Book:  Save the Cat: The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need by Blake Snyder (the original)  &  Save the Cat Writes a Novel: The last book on Novel Writing You’ll Ever need (the spin off) by Jessica Brody

Version: Kindle for Both

Description:  Both are story structure 101 broken down in a way that actually makes sense.  Both also have additional chapters/helps that I find super useful.

When I use:  All along the way.  Both books are my first and second stop when I need to nudge my brain a bit.  Interestingly, I have always used STC for my stories’ structure, even years and years before I read the book.  My earliest story efforts (hideously terrible though they are) all follow the STC pattern (which really says more about the universality of structure than it does STC).  Using STC structure with intentionality is SO much easier though.

How I use:

(1)    Premise: I use STC (the original) before I write a single word.  Snyder’s chapter on premise is super helpful in guiding me to pare down my idea into something intriguing.

(2)    Organization: I use a simplified STC structure on my giant white board to keep me organized.  My photo of this is pretty messy, but you can see a modified STC structure in vinyl in the first picture.  I cover it all with notes and stickies and typed outlines of whatever book I’m writing.

(3)    Being Stuck:  When I’ve written myself into a corner or when I’m writing a scene over and over and over and over again without being able to move forward, I can almost always figure out how to unstick myself by studying the structural beat where the stuck scene is located (using both books).  Nine times out of ten, the scene I’m working on doesn’t mesh with the beat I’m pursuing.  It is so, so fascinating to see this happen.

Problems:  One of the downsides of STC is that it can become a formulaic crutch.  I see this happen all the time in online writer groups with newer writers.  A writer will post their story idea and then ask others to help them fit it to the STC Beats.  Drives me crazy.  Because the beauty of STC is seeing it not as just a series of straight line (yes, I know.  I have a straight line on my white board and there are lots of lines in the beat pictures, etc.), but instead seeing it as a web.  Every beat connects to every other beat.  And using STC to the fullest means understanding for each story what this means.  For example, the events in the ‘Debate (which I call Precommitment Struggle) connects to the All is Lost and the Catalyst and the Execution of the Climax.  Each story does this differently.  If the writer doesn’t understand this connection, they aren’t building an entire web, they are just building the strands that connect cross-wise to the bushes or tree.  And it’s those radial bits pieces that give the story (and the spider’s web) so much beauty. If you look closely, you can see I have notes on the web for this book written up on the board. Note, this is not the plot points but how the sections of plot interact with each other.