Save the Cat! Writes a Novel

by Jessica Brody

And that brings us to a great tip for writing flawed heroes: Don’t let the problem stay contained to just one area of your hero’s life. Let the problem(s) manifest and spread and infect! Your hero’s problem(s) should be affecting their entire world: their work, their home life, and their relationships.

So what kind of problem(s) is your character facing? That’s the first question you must answer as you begin to create your story-worthy hero.

But it’s not enough for your hero just to have flaws; your hero also has to want something (badly) and be proactively trying to get it. Your hero knows they’ve got problems. (Or maybe they don’t know, and that’s one of their problems!) Now, the question is: what does your hero think will fix those problems, or what does your hero think will better their life?

Whatever the answer is—a better job, more money, to be more popular in school, gain their father’s approval, solve a big murder case, and so on—that is your hero’s goal. This is what they will be actively striving to achieve throughout the novel (or at least in the beginning).

Giving your hero a goal and having them proactively pursue that goal is the fastest way to get your reader to root for your hero and latch onto your story.

Readers keep reading because they want to know if your hero is going to get what they want.

So ask yourself, What does my character want in life?

The most effective character goals or wants are concrete and tangible. The reader should be able to know if and when your hero gets what they want. How can we really know when your hero has achieved this elusive goal of happiness? We can’t. That is, unless you give us a concrete thing that the hero thinks will make them happy.

Something tangible that the reader can keep track of and root for.

That’s why it shouldn’t be easy for your hero to get what they want. It should be hard. They should have to work for it.

Almost every want or goal has an equal and opposite force holding the hero back from achieving it. This force is often presented as a “conflict” or “nemesis.” What is standing in the hero’s way?

Now, it’s important to note two things about wants (or goals). First, they can change as the novel goes on. And they often do.

The wants, regardless of whether they change or stay the same, are what drive the story forward.

They’re what keep the plot moving. Otherwise, you’ve got a hero who’s just putzing around, waiting for something to happen. (Very boring plot.) When a hero wants something, it sets them in motion. It gets them off their butt and into the action, which is exactly where we want them to be!

And the second important thing to note is that not all characters actual...

Opal just wants to know more about her mother—and maybe even meet her one day. This doesn’t end up happening for her. But you know what? That’s okay. As we read this novel, we realize that Opal’s goal of getting to know her mother is not the true point of the story. It’s not where Opal’s real journey is heading. Because in the end, the want is only half the story. Heroes aren’t complete until they also have a need.

Heroes are often wrong about what will inevitably lead to their own happiness.

When really these wants are just Band-Aids covering a deeper problem. Something that probably relates back to those pesky little flaws and problems we talked about earlier. True to life, quick fixes in fiction never last long. In the end, your hero must eventually do some hard, soul-searching work.

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...

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 (an...

Your hero’s want or goal is an integral part of what’s called the A Story.

The A Story is the external story.

Essentially, it’s the exciting stuff. The “cool” stuff. Or what’s also referred to as the premise.

On the other hand, the B Story is the internal story. It’s the story that’s intricately linked to what your hero needs to learn in order to change their life, complete their transformation, and enter the hall of fame of story-worthiness.

The B Story/internal story/need is what your novel is really about. For example, Ready Player One isn’t about a worldwide Easter egg hunt through a massive online simulation game. That’s just the external story (A Story). Underneath, behind the scenes, the internal story (B Story)—the heart of the novel—is about a shy, insecure boy who hides inside a video game and finally has to learn how to make real-life connections.

Misery by Stephen King isn’t about a guy stuck in a crazy lady’s cabin in the mountains. That’s just a really creepy premise. It’s the A Story. The book is about a writer who discovers how to write the best novel of his career and how...

And Frankenstein isn’t about a scientist who creates a monster (A Story). It’s about a man who has to repent for his sins a...

What plays out on the surface—what the hero wants—is only half the story. The true soul of a novel lies in the hero’s need, which can also be called the internal go...

The life lesson is the inner journey that your hero didn’t even know they were on, that will eventually lead them to the answer they never expected.

This life lesson should be something universal.

You should be able to walk up to any Joe Schmoe or Jane Schmane on the street, tell them what your hero needs to learn, and they would instantly get it. Or better yet, relate to it. And here’s the good news. There are not that many options to choose from. I’ve found that almost every novel throughout time has an internal goal o...

The spiritual lesson or need is what your reader will grab onto. It’s what makes your reader feel like they’ve been somewhere, done something, experienced something—and that their investment in the pages of your novel was worth their time.

Writing about a hero who transforms—who comes out of the story a different person than who they started as—is the secret sauce of best-selling novels. Novels that people talk about. Novels that hit the best-seller list and stay there. Novels that get turned into movies. Novels that resonate with readers. And when you can resonate with a reader, that’s when you become a true storyteller.

So, you’ve got your hero. You’ve flawed them up good. You’ve given them a strong, compelling want and an even more compelling need that readers will resonate with. Now what? Well, to put it simply, now we figure out what to do with this beautifully flawed character of yours. Where are they going? What is their big journey? What is their most perfect plot? In other words: WHAT THE HECK HAPPENS IN THIS NOVEL?

CM is running to find a solution for his want: return his vision to normal—so he can see color again, and stop seeing these hellish creatures. Of course, if he thinks about it, his ability to see or not see does not change the fact that both are still there (both colors and creatures). Yet this begins to provide a story window into a greater problem: he’s been running from something long before he picked up a paintbrush, he’s running from something so dark and terrible, the absence (invisibility) of love in his young life, and the visible reality of no one to care for him, of falling through the cracks and being somebody seemingly invisible to the world. He thinks he wants to remedy the strange malady of his vision, but what if he begins to see that there is another world he hasn’t seen before, a world where there is love, where there are people to care, and if he will “see” that world before him, take a leap of faith to trust in those giving this love and care to him, then he might become the most visible person that world has ever know.

The Opening Image has a mirror beat (or an opposite beat) called the Final Image, the very last beat of the novel. If the Opening Image shows us where the hero begins, the Final Image shows us where the hero ends. They are bookends of the transformative journey. And you should make them as different as possible.

Essentially, the Theme Stated is the hero’s need or life lesson, somehow hinted at up front in the story (often by a secondary character). If that sounds like mumbo jumbo to you, let me put it more simply: Somewhere in Act 1 (usually within the Setup beat), a character (usually not the hero) will make a statement or pose a question to your hero that somehow relates to what the hero needs to learn by the end of the story.

O. Oddenblatt should be the invisible narrator. When he gets to The scene right after Christopher’s friend stares the theme (lady, unless you’re from Morocco, you don’t stand a chance with this guy). Ofdenblatt then says to open next scene: However gratuitous it may seem for me to point out, I assure you, it really happened that in Tangier that about the time Christopher’s friend Jeremy was making sport of Christopher’s vow, a set of green metal doors, broke the rust ridden metal bar holding them closed, shook in a the half rusted kind you see. As decades old air equalizes the pressure as a sharp breeze, a tall blond woman tumbles out the dark crypt crashing into three tripods a wedding photographer was setting up. The lady stands and the two tripods that got hooked into the black lace of her outfit follow her and being new to this world, as she most certainly is, she quite understandably believes she is being attacked. and the man who was starting to swear at the and into hairthat stepped out of the

By the end of all of these stories, the hero learns these exact themes.

Whatever life lesson your hero has to learn, whatever epic transformation your hero has to make, it should be subtly mentioned within the first 10 percent of your story.

You don’t want to shout it from the rooftops or spend five pages delving into it. You just want to delicately plant the seed in the reader’s brain.

Basically, by having a character subtly state the theme of the novel, you are giving the reader a subconscious hint as to what your story is really going to be about.

if it doesn’t go deeper into what it means to be human, it’s just not worth reading. So what is your story about? Well, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. It’s about transformation!

What will it take to make your hero a little less imperfect? Well, that’s your theme. And now someone’s gotta state it.

The Theme Stated is a single-scene beat. It usually comes and goes very quickly.

Now, don’t let the word “theme” confuse you. For the sake of the beat sheet, the theme refers directly to your hero’s need or life lesson.

And this is what I love about the Theme Stated. The hero often ignores it!

So, there’s your flawed hero. They’re traipsing around the Act 1 world, being flawed, making stupid decisions, generally leading an imperfect life, and then someone (usually a secondary character) comes up to them and says, “You know what would really fix your life? This!” Your hero is essentially presented with the answer to all of their problems right there at the beginning of the book. But do they listen? Of course not!

They completely, 100-percent ignore this person. Because at the start of the novel, your hero is resistant to change. They hear the theme stated and they go, “What the heck does he know? He doesn’t know me.” That’s why it’s o...

But what is your hero going to learn by the end of the book? That very theme that was stated so early in the story. Which means they had the answer to their problems the whole time; they just refused to listen!