A novel way to use screenwriting.

Most screenplays use positive and negative story beats. Alternating story beats aids the progression of the story, creates and resolves tension so that the viewer is not in a continual state of depression or euphoria, and keeps the viewer interested by adding different emotional elements to the story.

Positive and negative story beats basically mean that something good will happen and then something bad will happen. If the storyline is depressing, like the main characters are being tortured in a POW camp on a Pacific Island that is about to be flooded due to rising sea levels, humour is often used as a positive beat to ease the tension that the negative story beats have created. A script cannot be completely positive or completely negative as there would be nothing to drive the story and the viewer would not want to keep watching. A story like this would not be satisfying to watch as there are no odds that are overcome or questions that are answered (even if the answer is that there cannot be anyway to know for sure).

While this is part of screenwriting convention, it can also be used in fiction novels. ‘A Spot of Bother’ by Mark Haddon is a good example of a novel that uses positive and negative story beats. Haddon is a screenwriter and author of the acclaimed novel “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time”.

Another book I have read recently that uses positive and negative story beats is “Confessions of a Shopaholic” by Sophie Kinsella. If the story was just about the protagonist spiralling into debt and buying more clothing and accessories, and drowning her financial sorrows in alcohol because she is unsatisfied with her career as a financial journalist, the reader would stop reading as they would feel an overwhelming sense of despair and boredom. While her situation becomes fairly dire, humour plays a big part in dissolving tension and alternately creating tension to counteract the negative story beats.

In this book, when something bad happens, it gets worse and then it gets worse and then it gets worse again. The protagonist, Becky Bloomwood takes on casual employment working in a clothing store to make some extra cash to pay off the debt she has accrued. On her first shift, she spots a pair of jeans that she must have on sale. Unfortunately for her, a customer is going on a boyfriend sponsored spending spree and wants to buy these jeans. Becky decides The jeans are the most important thing to her, so when the girl takes them to the changing rooms to try on, Becky uses her power as a shop assistant and proclaims that the girl has too many items so she is not allowed to take the jeans into the changing rooms. Becky hides the jeans, and when the girl gets out she demands to try them on, but Becky refuses. The girl makes a scene, which attracts the manager’s attention. Becky is fired from this job, only after working there one day. When she is walking home she finds out her next door neighbour’s son, who her neighbours believe she fancies, is the boyfriend of the girl trying on the jeans in the shop.

If humour was not present in this situation, aiding the positive and negative story beats, this novel would not be enjoyable and satisfying to read.