Save the Cat! Writes a Novel
Aug. 12th, 2022 08:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingOn the recommendation of someone whose writing I admire immensely, I started reading Jessica Brody's Save the Cat! Writes a Novel, and it's great. Specifically, it's very useful in terms of concrete practical information concerning issues such as structure and word/pagecount.
What I especially appreciate about this book is that Brody doesn't obsess over "conflict" as a guiding concept (which I think is overrated) but instead focuses on character development spurred by the tension between what the main character wants and what they need, as well as how this development is spotlighted by the narrative structure of the character's world.
While reading Save the Cat! Writes a Novel, I realized that almost everything I've written follows the basic structure Brody describes. Which is very cool! This makes me feel like maybe there is hope for me after all.
Although The Demon King follows the Save the Cat! structure so perfectly it's uncanny, I'm thinking that maybe I'm still not ready to write that novel, especially since it's so difficult to categorize in terms of genre and will undoubtedly be impossible to market to an agent. I'm therefore thinking about using this structure as an entryway to return to An Unfound Door, which is a more manageable debut project.
I think it's also worth (finally!) paying for Scrivener, which will make it easier to keep track of wordcounts, outlines, character and place names, and so on.
What I especially appreciate about this book is that Brody doesn't obsess over "conflict" as a guiding concept (which I think is overrated) but instead focuses on character development spurred by the tension between what the main character wants and what they need, as well as how this development is spotlighted by the narrative structure of the character's world.
While reading Save the Cat! Writes a Novel, I realized that almost everything I've written follows the basic structure Brody describes. Which is very cool! This makes me feel like maybe there is hope for me after all.
Although The Demon King follows the Save the Cat! structure so perfectly it's uncanny, I'm thinking that maybe I'm still not ready to write that novel, especially since it's so difficult to categorize in terms of genre and will undoubtedly be impossible to market to an agent. I'm therefore thinking about using this structure as an entryway to return to An Unfound Door, which is a more manageable debut project.
I think it's also worth (finally!) paying for Scrivener, which will make it easier to keep track of wordcounts, outlines, character and place names, and so on.
