What is Save the Cat? (And why so many writers love it)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 16 ต.ค. 2024
- Wondering what is Save the Cat! and why so many writers are talking about it? In this video, I break it all down and get you up to speed on one of the most popular plotting method among writers.
✍️ FREE RESOURCES FOR WRITERS:
◦ Save the Cat! Starter Kit - www.writingmas...
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📚 BOOKS FOR WRITERS:
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◦ Save the Cat! Writes a Young Adult Novel - www.jessicabro...
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💁🏻♀️ ABOUT ME:
Jessica Brody is the author SAVE THE CAT! WRITES A NOVEL as well as more than 20 novels for teens, tweens, and adults, published by Simon & Schuster, Random House, Macmillan, and Disney Press. Her books have been translated and published in over 23 countries and several have been optioned for film and TV. She is the founder of the Writing Mastery Academy, an innovative online learning platform for fiction writers.
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I like how you use the examples from real novels. It adds a helpful extra depth of understanding. Thank you
A great story has been bouncing around in my brain for 7 years. It's time to catch it and push it into its proper beats. I even know the loglines for the 3 stories that will follow. Thank you for the book and these videos.
My gratitude for this is permanent. She has changed life
This explains why my wife and I enjoy two star movies. We're so used to these beats that a movie that messes some of them up is hence more interesting. Love your flashback sfx! That is such a writer way to do fx: "the fleets meet"
Video starts at 4:48
Nvm, it's in the description.
Nvm, she didn't even put it into the description.
Thank you for the help!
Love the save the cat book and joined her writing mastery academy and her 3 week class. Highly recommend for anyone thinking of writing stories.
Joseph Campbell, an academic scholar, observed a thing called The Hero's Journey way before somebody analyzed Save The Cat.
Hero’s Journey story structure is thousands of years old and based on the myth story form which is still the most popular story form of all today. I guarantee somebody “observed” its existence before Campbell but he secured the book deal.
None of this stuff is new. For anyone to say they’ve created or discovered anything new about story at this point is like saying Columbus “discovered” North America. Tell that to the Native Peoples who were already living here.
We should all be discerning of the narratives that people want to push and realize that it’s not about whether someone discovered anything first - it’s about who is sufficiently equipped to teach and disperse the tools and various methods of effectively telling stories.
Those are the people that are best to write these books and they should receive credit for propagating the knowledge and not disparagement because not all doers of a thing can teach it to other people. Ms. Brody can and does. There’s a reason her book on the subject is so successful.
Also, Hero’s journey doesn’t work for every genre…not even close. Save the Cat has a much better and wider range of use over more genres.
What can’t be disputed is that the Save The Cat method has worked very well for Ms. Brody. Her established career as a traditionally published author speaks for itself.
She gives credit to Blake Snyder for the original Save The Cat. She isn’t claiming she came up with his names for the beats or anything. She simply adopted the material for the written medium of storytelling while also providing examples and adding her own experiences to the mix.
I don’t understand the disparagement going on in the comments.
Amazing, thank you dearly
I litterally purchased Save the Cat and Hero with a Thousand Faces yesterday, 25sec into the video and I Googled it, I'll be reading HwaTF first.
Thank you 🙏🏻
Could you maybe do a video on negative character arcs and how they work with save the cat? I’ve been trying to write one but I just can’t seem to make it work.
I have save the cat writes a novel. Very helpful for my wip series. I'm torn between science fantasy or superhero.
Thank u for informations
Dear Jessica...we need your book in spanish! (At least a digital versión)
Of course this “code” has been around forever, most of us read “The hero with a thousand faces” ages ago.
How is this different from "The Hero with a Thousand Faces"?
How is the save the cat beats different than the 3 or 4 act structure
What about Animation. Still the same ?
Can you make a hero likable without the save the cat moment? Dang Runin and eren jeager come to mind but i am not sure if I should call them heroes
Most gurus say you don’t have to make your hero likable. But you do have to make him relatable. He might be a terrible person; but give him a limp from an old injury that keeps him in constant pain and he becomes relatable.
In that case the reader is thinking “Gosh, if I was in pain almost all the time I probably wouldn’t be the nicest person all the time either. I wouldn’t want to hang out with him; but I kind of understand him. I wonder if anything happens to him to change his life for the better?” 😂.
Better yet give him a more universal problem and even if we don’t like him, we’ll stick around to see what his solution was to that same problem we have or that’s similar.
I think unlikeable characters can be wonderfully complex. You just have to give the reader a reason to want to see what happens to them - even if it’s comeuppance.
Remember J.R. Ewing from the TV show Dallas? People loved to hate him but that’s why you watched - to see if anybody would ever get the best of him. His redeeming quality was the love and respect he had for his parents. And he could fight with his brothers; but nobody else better mess with them. Then there was his son as well. His family was his Cat.
This explains why the first John Wick was about an unlikable protagonist who avenged (saved) a dog, instead of a cat
OMG you're soooo right.. burn the world down to revenge the death of his dog. Now I get it
Let’s not leave out the part about the dog being a loving gift from his wife that she arranged to be delivered to him after her death.
It was her way to remind him how to keep living and to keep love in his heart after she was gone. That is what was taken away from him. To this day I cannot watch the demise of Daisy scene.
John Wick is a quintessential thriller structurally in that the protagonist is often a shady, initially unsympathetic or even villainous criminal (retired hit man) that has been very personally targeted / victimized.
The villain is known to the audience right from the start. There’s no real mystery about who the bad guy is and the protagonist’s story goal is revenge or to avenge or pursue Justice.
These are hallmarks of the thriller genre which works well with Save The Cat - as most genres do.
Already understood 5 act structure. Don’t understand how Save The Cat is different from Shakespeare 5 acts. Is it literally just making your character more likable? That’s what everyone has been raving about?
What about this 1:14
When will you do a beat sheet for children's picture books?
Another "save the cat" movie where the guy literally saved the cat is Breakfast at Tiffany's.
Eric Weinstein sent me here, via his appearance on Chris Williamson's podcast today