Save the Cat! Writes a Novel

by Jessica Brody

We call that real problem the shard of glass. It’s a psychological wound that has been festering beneath the surface of your hero for a long time. The skin has grown over it, leaving behind an unsightly scar that causes your hero to act the way they act and make the mistakes that they do (flaws!). You, as the author and creator of this world, have to decide how that shard of glass got there. Why is your hero so flawed? What happened to them to make them the way they are? And most important, what will really fix your hero’s life? What does your hero actually need? This is the third and biggest question you’ll have to ask yourself as you start to develop your novel. This is the crux of your story. This is the real “stuff” that great stories are made of. And this is what readers are really looking for when they pick up a book. Sure, they want action, they want mystery, they want body counts, they want kissing (and sometimes more than kissing), but in the end, readers want a novel that’s about something.

So what does that mean? It means, open your novel with something active. There’s a reason it’s not called the Opening Inner Monologue or the Opening Info Dump. We should see your flawed hero in action.

But whatever decision your hero makes when they Break Into 2 is a temporary solution. It’s the Band-Aid they’re slapping on to hide the wound underneath. It’s not true healing. Because those flaws are still in there, wreaking havoc. That shard of glass, which has made them who they are, is still buried. And so, at the Break Into 2, your hero is not yet solving anything on a deeper, spiritual level. Ergo, they’re fixing things the wrong way.