Writing Craft: Save the Cat! Writes a Novel
I have a fondness for books on the craft of writing. I like reading about other writers’ tussles with different elements of story and what they’ve learned as a result.
The ones I enjoy the most and the ones I think I’ll continue to learn from find a permanent home on my book shelves.
Save the Cat! Writes a Novel (Ten Speed Press, 2018) by Jessica Brody is one of these. (Note: Brody has a new book coming out in July 2023 called Save the Cat! Writes a Young Adult Novel.)
Maybe you’ve heard of it. It’s based on a book for screenwriters and focuses primarily on structure and plotting.
When I first heard about this book and the large number of plot points, I was skeptical. It sounded like she was advocating for a formula, although she claims it’s not a formula.
She writes, “I’ve studied popular novels throughout time—books published from as recently as today to as far back as the 1700s. And I’ve found that nearly all of them fit the same pattern. All of them can be structurally analyzed using the Save the Cat! methodology.”
Maybe so. At least she’s not claiming that all novels fit this pattern.
Brody uses the familiar 3-act structure to describe the 15 plot points or “beats,” as she calls them. Act 1 has 5 plot points, Act 2 has 7, and Act 3 has 3.
That’s a lot of plot points to worry about hitting! She doesn’t recommend starting with the first one and working your way through to the end. Later in the book she identifies a handful of them that she suggests writers figure out first. She describes them as the “foundation beats.”
In addition to describing each plot point and how it works within the story, Brody also identifies approximately where it falls. For example, the first plot point of Act 2 should happen at about the 20% mark in your story.
While I appreciated the details about the plot points, I think what might be even more helpful for writers comes after that.
Reading like a writer—helpful plot analyses
The bulk of the book is devoted to detailed analyses of different types of stories—she identifies 10—and their plots points. She analyzes several books in each chapter.
Although Brody describes her story categories as “genres,” they’re not, for the most part, how a bookstore or a library would categorize fiction. No categories for romance or literary fiction, for example.
The category that’s closest to our traditional sense of genre is “Whydunit,” which she defines like this: “A mystery must be solved by a hero (who may or may not be a detective) during which something shocking is revealed about the dark side of human nature.”
Within each category, Brody identifies its “key ingredients.” For a novel that fits the Whydunit category, she writes, “you’ll need three key ingredients to ensure its success: (1) a detective, (2) a secret, and (3) a dark turn.” She explains, with multiple examples, how these ingredients show up.
Each genre chapter begins with a spoiler warning for the novels whose plot secrets she reveals in her analysis. For example, the Whydunit chapter has spoilers for
Memory Man by David Baldacci
In the Woods by Tana French
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
One of the novels mentioned in each chapter’s spoiler warning has its own “beat sheet.” In other words, an outline of the 15 plot points. For example,
In the Whydunit category, The Girl on the Train
In the Superhero category, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, by J. K. Rowling
In the Rites of Passage category, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
Where character comes into play
Since this book focuses so heavily on structure, I was happily surprised to discover that chapter one is about creating a “story-worthy hero.”
Why does she start there? Because “[o]nly when you’ve got a good idea of who your hero is will you be able to figure out what kind of transformative journey they require.”
Great point!
If you’d like another way to think about character development, please sign up for 4 Steps to Compelling Characters.