Beat Breakdown: Analyzing Writing Line-by-Line - Part 1

Hello and welcome to the StoryGrid podcast. My name is Tim Grall. I'm the host and I am a struggling writer trying to figure out how to tell a story that works. Joining me shortly is Sean Coyne. He's the creator and founder of Storygrid and the author of the book storygrid. And he's helping us figure out how all of this stuff works based on his 30 years of experience. Along with us is Danielle Kielski, the chief academic officer of StoryGrid Universe, and and Leslie Watts, the editor in chief of StoryGrid Publishing. In this week's episode, for the first time, we're going to go through the short story Eyewitness and we're going to look at it beat by beat, line by line. So in last week's episode, we introduced the idea of tropes and introduced the idea of beats and gave you some structure around how we think about beats. But in this episode, we're actually going through beat by beat, identifying the beats, categorizing the beats, figuring out all of that stuff so we really go in depth. If you're listening to the audio only version of this podcast, you're going to.

Get a lot out of it.

We're going to walk through everything. We try to do everything in a way where you can follow along, but on the video version that we have over at YouTube, you can actually see us walk through the scene and actually see the scene that we're working on. So there's a screen share going on where you can actually see it. And so if you want to follow along while watching, you can go to our YouTube channel, just search Story Grid. You'll be able to find it, subscribe there. We're actually putting up videos every single day. And so if you don't want to miss all of the content that we're putting out, not just this podcast episode, but also videos that we're putting out every day. You want to go to YouTube and subscribe there, but either way, we're going to have a really great episode as we begin, begin the process of stepping beat by beat through the scene, through the short story of eyewitness by Ed McBain. All right, so let's jump in and get started.

Okay, great. So what we did last week is I gave an overview of the story grid concepts of active build up beats, breakdown beats, and binding beats. And I'm sure everyone really nailed all that very, very easily. But so to build on that, what we're going to do today is we're going to walk through the short story eyewitness by Ed McBain. And we are going to figure out what I mean by this. So what we're going to do is identify these inputs and outputs that make up all Beats, and then we're going to ask you some questions about what you think that beat is doing for our single audience member. So either you're going to be exciting the single audience member and enlivening her, right, she's going to be excited to keep reading, or you're going to be depleting her and she's going to have some anxiety. So that's all I'm going to say about that, because what we're going to do is walk beat by beat and we'll ask you these questions. This is going to be very meticulous work, and you have to take a lot of care because you really want to understand exactly how a masterwork works so that it can help you when you're going to iterate it yourself. So, and then just to remind everybody from the Beats, we'll be able to, in future episodes, find tropes. And the tropes are sort of this beautiful place where this. This very sort of sterile kind of energy determination of Beats and the. The big thematic idea of a short story itself. They meet. So you'll. You'll have a much bright, easier handle to iterate a scene based upon Eyewitness with a trope as as opposed to the Beats. But. So that's just a. A prelude to what's coming in the future. So I'm going to turn it over now to Danielle, who's our resident Beat person, who knows these backwards and forwards, and she's going to walk us through and we'll ask you questions as we go. So, over to you, Danielle.

Thanks, Sean. So to do this, the first thing we do is just take the blank or the text of the story without any annotations or anything, and we drop it into a document and then we can work from there, labeling the inputs and outputs and starting to apply the valences. So I'm going to share my screen so that we can work through these together and we'll just do this from a document. So here we have the text of Eyewitness, and we can go through and start to label the Beats. So what we went over last week is that each beat has an input and usually an output. If it's a binding beat, where it's more about the author, direct communication to the audience member, then it won't have an output. And we just need to first break down what the beats are. And we can do that by looking for inputs and looking for input output pairs. So to get us started, Tim, what do you think is the first beat here?

He had seen a murder, and the sight had sunken into the brown pits that were his eyes. It had tightened the thin line of his mouth and given him a tick over his left cheekbone.

He sat now with his hat in his hands, his fingers nervously exploring the narrow brim. He was a thin man with a mustache that completely dominated the confined planes of his face. I think it ended at cheekbone.

Great, great. We thought so, too. So do you think.

So what. What did you sense that made you feel that it ended at cheekbone? What were you noticing?

I feel like it switched from, like a.

This isn't the right word. Something like timeless to now. Right. Because it was like, this is his. This is the demeanor he has had for a while now. And then when it switches to he sat now with his hat in his hands. We're now dropping into the time of like, this is exactly what I'm seeing right now, as opposed to, this is how this person, this avatar has been for a while.

Like, I kind of pictured McGrew. Not McGregor.

Struthers.

Struthers. Sorry.

I said Magruder. And then I thought MacGruber. And then I'm thinking Saturday Night Live. I'm like, well, that can't be right.

I kind of picture Struthers as almost like standing across the room. And he's been watching this guy for a while.

Oh, Capelli's watching Struthers.

Yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Capelli. So Capelli has been watching Struthers for a while, and he's like, okay, this is what I've seen. And then now this is what he's doing right now. And we've talked before about starting wide and then, like, funneling down into the now.

Yeah, exactly. So a couple of concrete things to notice is that we have this verb tense, had, seen, had, tightened here. And then it switches just to the simple sat. Right. So that's just a concrete, on the page way of signaling that time shift that you're noticing as you run the film of this short story in your mind. So verb tenses are something to look out for. Also, we can think about when we're separating out these introductory, descriptive, binding passages into beats. We can look at what are the facts that the author is communicating to the audience, and.

Where does it switch from one fact to another. So I would say that the fact in this first beat is the murder has impacted this man. And then the fact in the second in, when we're getting into here, the fact here is more about.

What he's doing with that information. And so these are just different ways that you can approach breaking the beat at the correct place. But you absolutely did that.

So I want to categorize this from our schema as a world building beat. That is what we call gestalt to feature. So gestalt to feature means a big wide to a feature of the big wide. So when Tim was talking about the time shift, that's a gestalt. You know, this is what happened and now this is what's happening. So it moves from a big picture to a smaller picture. So that's world building, binding gestalt to feature. And lastly, I want to ask you, Tim, do you think this input is enlivening to Sam or depleting to Sam? Is it exciting to Sam or is it causing her anxiety?

Could you define those words?

Okay, so enlivening would mean that it is stimulating Sam. Sam's curiosity and there's energy going into her system that is making her interested. So she's having sort of a, and don't take this word the wrong way. She's being aroused. Her. Her limbic system, her is being aroused. Right. So she's attracted to this information or this energy. So that's enlivening. Depleting is when it comes in and makes her sort of stop for a minute and say, whoa, wait a minute, what does that mean? Right. So depleting means that she needs to.

Process the information so that it makes sense to her. Enlivening is something that sort of makes sense, that encourages and makes her aroused to find out what's going to happen next. So depleting is about what just happened and enlivening is what's going to happen next.

Okay, then I would say this is enlivening.

That's correct. And I'll keep asking this question. And there's a whole different set of tools that you can use to figure it out. And we'll go through them as we go through the story itself.

When you say anxiety, I'm like, well, when you tell me somebody's seen a murder, that doesn't make me feel great. So it makes me a little anxious.

So that's why I needed you to talk more about what you meant by that, because I was thinking this was enlivening. But if you tell me that a guy has seen a murder, I'm not like Ooh. You know, it's like, oh, well, you know, it creates anxiety, but it does pull me to want to read the next phrase before I. I don't feel like I have to stop and process. That was helpful.

All right, cool. So let's look at the second beat. So, Tim, where do you think the boundaries of the next beat are?

So I'm going to just read again.

He sat now with his hat in his hands, his fingers nervously exploring the narrow brim. He was a thin man with a mustache that completely dominated the confined planes of his face. He was dressed neatly, his trousers carefully raised in a crease protecting lift that revealed taut socks in the brass clasp of one garter. So I'm torn between whether that's all one beat or that's two beats, but I'm landing on two beats. So I think it ends with he sat now with his hat in his hands, his fingers nervously exploring the narrow brim. Because that's describing action. That's that he's taking. And then it moves into describing what he looks like.

Okay, and so you would break it here?

Yeah, between brim. And then he was a thin man.

Okay, so the question is for the next two paragraphs, going from he sat now with his hat into his hands down to the brass clasp of one garter.

Where are we going to break that? So you have that breaking after. His fingers are exploring the narrow brim. And we have a longer beat where we take the next two paragraphs, the ones that you just read out, and we have them all as one beat. So I'm going to put a marker for the input at the beginning of the passage, and we can look at why we might want to condense these into one beat instead of separating them out. So let's say that we have this first sentence. He sat now with his head in his hands, his fingers nervously exploring the narrow brim as.

One beat. And then for the next about his physical characteristics. We split that into a second beat. So just looking at that first.

Just looking at that first sentence, do you think that would be enlivening or depleting?

I would categorize it as enlivening.

Are you using the feeling of being pushed forward in the story for that?

Yeah, because now I'm wondering why he's nervous.

Okay, so when. When we get into Avatar description, too, one of the things we're looking at is whether the descriptions of these avatars include chaos, order, or complexity. And so chaos, these are noisy qualities. There's no real cause and effect. Things are Breaking down. Whereas order is very strictly controlled cause and effect based operations in the world. So when I look at this sentence, what I'm seeing is that when he has this nervous tic that he is exploring the narrow brim, this is a chaotic description because he's, he's breaking down. And this is the physical manifestation of that breakdown. Now, at the same time, I think that you're right, that the feeling of this.

The intent is to push you forward into the story. Right? So this is why it helps to condense this passage into one. Because the rest of it.

He has this mustache that he has spent time on, but it dominates the confined planes of his face. So confined planes is more of an ordered shape description. And then he has, he's dressed neatly, trousers carefully raised, taut socks, the brass clasp of one garter. These are all also ordered descriptions. So to achieve pushing Sam farther into the story, this whole passage works together to provide a contrast between everything after. Narrowbrin is describing qualities that this man had before he saw the murder because it's describing things that are evidence of longer patterns of behavior. So he has this mustache, he has the physical characteristics of his body, he has the way he is want to dress.

And that's very carefully, right? So he has these from his life, he has these ordered patterns of behavior. And they're contrasted with this chaotic, nervous exploration of his brim. And so together, the chaos and the order come together to create a complex beat that pushes us farther into the story. But if we separate them out.

We lose.

The interaction between those two halves. So we lose the contrast of it. And then we also get too depleting beats instead of one enlivening beat. Does that make sense?

Yes.

And then we want to talk about how to categorize this before we go on. So how would we categorize this beat?

Let me jump in there, Tim, and just give you the three categories. Right, the three global categories. We have binding beats. And binding beats are when the narrator authority is speaking directly to the reader. Sam. So binding beats are a communication channel between the narrator and the single audience member. Okay, so it's as if I'm talking to you directly.

The other two kinds of beats are active build up beats. And that's when avatars are interacting exclusively.

And breakdown beats are also when avatars are interacting directly. So binding beats are all about speaking directly to Sam. Active buildup is about avatar interaction, and breakdown is about avatar interaction. Now, the binding beats have three subcategories. One is what we call world building, which establishes the Alternate world. And the author narrator is telling Sam what the rules of this world are. Then there's camera shifting. And camera shifting is about.

Sort of scanning the landscape and changing the frame of reference for Sam so that Sam can see more in the landscape of the alternate world. And lastly, we have Transition.

Binding. And transition Binding is this really cool tool that enables the author narrator to move Sam's attention from listening to her, the author narrator, or him depending, to watching the action on the stage. So it transitions from getting information from the author narrator to watching what's going on on the stage. So we have, for transition beats, we have an input and an output. One input is the author talking to Sam, and one is.

Sam watching the world of interaction between the avatars, Sam. So transitions are very important because they smoothly move Sam's attention from listening to the author narrator to watching and experiencing the story through the eyes of the protagonist of that particular beat.

So with that said, this input, he sat now with his hat in his hands, his fingers nervously exploring the narrow brim all the way down. How would you describe that? Would that be a binding input or an active buildup input or a breakdown input?

Excellent.

Now we can answer the subcategory of the binding after we take a look at what happens next. So I'm going to turn it back to Danielle so that we can. We can look at the next.

Output.

Okay, great. So with this, we have Capelli looking at Struthers, whose name we don't yet know, but we see this thin man across the room. We see Capelli looking at him. So.

How does Capelli react to.

What he sees across the room in the next beat?

So we have this as this is an input, and then we have the next, the output as part of this beat.

So we have Capelli sees him sitting with the hat. He sees how he's dressed, and then he reacts to that visual sensation.

Can I just jump in here? Yeah. I just like to clarify what a beat is, because it's tricky. So beats can either be only input, only output, or input and output. Most beats have both inputs and outputs. So a beat is divided into two units, an input and an output. Or it could be binding. Beats could just be inputs. Only occasionally, like beginning of this short story, we have a beat that's only input for world building.

But most beats contain both inputs and outputs. So to be able to call something a beat, we're usually talking about to, you know, a binary of an input plus an output.

So you're including the next line, which is Capelli Asking that him question mark.

As part of this beat.

Because he's. The input was seeing this things about him and. And then the reaction or the output would be him asking the question. He wouldn't have asked the question without the input of seeing the man.

Okay. So.

I mean, well, then I feel like that makes it pretty easy to go back and say this is a transition beat, because the input is.

Is information that brings our eyes down. And then I watch instead of me getting information directly from the storyteller, from the author, I'm now also. It brings my eyes down and I'm getting information as the reader from the actual avatars, which is what you said a transition beat is the input is coming.

From the authority and the output comes from the avatars on the stage.

Okay. So when we're looking at this, transition needs to go from one plane of perception to another.

So the reason that we rule out transition here is that while we are going from an authorial description to a direct output from an avatar, if you look at the authorial description.

What plane would you say that that's on?

What do you mean by plane?

So when we talk about as we go through the trinity planes for the 624. Have we talked about that, by the way? We did, right? We talked about. Okay, I just want to make sure I'm not like forgetting things.

It was many episodes ago. All right, let me start that over. Okay.

Okay. So when we go through the 624 tools, we separate them into the beyond the surface plane, which is the universal patterns of behavior and connecting to archetypes and things like that. When we go into the above the surface, then that's talking about information processing systems and how avatars see the world, their worldviews and cognitive frames. And then when we go down to. On the surface, this is concrete actions that are actually happening on the. That are actually playing out. So if you had a camera, that's what you would be seeing. And what we. So we have these trinity planes, which are ways that we think about different concepts. And so the same planes that apply to how we split up the tools into three different groups can apply to how we split out information that's communicated in the story into these three different things. So if it were beyond the surface, you would see.

Summaries of the way that people are. So summaries of universal patterns of behavior, statements about universal truths, things like that. For above the surface, this is when you enter an avatar psychology and you start talking about that you, as an author would enter an Avatar psychology and talk about how they're processing things, what kinds of feelings and senses they have, and then how they translate those into motivations for their on the surface actions. And then if it's on the surface, it would have descriptions of concrete actions and events without getting into the psychology or without summing up to that collective cultural grammar level. So this is just. Just the facts would be the on the surface plane. So how do you think this is operating? The description of his. His dress and how he's playing with.

His hat beyond the surface.

Why do you say that?

Well, because you said it was just the facts. What I would see with a camera.

Oh, that would be on the surface.

That is. Isn't that what I said?

No, you said beyond the surface. Oh, maybe you said it would be on the surface, and I heard beyond the surface.

Oh, that's what.

Yeah, yeah.

All right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I'm like, yeah, okay, sorry. Yeah, so on the surface.

Perfect. Yeah, absolutely. And so then when we have direct dialogue, this is also functioning on the surface, so it's more immediate. But it doesn't represent a transition from one plane to the other, because it's moving from on the surface to on the surface, even though it does have a different quality of how that on the surface, information and energy is communicated.

To the audience by process of elimination where you've landed on camera shifting. Because it's not world building. It's not transition. So now I feel pretty confident that it's camera shifting.

Excellent. Yes. And sometimes. Sometimes that's how we. How we find out these things. You know, it's just. And that's actually when we were discussing this beat. That's exactly the process we went through, is we said it seems kind of transition, like, but then had to really take a look at it and say, no, this is on the surface to on the surface. So we're not getting that transitional movement.

Is camera shifting always on the surface, or can you camera shift at the other trinity planes?

I think that it needs to be on the surface.

Do you guys agree with that? Like, I think that if you're operating beyond the surface or above the surface, you have to drop down to looking at something to look at something else, and then you can go back, but saying something, like saying something about an avatar thinking about something and then going directly to another avatar's thoughts is very jarring without going down and being grounded in that concrete world.

I absolutely agree with that. And that's why I chose the word camera, because the camera is capturing a visual Sort of witnessing function, and we cannot witness the thoughts of others. And so above the surface, if you. If you move from.

Someone'S thoughts to another person's thoughts without that integration of going down to the ground again so that we can frame them in our minds, it's too schizophrenic for Sam. So remember, this is all about explaining how to make the experience for Sam fluid and lifelike.

So whenever you get stuck as a. As a story creator, think about Sam. How is Sam experiencing this level of story? And if you're moving, I. I can't sit here and mind meld and think about what any of you are thinking about. I can't penetrate your thoughts. Right. But a story creator can give us the thoughts of avatars, but they have to do it very, very care. And thankfully, Ed McBain does not do that in the story. So we don't really have to, you know, dive into this. This deep, you know, story toolbox. But just keep it in mind that if you move from above the surface to above the surface, it's not going to feel real to Sam. And it will be disturbing to her because it will be an alien input output to her because we can't hear other people's thoughts. So usually you'll get this quick transition.

Sean thought that. That Sally was being mean.

Sally went and bought, you know, Sally took her fork and jammed it into the table. Sally thought Sean was an idiot. Right. So you move from above the surface of Sean's thought to on the surface with Sally's actual actions. She jams the fork into the table, and then we can go up into Sally's thoughts. So it's this very fluid movement from above the surface, on the surface, above the surface, back down and back down. So it's like this. You can't go this way. But because we can't read one another's thoughts. And so to present that to Sam, your single audience member, she'll go, that's weird. That's not the way the world goes. I don't want to read this book because it's silly.

Okay, great. So here we have camera shifting.

And we already talked about the inputs, Valence, when we talked about the order, complexity and chaos. And we said that it's complex, so it's going to be enlivening.

So the output is.

Capelli.

Responding to what he saw. And he's asking the question that's. That him, I would say that's enlivening as well.

Okay. And I should have done this before, likely, but what do you think that is in terms of the type of output it is? Is it binding, active buildup or reactive breakdown?

Active buildup.

That gives us our first two beats, and then we can start to break down the third beat. So what is the next beat that you would identify here?

So the next lines. So Capelli is asked, that's him. That him? I asked. So that's the output of the previous beat. So the next couple lines are. That's him, Magruder said. And he saw the mugging, and that's Capelli talking again. So I feel like that's where the next beat would end because we have an input and output. We have Magruder saying, inputting to Capelli and then Capelli outputting back.

Great. That's exactly what we have as well. And it gets a lot easier when you get into the dialogue because you have these plays back and forth. Not that they're always like that, but it's a. A good place to start. So taking this first input. That's him, Magruder said.

Is that binding, active buildup or reactive breakdown?

It's active buildup.

Okay. And what about the valence?

I would say enlivening. I honestly don't know. I'm just guessing. It's not giving me anxiety. It's not making me pause and think. So it's enlivening.

It's not very impactful in terms of, you know, it's not.

It's not a highly valence enlivening, but it is enlivening in that it gives Capelli more information to go on and.

Pushes us farther into the story by saying, yes, that's the person we need to focus on. So it does push our attention into the future a bit. It's not neutral, but it is.

Sort of a light, enlivening moment. Okay, the output, what would you say the type of that is? And he saw the mugging.

So active buildup. And I would say that's enlivening as well.

Exactly. So anything to add before we go on to the next beat?

The only thing I would say is determining enlivening and depleting, again is a good heuristic, is to remember, is this pushing the attention of Sam into the future or is it making Sam want to go back and reread? Right. So if it's enlivening, it's stimulating and arousing Sam's curiosity, it's intriguing her. And if it is depleting, it's causing her some anxiety and she wants to sort of stop for a second and reflect on what has already happened before she moves forward. So one is anticipation into the future, enlivening and anxiety about what just happened. That's. And reflective. That's depleting.

One of the other things that we can look at when we're looking at enlivening and depleting, I think, is we can ask what the author, you know, at the red level, what the author is trying to illuminate about the problem that Sam has. And so one of the, and so there's that, there's that level. And then down in the, in the green, when we look at the scene analysis level, we can think about, because we've done all this from our 624 analysis, we can think about what, what is Avatar Capelli? So first, what is author Capelli trying to accomplish here? And then what is Avatar Capelli trying to do? Because Avatar Capelli is trying to test Struthers to see if he is a witness. Author Capelli is wanting to pull you, pull Sam into that process and show the details that indicate this is how you test someone when you're not sure if they're on your side or not.

So let's look then at the next set of input and output. So, Tim, what would the next beat here?

So Capelli has just asked the question, and he saw the mugging. That was the output from the previous beat. So now let me just read forward.

He says he saw it. He won't talk to anyone but the lieutenant. None of us underlings will do, huh? Magruder shrugged. He'd been on the force for a long time now. Okay, so the other beat ended after Capelli spoke again. So the input would be.

Magruder saying, he says he saw it. He won't talk to anyone but the lieutenant. And the output would be Capelli's response. None of us underlings will do. Huh?

Perfect. That's what we have, too. So now to go through and analyze them. When we look at, he says he saw it, he won't talk to anyone but the lieutenant. So that's coming from Magruder. Do you think that that is.

An active buildup, a reactive breakdown or binding?

Active buildup.

Okay.

I would call it depleting because it makes me that he won't talk to anyone but the lieutenant makes me pause and think. I wonder why he won't talk to anybody but the lieutenant. And so that idea, Sean, it makes.

Me reflect, is that.

I, I, I don't agree.

Okay, he won't talk to anyone but the lieutenant.

In, in terms of my heuristic would. Would make someone want. Want to know what's going to happen next.

Feel like as me, as the reader, makes me wonder why.

Like I start immediately trying to guess why he wouldn't talk to anybody but the lieutenant, which to me is reflective.

Yeah, maybe I'm using the wrong word. Reflective. In terms of reflective in, in.

In the sense that you are worried about what's going to happen next.

So you. It's sort of depleting is an experience as a reader that you're like, you have to take a second before you keep moving forward because you have to makes sense of the input. This makes perfect sense so that it's information that's going to Sam, the single audience member, such that she's anticipating. I wonder why I'm going to keep reading. It's not a shock to the system. So there are, There are levels of shock to the system for Sam, and this is not very shocking. So when you do get shocked, you. You reflect. And I think that may be a squishy, poor use of a term. So maybe shocked is a little bit better. Depleting is like a little shock to Sam that makes her stop for a second before she goes forward.

And we need those little shocks because what they do is they enable us.

To keep processing. It's like, like in cognitive science. It. It's this moment by which we. We stop to reintegrate, to move forward. So it's like you have to metabolize that shock before you can move forward. And then of course, there are little shocks that are constantly shocking Sam so that she. She keeps moving forward in the narrative. So if every line is enlivening, Sam's going to get bored because it's not very surprising. So what you need are these, these little anxious depleting shocks every now and then such that Sam will. Will keep moving forward. But. But it's a little bit of a pause. Right. And experientially, that's how Sam is experiencing it. So he won't talk to anyone but the lieutenant. It is a tiny little shock, but it's still enlivening because it's easily processable by Sam. Do you two have a better heuristic to answer that than this? Because this gets a little squishy.

I have one thought is that when something depleting happens for Sam, Sam has to rethink what's come before, has to reassess. Right. She's been moving forward, moving forward, putting all of the data in its categories. And boxes and such. And then when something depleting happens again, she has to reassess, she has to look at the categories, look at the information. Do I need to rethink this?

Yeah, I think another way that I look at it too is from the. On the surface level is that once we get into actual interactions between avatars, Sam has done the projection to align herself with, through empathy with the protagonist. So when we get into these dialogue exchanges, I like to look at how the avatars are affected as, as a method to see how Sam is affected. And so.

What that looks like is, does it.

Does it give, does it set the, the avatar up for more agency in the future? Do they get more information? Do they have shots set up for them if we want to use like a billiards example, or are they constrained? So are avenues of action cut off for them? And so in this particular interaction we have, he's in dialogue with Magruder, he's in a safe interaction. So he doesn't have to deal with he being Capelli here. He doesn't have to deal with the.

Refusal to talk to anyone but the lieutenant yet until he's then in dialogue with Struthers himself. So when you're in a dialogue situation, you can look at know, is it increasing the conflict and the tension between the two avatars, or is it creating more of a.

Cooperative and friendly environment? And that's, that's another way to look at it. But really it gets down to how it affects their agency. Is it expanding it or is it constraining it in some way and not allowing them to have as many open avenues of action in the future? So here, right, that's him, he says he saw the murder, but he won't talk to anyone but the lieutenant. It's giving Capelli the information that he needs to deal with this person more effectively.

So it's informing his action.

Yeah, I just want to really underline that point because what happens when you have dialogue is that Sam identifies with the output. So the outputer is what we define as the protagonist of that particular.

Dialogue. And so Sam sees the world through the outputter. Why is that? Because Sam cannot output, so she has a. An affiliation with the protagonist such that the protagonist's behavior are sort of these.

What Sam believes that she would do in the same situation. So Sam starts to identify with the protagonist of the particular beat, and the protagonist is always the outputer. So what we have here is Capelli is now playing the role of protagonist in these sort of micro beats before Struthers does. And later on, we're going to see how Ed McBain switches out the protagonist, such that Sam starts to see the world through Struther's eyes instead of the avatar Capelli. Now, Capelli's playing two roles here. He's playing the author, narrator, and. And he's playing an avatar. So this is a really complex story, but the way Sam is experiencing dialogue is through the output of the protagonist. So if the protagonist is being enlivened by the interaction, so is Sam.

So this may be jumping ahead a little bit, but with.

We'Ve identified in previous episodes that the protagonist of this short story is Struthers. But inside of a particular trope, can the protagonist be somebody different than the protagonist of the overall scene or in this case, short story?

Absolutely. Absolutely. And that's one of the means by which you can establish the. The, the, the truthfulness of the alternate world is to give Sam multiple lenses in the particular story such that she can see the world from different angles. However, there is an overall protagonist that Sam identifies with globally. So there can be micro moments when Sam sees the world through other avatars eyes in tropes, as you pointed out, Tim. And you have to clearly make sure that that protagonist gets switched back, you know, so that you really have to be very careful about how you're moving the camera. Because the way Sam is seeing the world is through the eyes of the outputer. And that's why it's so important to be able to take the time necessary to delineate these inputs and outputs. Because whoever is outputting is how Sam is viewing the world. So that's a really key insight that we've discovered at Storygrid that enables us to be able to send the signals that we want Sam to easily be able to pick up on her, you know, decoding antenna of her mind.

Yeah. And that switch can happen at any unit of story. It could even just be like handing the baton over for a single beat. It doesn't even have to be a full trope, but the relative size of the unit of story that the other avatar gets to be the output for, that's going to.

That's going to join them with Sam at a different level. And to. To get back into the previous episodes, you know, we talked about the five Commandments, and that's how we identified who the protagonist is. Right. Is the inciting incident. Who's responsible for responding to the inciting incident? And so thinking about those words, right, you have the inciting incident coming into your protagonist's life. It's an unexpected event. It's targeted at them. They have it targeted in the sense of they have to respond. Not necessarily targeted, unless it's a particle. Right. But that is this macro level input. The climax is a macro level output. So when you switch for a trope or you switch for a beat, it's exactly the same thing as if you have a novel where you have a global protagonist, but then in a particular scene or particular sequence, another avatar acts as the protagonist. And so these are the same dynamics that we use at all of the levels of story, but we're just seeing them at the very micro level here.

Okay. So we decided the input of that beat, he says he saw it, he won't talk to anyone. But the lieutenant is enlivening. And then now we're looking at the output. None of us underlings will do. Huh? I will say that's active build up, and I would say that's enlivening.

Yeah. So it's kind of like building up their connection, right?

Yeah. Am I looking for the next beat now?

Yeah.

All right, so. So Capelli has said none of us underlings will do. Huh? That's the output of the previous beat.

So now. Magruder shrugged. He'd been on the forest for a long time now, and he was used to just about every type of taxpayer. I looked over to where the thin man sat on the bench against the wall. Well, I said, let me see what I can get out of him.

Okay. Okay. So I would say the input.

Is. Magruder shrugged.

And then it's almost like the next sentence is describing his action. So. Magruder shrugged. As the input. But then we get some more information about that shrug. He'd been on the force for a long time now, and he was used to just about every type of taxpayer. So that starts making me feel like. Well, it almost feels like that part is binding or like world building or something, because it's giving me information about Magruder that's not input or output. Even though this is. That's not a separate beat. So to me, the input is maybe. Is it that whole thing. Magruder shrugged. He'd been on the force for a long time now, and he was used to just about every type of taxpayer. Would that be the input?

Yeah, we actually have it going a little bit further to. I looked over to where the thin man sat on the bench against the.

Wall as the input. Well, because I would end the whole beat. Maybe this is better after Capelli says, well, I said, let me see what I can get out of him, because what I'm reading here is the input. You could, you could rewrite this. I don't think it should be rewritten this way, but you could rewrite it as. Magruder shrugged. Well, I said, let me see what I can get out of him. And that would still be a full beat because I've got input and output. So those two middle lines are the things I'm not sure what to do with, because I see the input from Magruder, I see the output from Compelli, but those two middle lines give us some useful information, but I'm not sure what to do with them.

That is very insightful, Tim. And we have a whole toolbox that we called embedded qualification to deal with those sorts of binding pieces that are addendums to inputs and outputs. That's part of our technology. We don't need to get into it here. But you're picking out the binding elements here is really, really good. We don't. Again, we don't need to get into those details because we would be here for the next three weeks discussing how we contend with that. But we do have a means by which we evaluate that and make it part of our story. Grid gridding. But you're right. So the thing to remember here is you've identified the input and the output, and then that extra stuff is. Is addendum to. Magruder shrugged. And then. So, well done. I'm going to turn it back to Danielle.

Yeah, and we have it in the input here because it is, as you said, Tim, modifying how we think about the shrug.

So I think what you did instinctively was really great, where you look at what is the core nugget of the input, what's the core nugget of the output, and then look at. When he outputs, what is he outputting to? So we have. He shrugs, Magruder shrugs, then Capelli reflects on what the shrug means, and then he gets some sensory input from looking at the man. So all of this goes together into what inspires him to say, well, let me see what I can get out of him. So since we have that broken out now into input and output, and, and just a note here, too, is that we're not going to get into analyzing the embedded qualifications on their own, but we can use them to modify how we understand the input and the output in terms of the valence and what kind of.

What type it is. So that is. That's fair game. We can, we can use the author's description there. So when we have. Magruder shrugged and the accompanying binding. He'd been on the force for a long time now, and he was used to just about every type of taxpayer. I looked over to where the thin man sat on the bench against the wall. Is that a buildup, a breakdown or. Or binding?

I would say it's active buildup.

And would you say it's enlivening or depleting?

All right, so I want to say depleting, but I'm a little gun shy with the depleting.

But I'm think I'm sitting here thinking, like, okay, Magruder doesn't give any more information with his shrug.

He's kind of, to me, signaling that he's done.

You know, I mean, I. I don't know, but I start feeling like this is depleting because it's Magruder basically shutting down anything that comes next. So. Because the previous output from Capelli was asking a question, none of us underlings will do, huh? And so Magruder doesn't give any more information to him. He just shrugs.

Okay, so we have. We have enlivening.

Okay?

The reason that we have enlivening is that we have it. As you said, it's. There's not very much that we get about what Magruder's doing, right? He shrugs. And we know that he's kind of world weary from the description. This is all we get.

And what that does is that it gives us this space of potential.

Where he hasn't really enacted any particular.

Any particular way of responding to what Capelli said. So it's more wide open. And so we go to enlivening in that case, because it's preserving the complexity of the situation and their interaction, that it's not creating conflict between them. It's. It's allowing the conversation to. To go forward and continue to build up. So it's like he can be saying here.

He says, you know, none of us underlings will do. He shrugs. He could be saying, like, yeah, you and me both, you know, or he could be doing that as a covert action where he doesn't want to admit to being an underling. And so it's leaving that open. And so it's opening up. Right? We talked about enabling, right? So it's opening up all of these possibilities for how the conversation could go rather than constraining it down to a particular path that would be constraining.

So, like, when I think about active buildup, verse breakdown beats, most beats are going to Be active buildup. And that's kind of the default position until something breaks down. Is that kind of the same in enlivening the depleting? Where like the, if I had a spectrum, right? If we had negative 1, 0 and 1.

Like neutral and up is going to be enlivening unless something is specifically depleting. Because in some of these we've been like, well, there's not a lot there. But you know, we're going to, we're going to tag it as enlivening because like for instance, higher up, you know, an output was that him? You know, and it's like I, you know, it says that him I asked. So I have four words to decide if it's enlivening or depleting. And so I start to feel like, well, okay, I should start with enlivening and get talked out of it into depleting instead of like just looking at it as this clear binary choice. Would that be a better way to start thinking through this or am I still missing it?

I think yes. But I have some, some follow up thoughts on that that.

I would say that neutrality, what neutrality means is that the, the avatar is following the rules.

Of the collective cultural grammar, which is enlivening because it's moving the, it's moving that relationship forward. It's creating, it's not creating tension, it's creating a bond. That's how collective cultural grammars work, is that they provide frameworks in which to form those bonds. So in the absence of anything else, I would say that yeah, neutrality tends toward enlivening because we experience following the rules as neutral. However, I don't think that that means that the distribution is overwhelmingly enlivening because what you'll. Because stories aren't life. So like in our lives, most interactions are enlivening, hopefully. But in a story you do want to have this mix. And so like at the very beginning, if they're in this situation where they're, they're getting along like they're at work, they always go to work, chances are something relatively neutral is going to be enlivening. However, the reverse is true. If you have an avatar who has.

Who has already established a depleting pattern of behavior and they're just always terrible if they go toward the neutral, like they're probably going to be still depleting. And so you can adjust.

Your expectations of that avatar based on the strategy that they've been following up until this point.

So like Eeyore would be depleting even when he's neutral. Is that kind of what I'm hearing?

Potentially? I feel sorry for him. I feel, I feel a lot of.

Empathy toward, er, Eeyore and Winnie the Pooh is who I'm thinking of.

Right, I know. And I'm having trouble being like, yes to pleading because, you know, well, I haven't seen it in a long time. Yeah, yeah, right. So is it like, is he depleting or is he just like.

I don't need to look at this.

It's probably a rabbit hole. We don't need to go down.

Right. But something like Thorin or. Yeah, go ahead.

I think the point here, Tim, is that there's a tendency for us to try and generalize. Right. So you're looking for like a generalized rule of thumb to use and say, well, most things are enlivening. So, yeah, I'm just going to go with enlivening. Unless there's proof of depleting, and that's kind of a mistake. And the reason why that's a mistake is because the reason why we take such care in these beats is the variation is extraordinarily.

The energy transfer is very, very specific. And so if you start using generalized principles at the beat level, you start to get into trouble because then you start just sort of using formulaic, I'm going to go alignment, alignment, alignment, depleting and limelight. And then it becomes patterned and it doesn't feel real because the patterns in life are unpredictable. Right. So you're trying to simulate the unpredictability at the beat level. And so to, to use these sort of generalized principles and say, well, you know, 72% of them are going to be enlivening. And then every 3% afterwards, you're going to deplete. That's going to get you into trouble. So this is why we, we, we take great care looking at masterworks, because the masterworks do these beautifully intricate variants on these, these very large, you know, generalized principles like it's good to fall in love. That's a great generalized principle. Right? But if you want to read a great love story, it's much more nuanced than it's good to fall in love. You know, you don't finish reading Pride and Prejudice and go, well, the moral of that story is it's good to fall in love. No, you go, well, there's all of these nuances of how about how to properly fall in love? And depending upon the variation of things happening in the story. So this is where the variation really comes to the fore is in these bead analyses. So as. As difficult as it is and how like it does, it does crash your mind a little bit, you do have to take the care to really suss out the enlivening and depleting here. And we do have three tools to be able to do that, you know, which we have been discussing. We have sort of, you know, the. The. Is it moving me forward or making me reevaluate Sam? Right. So we take Sam's position, and then at the very bottom, we can take Sam's position as seeing the world through a particular protagonist. So now we're saying, is this enlivening to Capelli or depleting to Capelli if it's in a dialogue transfer? And then we have, you know, other tools to be able to do this. But I understand what you're trying to do. You're trying to generalize the principle and say, would you. Would you agree that most beats are enlivening or most inputs? And that's why I think you're getting hesitancy to say eeyore is always depleting. Because we don't want to say that unless we're analyzing. It's like, well, which input and output are you talking about? Then we'll take a look. But to generalize EOR as a depleting person or avatar is not. We don't feel comfortable doing that because we need to see the words on the page to make that determination.