If you’re around writing long enough you’ll hear about a specific concept called Beats. Beats, or Story Beats, are moments in the narrative where you shift the tone intentionally. It’s like in a song where you move through the four count and land on that hard thump and then back to one. Those shifts define the pace of the story and create a sense of what is to come. Now we see this more in script writing because it is more obvious there. Scripts are visual blueprints, and the beats or changes are vivid on screen–especially on network television where the shows hit that cliffhanger moment before every commercial break in order to force you to stay in your seat in anticipation of the moment leading out of the break.
Larger works such as novellas, novels, or particularly long ‘short’ stories have beats. At least they ought to. My last novel struggled with the beats. I had a few things go well but that was not one of them. It is a thing I intend to fix in the sequel. I also expect to write more about this specific idea of beats in the future–perhaps even doing a visual layout of beats here over a ten minute run. Definitely worth the energy.