Book Review: Save the Cat! Writes a Novel

I have been playing around with writing fiction for the first time in a long time.  A fantasy story about elves has been playing around in my head for years. I sketched some character descriptions and tried writing few scenes in the past but it’s never gone anywhere.  I decided to invest in Save the Cat! Writes a Novel because I have heard it recommended many different times to help in plotting out a novel.

I’ve written out short stories before, but nothing recently and I have never written anything that comes close to the length of a novel. What if I’m too much of a beginner to benefit from an entire book about plot?

Save the Cat! Character Development

Before Save the Cat!, I had some basic ideas about the main characters, but I really benefited from the discussion of how to develop personality aspects and goals for each character. It inspired me to get to know the inner workings of my main characters. I had some productive prewriting about the characters based on what I learned from the book.

Save the Cat! Beats – The Beginning

The discussion of plot beats and what happens during each act was very in-depth and once I started writing out beats for the first act, I could start to visualize each scene and where it fit into the whole. The act one beats are especially detailed and broken into small chunks and it wasn’t hard to move from scene to scene.

The Middle and Beyond

Save the Cat! suggests a three act structure. Once I got to the second act, I noticed I struggled because the “fun and games” portion of the beat sheet and the rest of the beats in the middle are less proscribed and much larger chunks.  I needed to stop and do the scene by scene planning like act one to get me through the middle slog.  The third act beats seem to describe very specific events and conflicts.  I am not sure at this point if that will be comforting and inspiring or if it will feel too proscribed. There’s certainly tons of structure for the exciting climax scenes.

Save the Cat! for a Beginner

Overall, the Save the Cat! Writes a Novel has really helped frame out the progression of a first novel and visualize each scene like a movie scene.  Just helping me get thousands of words down on paper is a huge win for me. I’m not usually a fiction writer and the novel form is very new to me. This book helped me make a ton of planning progress and get some chapters down on paper. If you want the novel form broken down into a clear, detailed plot structure, this book is for you. It has many different plot maps from famous books in a variety of genres. It has what you are looking for.