Insert Tears Here

How I plot emotional beats plus another Goodreads Giveaway!

There are 20 more early copies of THE ART OF SCANDAL up for grabs on Goodreads! Enter before April 9th! Open to U.S. and Canada only.

Insert tears here: Plotting with emotional beats

When plotting a story, I always try to develop a general idea of the readers’ emotional journey. Where does it start and end? Does it go from funny to sad or intense? Or maybe it starts cynical and ends on a hopeful note. If I use a particular trope, that can dictate the emotional experience too. (e.g., Angst is an integral part of the second chance trope because, at some point, the love between two people has been lost.) My goal is to create a bit of an emotional rollercoaster (if you read SCANDAL, you’ll know what I mean) that feels like a satisfying ride once you reach the end. However, I’ve never known how to articulate the why behind this process in a short, concise way until now.

I recently read an amazing craft book called Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee. The book is a deep dive into the broad concept of the story that gave me so many lightbulb moments while reading that I know I’ll be revisiting it often. One of those lightbulb moments was about the role of emotion in storytelling. McKee uses the economic concept of diminishing returns to explain why the audience (or reader) sometimes has a lackluster or even the opposite emotional reaction to the story than what the writer was going for.

In very broad terms, diminishing returns means that the more you use something, the less value you get from it. In business, if you increase investment in a particular area, the profit will stop growing if every other investment area remains constant. In fiction, it means that the angsty moments I develop for my second chance romance will only inspire that peak heartache I’m going for the first time before the impact is diminished. Without light moments between the dark times, our hearts are wrenched a little less each time we encounter that identical angst. This is why I try to plot a varied emotional experience (funny then intense then heartbreaking then hopeful but then funny again, etc.) to increase the chances of each emotional moment having a different impact.

This is an easy concept to incorporate in a first draft outline or in a reverse outline during revisions. Look at each scene and summarize the dominant emotions. (e.g. Jane is embarrassed because she wore the wrong costume. She gets angry when Brad makes fun of her. But then she feels grateful when she realizes he only did it to distract her). If there are back-to-back emotions that are virtually identical, break them up with something different or omit the emotional beat completely.

In addition to creating a less predictable reading experience, this is also a good way to tighten pacing and trim your word count.

I’d love to hear what some of you think about the concept of diminishing returns in story structure. Have you noticed it in books you’ve read or movies you’ve watched? Are there some other aspects of stories where this concept could be applicable? Let me know in the comments.

Come see me at the Steamy Lit Con!

Steamy Lit Con is a romance book convention celebrating diversity in romance; those who write it and those who read it!

The event will be held August 18 - 19, 2023, in Anaheim, California. The event will include panels, signing sessions with 200 authors, and some awesome parties for you to hang out with some other romance book lovers.

I am participating in this event and would love for you to join me! Ticket sales are live, and they can be accessed through the Universe website:

https://www.universe.com/events/steamy-lit-con-tickets-STP8BN

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More event news will be coming soon!