I read this book in 2022. I was part of a group of writers, and we met weekly from March to December to read and discuss it. We started with eight members. By the end, there were three of us. And when we met for the last time, we still had a few pages to go, which I finished by myself.
In our meetings, we discussed the sections we had read during the week and how we had implemented what we learned in our works in progress. We shared resources, helped each other, and got excited about our meetings every single week.
Four years later, I write about Save the Cat! Writes a Novel not as a book I got, read, finished, and then moved on from. I look back at the whole experience and its impact on my writing journey. Did I become a Save-the-Cat writer? No, I became a Save-the-Cat reader. I know. Your surprise is as good as mine. I often catch myself anticipating or recognizing the beats while reading. This sounds like reading Save the Cat! ruined reading for me, but it did the opposite. It created a new layer of anticipation, a new way of understanding, and new ways to lose myself in a book.
So, you might ask, do I still consider Save the Cat! Writes a Novel a good book if I don’t actually write the way it taught me to?
Save the Cat! Writes a Novel is a popular book. It has more than two thousand reviews on Goodreads and a strongly positive overall rating of about 4.49/5, with roughly 60% five-star and 29% four-star ratings. As if that’s not intimidating enough, the book was inspired by another well-known book, Save the Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need by Blake Snyder. And it was Blake’s team who approached Brody and worked with her to write Save the Cat! Writes a Novel. Why am I even reviewing this book? I know why. I wrote a practical walkthrough for Save the Cat! Writes a Novel. It was fun. It’s totally on me for letting it get to my head that I should write a review while I’m at it. Oh, boy.
But you’re here now. If I can’t interest you in some coffee instead, I should at least look at the claims Brody makes about her book and some of the criticisms it faces.
After hearing so much about the book, you can imagine I started reading it, eager to bask in the promised clarity. I expected it to be along the lines of, “You have a problem. I have a solution. Here it is.” But from the get-go, the book starts refuting criticisms of the method before it introduces the method to me. It was like getting caught in a fight you’re not part of, and having no means to decide who you should side with.
Is the method too formulaic?
Will it make the story predictable?
Will it detract from the art?
Will it limit the writer’s creativity?
Brody knows her audience. She placed that section exactly where she did because she wanted to “nip that fear in the bud right there. Right now.” Whether she was successful or not is another question, especially since the same criticisms are still circulating.
But is Save the Cat! Writes a Novel too formulaic? Brody says it’s not a formula. It’s a pattern or “an underlying storytelling code.” Then she proceeds to give you fifteen beats detailed down to percentages. Son, take this vial. It’s just tea, but you needn’t drink more than one drop at sunrise and one at sunset. Remember, only one drop, my son, only one.
Calling it a formula, a framework, or a code is not the real problem. Brody says it herself: “Regardless of what you call it, it works.”
Define works. It works because it will get words on paper? Or it works because it’s been proven to fit almost any novel? If it’s the latter, which is an argument Brody keeps returning to in her book, it needs proper investigation. Applying the method retrospectively to many successful novels shows that those novels can be mapped onto it. So maybe the method works as a structural tool. It doesn’t necessarily mean the resulting novel works as well. The success of a story doesn’t depend only on pacing and structure. Characterization—to which Brody devoted the first section of her book—prose, genre, and the actual execution of the method are all factors in the success of a story.
Then again, is it still the story you want to write? Wouldn’t that limit your creativity?
This is not a baseless fear. I remember feeling the same when I saw the percentages. My first thought was, how would I know if my catalyst is at ten percent when I’m still writing the story? And if I decide that this point of the story is my ten percent, how am I supposed to contort the rest of my story to make up the remaining ninety percent? All the while, mind you, focusing on creating the plot. Brody looked at Henry Ford’s “Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black” and said, Bet. Gather fellow writers? The fifteen beats are endless.
However, back then, I was young and reckless, so I took my trusty notebook and started scribbling tables, color-coded tables. Satisfied with my handiwork, I set out to fill in the beats. I could fill in the beats only as far as the story I’d already written. The table and I looked at each other, dreading what would come next.
But that’s just me. It must be me. I’m a pantser. I have no idea what I’m getting myself into when I start a story. Of course, I know the broad strokes, but don’t ask me what will happen and when. We shall discover our fate together. Maybe the method is for plotters? Brody claims the method can benefit both types of writers. She presents the method as a planning tool for plotters and a restructuring tool for pantsers. You’re a plotter; you already plan your story before you write it. Save the Cat! gives you a roadmap. It fits your approach. It won’t hinder your creativity, I presume, because you’re doing exactly the same thing, but instead of papers flying around you, you have a clear system. If you’re a pantser, however, using this method as a planning tool is likely the surest way to abandon the project altogether. So, write your story, finish it, then go back and fill in the beat sheet. Use it as a diagnostic tool: restructure something you’ve already written, check pacing, or examine where major moments fall.
So, you mean, after writing my ninety-thousand-word novel, if my catalyst falls at fifteen percent of the story instead of ten, then I’m doomed?
Brody says in her book, “Your beats are not carved in stone. Nor should they be.” She’s telling you to expect the beats to change as you write and edit. And she advises you to rebeat. So don’t let the flexibility claim fool you. She’s not telling you that the method is flexible; she’s telling you to be flexible and change your story to fit the not-a-formula. No, I’m being unnecessarily prejudiced against the method. I’ve watched many interviews with Brody, and she didn’t claim that you should hit the beats at the exact percentage. You need to be at least in the neighborhood. It’s up to you to decide how far this neighborhood stretches.
The good news is, as far as I know, when you buy Save the Cat! Writes a Novel, you don’t make a blood oath to follow its guidelines and nothing but its guidelines till death do you part. Learn the framework first, then deviate deliberately. Learn the rules before you break them.
Interestingly, one of the unexpected outcomes of the book, as I mentioned before, is that it taught me how to read like a writer. So knowing the beats didn’t spoil the stories for me. It’s the writer’s creativity that makes the execution surprising. What did Save the Cat! Writes a Novel do, then? It gave me terminology for my expectations of the story: Why do you feel frustrated when the writer dumps all the details of their carefully crafted world before the story even starts? Why do you feel the whole journey of the main character is avoidable because what sent them into the story wasn’t big enough? You feel something is wrong, but why?
Save the Cat! helped me put a name on it. Now, I automatically notice things like the catalyst, Theme Stated, false victory/false defeat, and ascending/descending movement of the plot. It’s become an effortless exercise for me as a writer that helps me strengthen my writing instincts. Why did this happen where it did? How did the writer surprise me? Even getting the prediction wrong becomes a craft lesson. A good example of this happened recently when I was looking for recommendations for Good Company Lit’s library. In Darkened Forged by Kenley Davidson was the book. I ended up not recommending it for our library, but that’s a story for another day.
In the beginning of the story, I recognized what I assumed was the Theme Stated. Disclaimer for the people who haven’t read the book: this might contain spoilers. It fits the description Brody gave: the theme is hinted at early, it’s often stated by a secondary character, it points toward what the protagonist needs to discover or the transformation ahead, and the protagonist often doesn’t believe or accept the Theme Stated when they hear it. In this story, this happens as Aislin, the main character, is leaving and her journey is beginning. Her grandmother states it: “You must find your magic, child!” Aislin explicitly doesn’t believe her. She smiles and nods “as if she understood,” while the narration tells us she believes her family’s magic is gone. Her grandmother becomes even more explicit: “You don’t believe me […] but you will find it. In a dark place, where you least expect it…”
Lo and behold, Aislin’s adventure takes her to a dark place—the tunnels under the mountain—as her mission reaches its end. Tal, her guide, who’s been doing most of the heavy lifting on this mission, lies unconscious. She’s all alone. But instead of powerful waves of magic erupting from her, Aislin confesses her love to Tal. Tal himself is full of the very thing Aislin believes she lacks: magic. So “you will find your magic” carried a meaning Aislin—and I as a reader—hadn’t initially assigned to it.
Needless to say, Save the Cat! Writes a Novel is always within arm’s reach. It isn’t a book you simply finish and move on from. I still return to particular sections when I need them. Its long-term value may be as a working craft reference, not necessarily a book writers repeatedly read cover to cover.
Save the Cat! Writes a Novel has proven its usefulness. The number of writers who use it in one way or another, even those who have reservations about it, speaks in favor of the book. Some of the criticisms are substantive, like the concern that the method privileges mainstream or Western narrative conventions. But other criticisms, like the tone of the narration or the way information is presented, are largely a matter of taste.
But is it the book for you?
I believe it’s a valuable addition to your library for sure. It may have been more influential in teaching me how to see stories than in teaching me how to plan them, but you can still benefit from its strongest assets: plot structure and character development.
If you’re entertaining the idea of using the method but you’re not sure what it entails, our How to Use Save the Cat! Writes a Novel: A Practical Walkthrough can give you valuable information—and one chuckle or two.
