On Cats And Books

Given that I’ve taken part in NaNoWriMo since 2008, I’ve tried a million different methods of plotting books.

• Larry Brooks & Storyfix
• First Draft in 30 Days
• Layer Your Novel

But my latest discovery, Save The Cat Writes A Novel, is what I’m using to plot my new book.

Based on the method by Blake Snyder, whose Save The Cat for screenwriters is pretty popular, this one was developed by author Jessica Brody specifically for writing books.

I decided to take Jessica’s Udemy course called Write A Bestselling Novel In 15 Steps, a companion to her book. I really liked this course, Jessica breaks each main “beat” of the novel into separate modules, with descriptions, examples from books & movies, as well as her own books.

It’s great if you don’t have time to read an entire plotting book. You can literally sit there and plot out your main beats in a weekend if you want!
I liked it so much that I’m going to also buy her book to get more examples of the beats, but her course is a great resource, with a bunch of freebies you can download with tip sheets on the beats.

MY PROGRESS

I’ve pretty much planned out the main “tentpole” scenes for the first 2/3 of my book. I’m about to plan the final third, and then I’ll go through each of those main chapters and plan the beats for each scene (point-form chapter breakdowns, so when i sit down to write, I know what will happen in each chapter).

Yes, I am a card-carrying plotter. I like a detailed road map for where my book will go, but that doesn’t mean it won’t change along the way. In fact, it usually does. But having that main foundation really helps me, and more often than not, I find some really cool seed I didn’t even realize I’d planted comes to fruition in the writing process.

AND YOU?

Do you plot your stories or books? Do you have a structural method you like? Or do you go into it with a more open framework and discover your story as you write?