Book Review: SAVE THE CAT! WRITES A NOVEL by Jessica Brody

Based on Blake Snyder’s famous (and very useful) SAVE THE CAT! books, Jessica Brody does for novelists what Snyder did for screenwriters. Just as Snyder identified a number of “beats” that every good movie contains, Brody has identified 15 beats that you can find in every good novel. These include:

• The Opening Image
• Setup
• Catalyst
• B Story
• Fun and Games
• All Is Lost
• Finale

Of course, there are more but I don’t want to give everything away.

She also offers 10 genres that fit any story. That is, any story will fit into at least one of these genres. Brody’s genres aren’t your traditional genre types (Western, Romance, Horror, etc.). Rather, these are templates that might encompass various traditional genres. For example, the “Superhero” is a story type in which an extraordinary hero comes to terms with being special or having a special destiny in an ordinary world. She lists DRACULA, PETER PAN, THE BOURNE IDENTITY, ERAGON, HARRY POTTER, CINDER, and SHADOW AND BONE among the novels that fit this genre. Other Brody genres include:

• Whydunit
• Rites of Passage
• Institutionalized
• Dude with a Problem
• Fool Triumphant
• Monster in the House

Again, that’s not all of them. Spoilers, ya know. 🙂

You can fit her 15-point beat sheet into each of these genres. Each genre also has three elements that are unique to them but need to be present. The “Superhero” genre, for example, must include a power your hero has, a nemesis who opposes your hero with an equal or greater power, and a curse your hero needs to grapple with.

All this may seem to be formulaic, but Brody insists that’s not what the beat sheet is about. Save the Cat! is not a one-size-fits-all technique for writing the perfect story. Rather, the beat sheets give you a structure upon which to hang your story. If you’ve already written your novel but it doesn’t seem to be working, you can use this structure to see if your novel is hitting all the beats. If you’re just starting your novel, you can use the 15 beat structure to make sure you’ve thought through all the elements of your story.

What if you’re not a plotter? Brody claims the beat sheet can still be useful to you, providing a loose roadmap as your story develops to keep you on course.

To help you see how the beat sheets work, Brody includes a 15-beat breakdown of one popular novel for each of her 10 genres (she uses HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER’S STONE for the “Superhero” genre). This is extremely beneficial, putting her theory into practice.

In short, SAVE THE CAT! WRITES A NOVEL is an excellent book, one that should be in every writer’s library. Brody’s style is engaging and informal making the book very readable. I can see this being a useful resource for many writers. Myself included.

The tagline says it is “the last book on novel writing you’ll ever need.” As long as the first three books you have on novel writing are ON WRITING by Stephen King, WRITING WITHOUT RULES by Jeff Somers, and FUNNY YOU SHOULD ASK by Barbara Poelle, I would agree.

Any questions?