LDSPMA

Empowering Latter-day Saints to spread light and truth by connecting them at the intersection of faith, creativity, and professional skill

fiction writing

How “Save the Cat” Can Save Your Story – Part Three

By Leave a Comment

Previous Parts
How “Save the Cat” Can Save Your Story – Part One
How “Save the Cat” Can Save Your Story—Part Two

In my last article, we talked about Save the Cat’s “Transformation Machine.” In this article, we’ll learn about the next three plot beats that draw on your hero’s want while planting subtext about their emotional wound and true need. If you know your hero’s background, you can infuse the story with that rich resonance we want to create with our readers. Studies have shown that most readers will read about 25% of a story before giving up, so these next beats are all the more important. Resonance is the key to hooking your reader and keeping their interest.

The first three beats—Opening Image, Theme, and Set-up—established our world, the main characters, and the hero’s essential problem. Now it’s time for the plot to come crashing into the hero’s life in a very big way.

Beat 4: Catalyst

The Catalyst is a single-beat scene that hits around the 10% mark of your story. Think of this event like a bomb going off in your hero’s life—it’s unexpected (to them, though the reader may anticipate it), upsets everything, and can’t be ignored. If you can honestly say that the hero could ignore the Catalyst—you know, if he weren’t in the book you’re writing—then chances are good it’s not a sufficiently disruptive event. While the hero will spend the following few chapters debating what to do in response to the Catalyst, the truth is they have no choice but to act.

Pro Tip #1: Imagine your hero going about their day—same-old, same-old—when a bomb smashes their house to bits, leaving them alive, but suddenly living a very different life. That’s the kind of impact your Catalyst should have.

Beat 5: Debate

When writers feel like something is “off” with their manuscript, I always review the Catalyst and Debate. Getting these two beats wrong will mess with the book’s flow. In these cases, I find the Catalyst is almost never life-changing enough, and the Debate is never (I mean, never) long (or deep) enough.

The Debate should be 10% of your book!

If you’re writing a 100,000-word long book, the Debate alone will cost you 10,000 words. That’s a lot of words! My chapters tend to be 2,000 words long, so I’d need to write five chapters of Debate. That’s 10% of your story spent on boring stuff.

Or is it?

The Debate is only boring if you write it that way.

Imagine that Beat 4’s bomb lands on your hero’s house and everything goes up in flames. It’s a total loss.

Beat 5 asks, “What now?”

If (as is common for many writers when they first come to me) your answer is, “Then she moves in with her boyfriend, and it’s awesome, and they live happily ever after!” then, well, you have a problem. That’s not interesting, and it’s not real life.

The Debate beat allows you to lean into what you know about your hero and the internal journey you want to take them on.

In real life, if a bomb randomly blew up someone’s house, the victim wouldn’t stop talking about the event. They’d have a hard time working, sleeping, eating, or doing anything. Their mind would be on a constant loop of “A bomb just destroyed my house!”

First, they’d freak out a bit. (Understatement.) Then they’d call the fire department, police, and a friend—because where are they gonna sleep? And what will they wear/do/think? Everything they owned was just destroyed. (More freaking out.)

They’d talk to the police and insurance people. And talk to them again. The place where they spent their first night might not be where they want to stay long term, so they’ll talk to more people and make more arrangements.

They must pick through what’s left of their life, which will be so hard. Lean into that pain.

This is an opportunity to make a change. Maybe they work from home, so really, do they want to rebuild on the same lot? Or do they want to follow their lifelong dream of living and working in Belize? Do they even want to build another house? Maybe they want to move downtown into a trendy condo. The options are endless, challenging, and ultimately, revealing. They might even find themselves thankful for that bomb because the misfortune will allow them to fix everything that’s wrong with their life.

That hope, that belief that they’re in control and know what they’re doing is exactly where you want your hero to be as they Break into Two (Beat 6).

Pro Tip #2: If your Catalyst doesn’t yield this kind of life-altering dilemma, it’s not big enough or radical enough.

Pro Tip #3: Make a list of everything that needs to happen because of the Catalyst, then build your Debate. You’ll discover plenty of material to fill that 10% of your book, and it will inform Act 2 in powerful ways.

Pro Tip #4: If you’re writing a “Call to Adventure” story, the Debate can be a preparation beat—but should be no less demanding of your hero.

Beat 6: Break into Two

The Break into Two beat is a single scene showing your hero choosing to move into Act 2. The event should be physical and occur entirely of their own volition.

This shift from the set-up phase isn’t Harry Potter going to Hogwarts. It’s Harry running head-first into a brick column, believing it’s a magical gateway to wizarding school.

It’s not Katniss volunteering to be Tribute. It’s Katniss boarding the train from District 12 and stepping off into the completely different world of the Capitol.

A bold decision or action provides the perfect lead-in to Act 2—otherwise known as the Upside-Down World. But you’ll have to wait for the next installment to learn how to solve that whole “messy middle” business.

Here’s a hint: With Save the Cat, there’s no such thing as a “messy middle.”

A headshot of Ali Cross.

Ali Cross

Ali Cross is a USA Today bestselling author, motivational speaker, and story development coach who loves to help writers level up both professionally and personally. A happiness enthusiast and believer in hope and magic, Ali’s a sucker for underdogs, redemption stories, and happily-ever-afters. She explores the concept of joy and where it can be found in her YouTube show and podcast, Write4Joy. She lives in Utah with her hacker husband where they collaborate on stories, artificial intelligence, and their plan for virtual world domination.

Find Ali at her website or @thealicross online.

    Presenting Moral Themes for a Secular Audience

    By 2 Comments

    By Emma Heggem

    Most of us don’t work within an entirely Latter-day Saint community. Many of us work with audiences, co-creaters, gatekeepers, and financial backers who are not of our faith. Sometimes,  in the secular publishing community, it feels like we have to pack our beliefs away during professional moments and save them for personal time. But that approach is never truly possible. Some of our beliefs may be easily removed from our creations, like letting characters drink coffee or swear. On the other hand, some of our beliefs are so deeply rooted that we don’t even realize they show up in our work. We may accidentally include topics such as what makes a good leader, whether people are primarily good, or if good is capable of overcoming evil. Sometimes these influences will be subtle and readers won’t consciously notice them. Other times, these beliefs become an active participant in the plot in the form of a theme. 

    When our beliefs become a theme in our fiction novels, we can still make books that can be published and appreciated by general readership. We just need to make sure we are making these ideas palatable for readers who are not of our faith by handling the theme with honesty and complexity. 

    Explore Your Theme

    When tackling a belief that some of your readers may disagree with, you can’t present a singular and unequivocal answer. For example, in a book with a theme about lying, stating that lying is bad is not going to be convincing. An author can touch their readers much more deeply by exploring the pros and cons of lying. For readers who do not already agree that lying is bad, this exploration—as opposed to explanation—will allow them to inform their own decisions rather than feel as though they are being force-fed your answers.

    Posing your theme as a question can help you make sure that you are exploring both sides of the issue in your book, though not all questions are going to lead to true exploration of a theme. For example, the question “Are serial killers bad?” is likely going to provide a single and fairly predictable answer. I think you’ll be hard pressed to find situations that do anything but show serial killers being bad and will have an even harder time convincing readers that there is any confusion over the answer.

    A better theme might be “Are sociopaths destined to be evil?” as the book I am not a Serial Killer by Dan Wells asked. While related to the topic of serial killers, it is a question that readers had not previously considered, and the book’s main character was determined to prove that sociopaths didn’t have to be serial killers. People were interested in seeing if that answer could hold up.

    Another option, if you don’t want to try to convince people of an unlikely (but possible) answer to an obvious question, is to present one answer out of many. This is the case for the question “Is lying always bad?” Many people will have different answers to that question, and your book can explore several of those answers and which might be right in various circumstances.

    Proposing a Natural Theme

    In order to explore a theme, you need to match it to the right story. The events of your story should naturally lend themselves towards questions and conflicts over the topic. A story about the morality of war will need a war. A story about honesty will need secrets and lies. A story about repentance will need a main character who has made a terrible mistake or who has suffered from someone else’s sins.

    Themes should also match the story in tone. A kids’ book about unicorns would likely not be the right place for a plotline focused on the murky, gray areas of life. An adult novel about deadly political conspiracy would probably fail to carry a theme about the importance of friendship.

    Sympathize with Multiple Sides

    As your story develops and the theme becomes relevant to the plot events, your characters will begin to be affected. They may deal with the fallout of other people’s decisions, or they may make their own decisions and have to deal with the consequences. As this happens, the characters may begin to have opinions or even dialogue about the “answer” to the theme question. 

    No matter what you feel is the “correct answer”, your characters need to come to their own conclusions. A good example of this can be found at the end of the film Doctor Strange. (If you haven’t seen it, the climax is a fight with a demon who was summoned from a realm of destruction by magicians who want to use his powers for their own means. The hero, Doctor Strange, chooses to use forbidden magic of his own to fight the demon.) The overarching question in this movie is: “Can dangerous magic be used for good, or will it always cause destruction?” Doctor Strange and his friend both enter the climax to stop the demon, but they leave the fight with very different conclusions about the overarching question. 

    No matter what you feel is the ‘correct answer,’ your characters need to come to their own conclusions.

    In the end, Doctor Strange believes that forbidden magic could be used for good because he has just saved the world with it. This ties in with his arrogance, which is an important personality trait for him throughout the story. 

    On the other hand, his friend leaves the movie with the opinion that using forbidden magic is what brought the demon to their world in the first place, so not using forbidden magic, or maybe even any magic at all, is the safest course of action. This lines up with his own established personality as a man who believes rigidly in rules. He also has recently learned that someone very important to him has been lying to him. This betrayal breaks his trust in people, and that carries over into his trust in Doctor Strange’s use of dangerous magic. 

    In your own stories, the line between characters who believe in the “correct answer” and the “wrong answer” should not one hundred percent follow the line of “good guys” and “bad guys.” Their backgrounds, personalities, and experiences may lead them to come to different conclusions from you and from each other. Always treat the differing opinions as valid and intelligent. If the only proponents of the “wrong answer” are misguided idiots or actual evil people, you will lose your readers and come across as preachy.

    Proposing an Answer

    When writing a story with a theme, you may frame your plotline around a specific answer, or you may keep it more open-ended and leave readers thoughtful about the topic. If you choose to provide a single answer at the end, you’ll have to be careful to do so gently and without invalidating the individual characters’ beliefs. 

    Have you ever watched one of those twenty-minute kids’ shows where, at the end of the episode, the main characters say, “And that’s why we always tell the truth,” and everyone nods sagely. Yeah, me too. And it wasn’t at all that convincing. Instead, it usually made me want to laugh. And possibly start lying ridiculously. 

    The reason this drove me nuts was because the idea is unbelievable. When was the last time that you got caught having lied to a friend, and they said, “Wow, now I see. I’m never going to lie again.” Never? Me neither. 

    In this example, the character who lied and the character who was lied to are going to have different experiences in the same scene. This may lead to different conclusions and reactions. The liar may feel as though the truth coming out was what got them in trouble, while the character who was lied to feels that the lie itself was the problem. Despite these differing beliefs, you can still have the plot demonstrate a clear answer. When the main character makes a correct decision, the plot should move forward. They should conquer an obstacle and make progress towards their final goal. Likewise, when the main character makes an incorrect decision, the plot should stall, their progress should fail, and negative consequences should occur. This pattern of being punished and rewarded by the plot will leave readers seeing how the “correct answer” is useful, and the “wrong answer” causes problems. Individual characters may believe or react differently, but the overall plot will still clearly send the message. 

    Using a Theme to Share our Faith

    Writing is a deeply personal art form, but we don’t need to hide our religious beliefs to write books for nonmembers. Including complex and nuanced themes will leave room for our beliefs in our books while still creating a story that people from any background can enjoy.

    Author Bio

    Emma Heggem specializes in content editing sci-fi and fantasy novels. She has worked with authors from around the world to prepare their manuscripts for publication. When she’s not editing, she loves to attend writers conferences to give critiques and demystify the publishing industry. She also runs an editing advice blog (www.editsbyemma.com). Emma graduated from Brigham Young University with a degree in English language and a minor in editing.