Dear Writer: Save the Cat Won’t Save You.

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I love rules. When COVID first hit, I was that person ruthlessly obeying the one-way arrows at the grocery store. 

If my high school had had hall monitors (or hallways, for that matter) I would have been one of them. 

Now, before you get the wrong impression. It’s not that I love the rules themselves. Trust—when I encounter a bad rule, I’ll be the first to question, subvert, or outright defy it.

What I love is the clarity that comes from having clear, reasonable guidelines. 

At this point, you might be wondering—what the hell does any of this have to do with saving cats? 

Great question.

This post isn’t about rules—it’s about story structure. Or, more specifically, the story structure systems that writers get sold, beaten over the head with, and yelled at for not using. 

Save the Cat! is one of those systems. Originally created by Blake Snyder for screenwriting, it has since been adopted by countless novelists, most notably by Jessica Brody who wrote Save the Cat! Writes a Novel and Save the Cat! Writes a Young Adult Novel.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I read and loved Save the Cat! Writes a Novel. There is tons of helpful advice in that book! In fact, I love all of Jessica Brody’s work—I’m even a member of her membership site for writers - WritingMastery.com (not an affiliate link). But there’s one big problem with the way most writers talk about Save the Cat! and other plotting systems. 

It’s all built on a bed of lies.

There, I said it. 

Too many plotting systems oversell and underdeliver. 

When you read a book like Save the Cat! Writes a Novel, you’re promised a system that will cure all your storytelling woes. A one-stop-shop that will give you everything you need to write a bestselling novel. In fact, the subtitle of Brody’s book, proclaims that Save the Cat! is “The Last Book on Novel Writing You’ll Ever Need.”

That’s a wild, audacious claim. It would be great if it were true.

Unfortunately, it’s not.

I don’t know a single writer who doesn’t have a shelf (or shelves) full of writing books. Writing a great book is just too complex for any one book to fully explain.

That might sound terrifying, but if you’ve been banging your head against the keyboard, wondering why XYZ plotting system hasn’t solved all your problems—it’s okay, you’re not doing anything wrong. But if you’re looking for one plotting system to be a comprehensive, novel writing solution, you’re setting yourself up for failure. 

I fell prey to this trap when I first started writing. I tried plotting with Save the Cat! but my outlines never felt complete or cohesive. Then, one day, I looked more closely at the Save the Cat beats and realized something:

The entire middle is missing!

Well, not exactly missing. But the entire middle of the story—a whopping 50% of the book—is represented by only 3 story beats out of the 15 total beats in the Save the Cat! system.

In contrast, the beginning 25% gets 8 beats. The ending 25% gets 5 beats (though one of those beats is divided into another 5 sections, so it’s more like 10 beats). 

There’s clearly something missing. I mean, half the book is barely covered and we haven’t even started on subplots! 

Some writers have no problem filling in the gaps on their own. But, for others (cough—it’s me—cough) who tend to follow the rules and draw inside the lines, it can be a lot harder to bridge the gaps intuitively. This is especially true for beginning writers who don’t have the specialized knowledge required to make up for the elements Save the Cat! leaves out.

So many writing classes for beginners stop at the surface level. It took me YEARS to realize that there wasn’t a magic story structure system that was going to tell me how to fully plot out a complex novel. 

Here are three truths that helped me finally break free from the story structure trap: 

1) Most story structure systems are tools of analysis not planning. 

Every novel cited in Save the Cat! Writes a Novel was written before the book was published. Every. Single. One. 

Think about it: in order for the author to analyze that story in the book, it had to exist before the framework had been written down. The same is true for the movies analyzed in the original Save the Cat! book. The same is true for every movie analyzed in John Truby’s The Anatomy of Story. 

Even Gwen Hayes’ Romancing the Beat (an amazing resource, btw), which includes an example Hayes wrote herself, is based on the author’s observations after years of reading and editing successful romance novels. 

Sitting there despairing that you just can’t seem to master the bestseller code?

Stop. Take a deep breath.

Then remind yourself: Stephen King didn’t have Save the Cat! when he got started either. If a certain plotting system doesn’t gel with you, that’s okay, you can still write a great book. 

2) The numbers are generalizations. No matter how strict the guidelines appear.

When it comes time to apply these plot structures to your work-in-progress or outline, don’t look at them as hard and fast rules. 

They aren’t.

Remember point #1? Most of the time, even the sample books used to teach these systems don’t hit the plot beats at the exact right percentage point of the story. 

If you’re working yourself sick, trying to force your story to hit the right plot beats at the exact right moment, then, once again—Stop. Take a deep breath. Trust your story, and trust yourself. 

Creative writing doesn’t fit neatly into little boxes or benchmarks. And that’s okay! You can still write a story that works. 

Remember, we are writing for readers—not our writing teachers.

When someone sits down with your book, they are looking to be engaged in a great story. They aren’t going through it with a checklist of writing rules or plot points or key scenes. Most of them, won’t ever hear of Save the Cat! or seven-point story structure, or any other plotting method.

Story structure systems are great if they work for you. But if they are stifling your creative process because you’re too worried about getting your inciting incident to happen at exactly 5000 words into your story, then you need to stop using it. Write the damn story. Then, use those story structure systems as a tool for revision.

3) Focus on the three C’s: character change, cause/effect, and conflict. 

Whenever you find yourself getting too bogged down by outlines and story structure systems, reorient your focus on three things: 1) your character’s internal journey; and 2) the chain of cause and effect that links each scene—especially in the middle of your book, and 3) the constant escalation of conflict from the inciting incident to the climax. 

Why these three elements?

Because these are the fiction elements that will sustain the middle of your story. Going into these three in depth would take a whole series of blog posts. But here’s the tl;dr version: Create logical problems for your character, have them react, and ensure that these experiences cause your character to change as a person. 

If you can keep those three elements in play, you’re more likely to power through the middle and make it to the end of the story where the plotting systems kick back in and provide further clarification on what should happen and when.

At the end of the day, writing a novel is incredibly complex. Though well-meaning writing teachers try to simplify the process with plotting systems and bite-size steps to implement, they often go too far, oversimplifying what is inherently a complicated process. 

By trusting your intuition, and approaching the middle of your story with the knowledge that you’re going to have to expand beyond the guidelines provided by any story structure system, you can conquer story structure dread and write an amazing story.

Bonus! Here are three craft books that can help add some nuance to your understanding of story structure & plotting!

1) Conflict & Suspense by James Scott Bell

Technically, Bell’s book is not about plotting. But this book transformed the way I approached planning for my stories. Instead of just brainstorming interesting a list of unique or interesting events, I now think about building my story around conflicts—conflicts that are going to affect my characters on a personal level and hook readers with nail-biting tension. I recommend this book to almost all of my clients and still use it in my own writing.

2) 27 Essential Principles of Story by Daniel Joshua Rubin

Again, this book isn’t strictly limited to plotting, but it did help shift my perspective about storytelling. Rubin leans on a variety of examples from a variety of genres—television shows to Shakespearean plays, high brow to low brow—he touches on a diverse range of texts (a big plus in my book). His analysis of each of these texts was incredibly helpful to me as a writer and an editor.

3) Story Genius by Lisa Cron

I don’t agree with 100% of Cron’s suggestions (like her insistence on plotting out the entire story in advance), but I do love her focus on planning the story based on the character’s arc instead of an arbitrary list of structure milestones. Cron has some great insights from her research into the neuroscience of story—if you haven’t read her books yet (Wired for Story is also great) I definitely recommend you check one out now!

Still stuck on your story’s structure? 

Olivia can help! 

Check out my offerings for editing & coaching!

FYI: This post contains affiliate links. If you use these links to buy something we may earn a commission. For more information click here and thanks, as always, for your support!