mary-masked

Saving the Cat and Learning Story Structure

Published: August 28th 2017, 2:47:14 pm

Between the eclipse and my phone addiction, I managed to literally make myself sick with the power of light. I was nauseous for a day and a half before I figured it out and then I had to spend all of Wednesday in a dim room writing on paper like some kind of caveman.

The upside of this is that I made myself beat out the story of several books I'm working on, according to the beats in the popular screenwriting book Save the Cat. I was unsure about it at first, especially since most of the movies he uses as examples are... kinda terrible. High grossing, yes, but not good. But then I started applying it to movies I *did* like. I watched Better Off Dead, an utterly bonkers movie, with an actual timer to see if it matched up with the beats in the book. It wasn't exact but it hit every one.

So even if the writer has very different taste in films from me, and writes Home Alone style family comedy, and took the time to write "Fuck Memento" in his book, he still had some pretty valuable advice to give. And just like Burlesque has a structure that allows for a lot of creativity, so does writing. It's just harder to visualize.

Working on these beats did force me to ask some important questions about the stories I was writing. For instance "what's the one *major* point that this book is trying to make, sure it's about a lot of things, but pick one big one." This is something that always trips me up and I think it's getting in the way of my stories.
I realized that the point of one book was "Love does *not* conquer all." Which seems kinda bleak as morals go, but in a society where 50% of marriages end in divorce, maybe it's one we need to hear a bit more often. If only to make it not so disappointing when it happens in the real world.

It also gave me a better handle on where my story needs to start and how to cut down my backstory, like *really* cut down my back story. If I'd done this in the first place, I might have a book deal by now.

But I think this is just sort of how creative learning works, for me at least. You discover an art form and kind of roll around in it for a while. Then you look at what you have, get a sense of what you don't know, and start learning the actual craft.

So now I have YET ANOTHER scrivner file for my Cinderella book. But hopefully this will be the one that sticks.