Saving Cats with Jessica Brody

Last week I had the privilege of attending a workshop hosted by the Virginia Romance Writers in Fredericksburg, VA. The day was a fabulous training on story structure for novelists brought over from screenwriting.

If you’re not familiar, Save The Cat, is a screenwriting book that talks about the mandatory storytelling points or beats in movies. One storytelling beat, and where the title comes from, is the moment at the beginning of the movie we see our hero or heroine metaphorically save a cat or do something good to get the audience on their side. For example, when we see Alladin give some bread to little kids or when Cinderella saves a mouse from a trap we are rooting for them.

Jessica's book Save the Cat Writes a Novel walks writers through the fifteen-story beats present in all great stories. Not only did Jessica define each beat with examples from both books and film, but she also shared with us her research on where those beats need to be using percentages.

The day was an outlining plotter's dream. We walked away with not only worksheets and calculators, but a working knowledge of how to outline our next story's structure or a proven method to triage a story that's being difficult.

Jessica recommended that in addition to a beat sheet for the book itself, every character with a POV must have a beat sheet that clearly outlines their arc throughout the plot. This tip helped me as I listened and learned how to use her strategy to straighten up and clarify one of my characters in my next book.

All in all, it was a great day spent among great friends. If you'd like to learn more, here are the links to Jessica Brody's website and book.

If you're outlining a book, drop me a comment below! I'd love to know what you're working on.

Onward,

Kathryn