Last week I reread To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway and thought it’d be interesting to “beat it out,” as Blake Snyder would say in Save the Cat.Snyder’s beat sheet (available gratis on his website) is a one page synopsis of a movie that lists page numbers for each act break and important plot points in the story arc of a 110 page script.
2. Theme Stated (5): What question does the story ask?
3. Set-Up (1-10): Introduce all A Story characters and the “before” world of the hero
4. Catalyst (12): Introduce the problem the hero faces
5. Debate (12-25): The hero doesn’t immediately solve the problem. Rising action
6. Break into Two (25): Shift to middle section.
7. B Story (30): Introduce B story characters
8. Fun and Games (30-55): Wacky hijinks, love story, car chases, etc. Scenes for the trailer.
9. Midpoint (55): Something happens to get the A story momentum going again
10. Bad Guys Close In (55-75): Everything that can go wrong will go wrong
11. All Is Lost (75): It’s over, the hero is never going to make it
12. Dark Night of the Soul (75-85): The hero mopes
13. Break into Three (85): The hero is revived, finds courage or hope or whatever, new day.
14. Finale (85-110): The hero rescues the girl, finds the treasure, saves the day, etc.
15. Final Image (110): Reverse of opening image that demonstrates the hero’s change
I wanted to know how the page numbers would line up for a novel which has twice as many pages. If a screenplay breaks into Act Two on page 25, does that mean the novel gets 50 pages?
As it turns out, the answer was: not necessarily. Instead of an exact doubling of each section, I found the Set-up and Finale sections (beginning and end) of a novel are still relatively short. In fact, Hemingway sets up the story pretty well in the first 10 pages. The Beat Sheet indicates 15 pages for the Finale, and Hemingway wrote exactly 15 pages in the final section of To Have and Have Not.
Some things did take longer in the novel. The Break Into Two came at page 57. That’s pretty close to double the 25 pages a screenplay allows for. Where the novel uses up the most pages is during the Fun and Games section, the B story, and because Hemingway was a depressed SOB, the Dark Night of the Soul and All is Lost Moments.
This whole side trip into reading Hemingway and Save the Cat has been my real life B story, and the past week and a half have definitely been Fun and Games. Tomorrow I go to a hotel for a writing retreat, where I will write through the Midpoint and into the second half of my novel.
Studying screenwriting as a way to improve my novel has been amazingly helpful. After all, a movie is just a story put on film. Lots of films are adapted from books; why not go the other direction and allow film structure to inform the novel?
Blake Snyder’s point in chapter two of Save the Cat is that you have to put a fresh spin on an old idea. It won’t be cliché, if you know what tradition you are writing in. Your goal is to give it a twist to make it new. “The point is to be well-versed in the language, rhythm, and goals of the genre…. learn its rules and find what’s essential.”
Know your genre. WHAT IS IT… MOST LIKE?
Snyder categorizes movies into ten different genres, but they aren’t the “standard genre types, such as Romantic Comedy, Epic, or Biography — because those names don’t really tell me anything about what the story is.”
He focuses instead on story structure, or core story types. And he argues pretty convincingly that every movie out there falls into one of these ten categories. Maybe every novel doesn’t, because novels can do things like interior monologues, descriptions of setting, and commentary, that films rarely (if ever) indulge in. But studying stories is always time well spent.
Here are the ten genres. Does your story fit into one of them? If so, could your project benefit from watching some related movies? Pop some popcorn and pick out a few!
famous poster (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
•Monster in the House
The “house” is any confined space. Characters are trapped, feel smothered, with no escape. Sin is committed. The monster is revealed, kills the sinners, spares the heroes. Lots of “run and hide” sequences. Jaws, Scream, Alien.
•Golden Fleece
The quest myth, where the hero goes in search of one thing and finds another, usually himself. Road movies, heist movies fit into this category, where the scenes are somewhat episodic because the theme is less linear and more concerned with internal growth. The Wizard of Oz, Star Wars, Jason and the Argonauts, Ocean’s Eleven.
•Out of the Bottle
The wish fulfillment genre. It can feature a magical genie, or not. The point is the main guy we like gets his wish and the story covers what happens next. In the end a moral ties a nice neat bow around the package. Bruce Almighty, Flubber.
The reverse of this category is the comeuppance tale, in which a guy we don’t like all that much gets what’s coming to him, proves he has some redeeming qualities, and eventually triumphs. There must be a Save the Cat scene early on, or else you risk losing your audience at the outset. Groundhog Day, Freaky Friday.
•Dude with a Problem
“An ordinary guy finds himself in extraordinary circumstances.” The story starts off with an ordinary day in the life of the regular Joe which quickly turns catastrophic as the problem is revealed. You’ll need really bad villains, insurmountable problems, and an ingenious way for our supposedly ordinary guy to outsmart the enemies and save the day. Die Hard, Titanic, Schindler’s List.
Pretty in Pink (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
•Rites of Passage
Coming of age, midlife crises, dealing with the death of a loved one— these are all rites of passage. “In a good Rites of Passage tale, everybody’s in on ‘the joke’ except the person going through it,” and the story charts “the hero’s grudging acceptance of the forces of nature that he cannot control or comprehend, and the victory comes with the hero’s ability to ultimately smile.” Ordinary People, Pretty in Pink, Lost in Translation.
•Buddy Love
Buddy stories can be about two guys, two girls, two fish, a boy and his dog, lovers. The story often starts with the two hating each other, but during their adventure together find they need each other, which they also hate. The All Is Lost moment is when we think they are calling it quits, but in the end they realize they’re better together. Love wins.
“The buddy movie was invented by a screenwriter who realized that his hero had no one to react to. There was just this big, empty space where interior monologue and description is found in fiction.” Dumb and Dumber, Notting Hill, Rain Man.
Cover of Rear Window (Universal Legacy Series)
•Whydunit
Detective stories, social dramas, dark heart kinds of tales that ask not just who did this, but why did it happen? The story explores something so evil we could not imagine it being possible, then turns the question back on ourselves: what am I capable of?
Snyder reckons Chinatown is the best example of the whydunit Hollywood has to offer. “It’s one of those movies that you can see a thousand times and drive deeper into smaller and smaller rooms of the Nautilus shell with each viewing.” I haven’t seen it, but it sounds worthwhile. Citizen Kane, Rear Window, Fargo, Minority Report.
•The Fool Triumphant
An underestimated underdog proves to be wiser than the establishment and more capable than he at first appears. With determination and a bit of luck, he saves the day, wins the girl, and becomes an unlikely hero. Forrest Gump, Legally Blonde, Aladdin.
Film poster for Office Space – Copyright 1999, 20th Century Fox (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
•Institutionalized
These stories draw attention to groups, families, institutions like the military. Often the hero is a newcomer with whom the audience can identify, and there is a secondary character who is more experienced and helps the virgin newbie (and us) learn the ropes.
The group is often portrayed as crazy in some way, yet people are loyal to the group and willing to sacrifice themselves to a certain extent. There’s a survival element, and “each has a breakout character whose role is to expose the group goal as a fraud.” One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, The Godfather, Top Gun, Office Space.
•Superhero
Exactly the opposite of Dude With a Problem: extraordinary person faces the ordinary world. We can never totally identify with the superhero, but we can all identify with being misunderstood. The writer often makes the superhero sympathetic and relatable by stressing the flip side of being a genius/superhuman/god. They have problems, too. X-Men, A Beautiful Mind, Gulliver’s Travels, The Matrix.
As I finished writing this post, I found a PDF on Blake Snyder’s website called Save The Cat Goes to the Movies! At a Glance that lists hundreds of movies by category. Not only that, each category is broken down into five sub-genres, so you can really narrow down what type of story you’re writing and find similar movies to watch.
According to Save the Cat author Blake Snyder, one of the four keys to writing a winning log-line (elevator pitch) for a screenplay is generating “a compelling mental picture that promises more.” Part of this step is visualizing the movie poster.
As novelists, we don’t need a poster (yet), but we do need a book jacket.
I’m totally getting WAY ahead of myself here, but in addition to Save the Cat, I got two other very closely related messages in the past few days, so I’m pretty sure it’s a sign from the universe to design some cover art.
First, I was sent an article on The Point of the Paperback from my book-loving friend American Book Junkie. There are some really great looking books here, and I found that in almost every case I was more drawn to the hardcover than the paperback edition. Super fun article! If looking at book covers is your idea of eye candy, you really need to see it. I practically squealed.
To be honest, thinking about what the book cover will look like feels a bit like hanging a decorative shelf on an unpainted wall in a half-built house. But since I’m on break from writing this week to focus on reading, organizing notes, and getting the big picture perspective, why not have a bit of fun? It’s kind of exciting because it makes me think, “I’m really doing this!”
Punk has an awesome concept for it. He even drew up a picture. I like it so much I think it might actually be the winning look for my book. So I’ll keep it a secret for now. In lieu of sharing it, here are a few book jackets that have lured me in over the years. If it hadn’t been for the cover art, I may not have even read some of these:
Yep, I had a sweet little helper choosing favorites today. Good thing, too— he added a splash of color to an otherwise bland looking selection. (I must be in a yellow frame of mind.)
How about you guys— how do you choose your covers? Do you even think about cover art at all while writing the story, or do you wait to hang decorative shelves until after the house is painted?
Blake Snyder has a knack for distilling what a screenplay needs into a cat-treat sized morsel that’s all protein and no filler. What he calls a log-line is basically the elevator pitch– you’ve got ONE line to say exactly what your story is. I’d like to be able to do this for my novel now, before it’s written, and I’ll absolutely have to when I get to the query letter stage.
Here’s what he says I’ll need:
Four must-haves for every screenplay’s log-line (one-line)
•Irony. Things are not what they seem. The dish is full of cat food but it’s turned upside down.
•Compelling mental picture that promises more. What is it about? There must be a core story.
•Consider audience and cost. Maybe not cost so much, because I can blow stuff up in my novel without actually having to foot the bill in real life, or on a movie set.
•Killer title that says what it is. Heck, yes! I’ve had a title picked out for a year. It was one of the first things that came to me when the story began to surface. (Uncle John says poo on titles yet, even though the book is nearly half written.) The title I’m working with is not thematic. It just says what it is. Double points: it’s ironic!
Ripley literally saves the cat in Alien.
Maybe you’re wondering what “saving the cat” is all about. I didn’t have a clue. It’s a scene early in a movie that shows the character in a positive light. Often the main guy is potentially unlikable, which is a good thing because he has lots of room to grow and become awesome, but it’s a bad thing if your audience hates him. The “Save the Cat” scene shows him doing something humane, which hopefully gets the audience, or in our case, our readers, to care about him.
For example, in Aladdin, we see the hero as a thief (bad guy) but then watch as he gives the stolen bread to a couple of poor hungry kids (good guy).
I’ve been mulling over Dufresne’s approach to novel writing in Is Life Like This?, contemplating why it hasn’t turned out to be a good fit for me. I think it comes down to two things:
1. Uncle John assumes you want to write a novel but have no idea what to write about. But I already had a well-formulated idea of the story I wanted to write (title and everything!) and had already “written” many of the scenes, if only in my mind.
2. His program involves following around a character to see what they will do. His assumption is that the story the character will tell me is better than the one I want to tell. This cannot work for a woman who is trying to become a person. I can’t work on my codependency issues– learning to value myself, speak up for myself, trust my own decision making process, have opinions– and then give control of my project over to a character that I created.
Dufresne’s fiction is great, but that doesn’t mean his way of writing novels is the only way. I have followed his program to the letter, but it hasn’t improved my story. It’s turned a tight 17 beat plan into a 67 beat monstrosity. Kind of like driving from Detroit to New York by way of Kentucky’s back roads.
His program has also been invaluable, and I still recommend it if you want to write a novel but haven’t got the germ of an idea yet. Favorite sections were digging through my personal history for topics, characters, and themes; visualizing the setting, the town, the ambience of my novel in detail; working through the exercise on point of view.
All good stuff!
I checked out the next few chapters and the book (Is Life Like This?) is still totally worth keeping on my desk. It’s comprehensive so I know Uncle John won’t let me accidentally drop anything through the cracks.
But there’s a kitty on top of that book now. Campbell with his Hero’s Journey, and now Snyder with his cat, have brought me back to the story I wanted to tell in the first place, and restored my confidence in my ability to tell it well.
After reading Catherine Caffeinated’s endorsement a few weeks back, I decided to check out SAVE THE CAT by Blake Snyder. I’m SO glad I did. It’s a screenwriting guide, but it might just be the book that saves my novel.
Following the six month program in Is Life Like This? has been helpful in a lot of ways, and I am grateful for John Dufresne. But as I alluded to in my Week 8 recap on The Hero’s Journey, I think I’m an outline girl. (Uncle John is not.)
Following characters around to see what they’ll do has led me down so many paths, and honestly I don’t see any of them panning out because none of them are turning into a well-formed linear story. They’re all over the place— episodes. Vignettes.
Not a novel.
When I write, I envision the story as if it’s a movie. The scenes play out in my head, and they follow a very definite path. I see how the events fall into three acts. There’s an inciting incident, a reversal, a climax and all the rest. So while I am following Dufresne’s plan to finish the first draft by June, I’m going to resist chasing any more of his wild geese.
I’m going to save a cat.
Oh, right. Weekly recap. Week 11: 4th week of plot work. I wrote some scenes, but only for 4 days. Week 12 is a much needed vacation from writing— to read!— and I couldn’t wait to get started. Read a favorite novel/author, take notes, figure out why it works. Heaven! Thanks for the break, Uncle John. I owe you 3 days.
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