was an altogether other element of pathos I had never thought of before… or maybe I subconsciously knew it was there all along. Suffice it to say, the sequence was both very much what I had envisioned for years and yet completely different.
And that’s how I write. For the aforementioned series, I know all the main characters’ arcs. I don’t know how all of them will complete said arcs… and maybe some things will change along the way. It depends on what more beats accumulate and what comes out of the writing. And this mix of structure and inspiration does not seem to please the adherents of either of the Plotter or Pantser sects.
So I was very pleased to hear that Drew Goddard, who most recently adapted the book Project Hail Mary for the screen has a similar use of beats that coalesce over time as I recently learned in an episode of Scriptnotes. Okay, he probably has a toolchest of tricks I do not have, but I still found it validating. So if you are also a writer who does not want to join the Sharks nor Jets and likes door number three OR you simply want to know a bit more about adapting books into screenplays or related insights, give the episode a listen.
And feel free to give the Sharks and Jets a wide berth. You don’t want to be dragged into their dance sequences. They’re exhausting.