I’ve started analysing my old screenplay
I didn’t really know what do to until I’ve discovered something about how scenes works.
I don’t know If I’m the first to figure this out. I’ve asked ChatGPT and it told me that something similar to that Robert McKee came up with. I have his book, but I haven’t read it yet.
So:
every story has acts,
every act has sequences,
every sequence has scenes
and every scene has beats
So the beat is the smallest unit of measurement in a story. But the beat itself also has a structure and it is exactly this that I think I’ve discovered.
Every Beat is made of 3 events which I’ve called A, B and C
(Pre-beat)
A - A new element is introduced into a scene
(What is new that wasn’t here before?)
B - That element ACTS or it’s PROPERTY is introduced
(What does the new thing do?)
C - A response is given by the environment
(How does the world respond?)
(Post-beat)
Now what do I mean by this?
A simple event of a man shooting a zombie with a gun would be ABC + ABC
A - A man is sitting on the roof of his house with a gun in his hand
B - He checks his gun, It’s loaded
C - He sighs and looks down sadly
A - A zombie screams behind the man
B - The man turns around and shoots quickly at the zombie
C - The zombie falls from the roof, the man breathes heavily. He survived.
So more in depth this would be:
A - A man is sitting on the roof of his house with a gun in his hand
(MAN and THE GUN are the new elements)
B - He checks his gun, It’s loaded
(THE BULLETS IN GUN is a new property of an element)
C - He sighs and looks down sadly
(A response by MAN aka. the environment)
A - A zombie screams behind the man
(THE ZOMBIE is the new element)
B - The man turns around and shoots quickly at the zombie
(THE MAN ACTS killing a zombie)
C - The zombie falls from the roof, the man breathes heavily. He survived.
(THE LAWS OF GRAVITY RESPOND, and the zombie falls)
Now those two beats are very linear and straight-forward. However a story composed only of those kinds of beats would, I think, be very boring. There is nothing really to discover on your own. I’ve called this “ABC” type beat an “info beat” because the viewer gets all the information.
Since then I’ve discovered some more types of Beats, keep in mind not all of these would work on the man shooting a zombie example.
ABC - Info Beat
AxBC - Unanswered Beat (Chekhov’s gun, x- marks a pause)
ABxC - Unresolved Beat (Reverse Murder Mystery)
A?C - Uncaused Beat (We are not aware of what caused the response)
aBc - Cause (This would go after A?C to clarify things)
?BC - Unknown Beat (The new element is unknown)
Abc - Element (This would go after ?BC to clarify things)
ABbCc -Dispute Beat (Two characters act differently on the same event causing a dispute, resolves into an ABC)
There probably exists much more types of beats but these ones are the ones that I’ve discovered in my screenplay. That is for now… I’ve only finished a page and a half. I still have 29 pages to go.