Save the Cat! Writes a Novel

by Jessica Brody

  Three books. Three beat sheets. Three genres. One phenomenal story.

  And you can do it too. I believe in you!

  Help! My Hero is Unlikable! How to Save a Cat

  Back in 2011, when I was writing 52 Reasons to Hate My Father, my young adult novel about a spoiled teen heiress who has to take on fifty-two low-wage jobs in order to earn her twenty-five-million-dollar trust fund, I immediately confronted the likability issue, which many authors have asked me about since. My hero was a filthy rich girl who’s never worked a day in her life, grew up traveling the world on yachts, lives in a mansion in Bel-Air, drives a five-hundred-thousand-dollar Mercedes, and oh yeah…she’s an insufferable spoiled brat. Now that’s a character you can root for!

  Here’s the problem. I told you way back in chapter 1 that you need to create a hero who has somewhere to go. Someone with flaws. Someone imperfect. Someone for whom change is a necessity. You gotta back way up on the runway so you have some takeoff room to fly that hero where they need to go. And sometimes, in order to do this, you gotta start with a hero who is less than a peach.

  But you still have to make sure the reader will stick around to see that transformation take place.

  So what do you do?

  YOU SAVE A CAT!

  As I mentioned in the introduction, “save the cat!” actually started as a fancy writer trick designed to take an unlikable hero and make them a little more likable. It originates from the imaginary scenario that you’ve got a douchebag of a hero, desperately in need of some de-douchebagging, walking around doing douchebaggy stuff when suddenly he sees a cat stuck up in a tree. He stops, he climbs up in the tree, and he saves the cat, at which point you, the reader, stop and go, Wait a minute; this guy can’t be all bad. He’s got a good heart. And voilà! Now you’ve got a redeemable unlikable hero—instead of just an unlikable one.

  Okay, so you don’t literally have to save a cat! It’s just an expression that means you need to employ some writerly sleight of hand to convince your reader there’s something worth rooting for in your hero. Although I’ll admit that in 52 Reasons to Hate My Father, I actually did make the hero’s dog an insecure, emotionally damaged rescue. So yes, she quite literally saved a dog! But you don’t have to rescue animals to solve your likability problem; you have other options.

  GIVE YOUR HERO ONE REDEEMING QUALITY, ACTION, OR HOBBY

  Is your hero meek? Bossy? Vengeful? Whiny? Depressed? Ungrateful? Nothing can spoil a great Setup like an annoying hero you just want to shake and say, “Snap out of it! Life is not that bad!”

  And that’s exactly what you need to do in this situation. You need to make life not that bad. You need to give your hero one little thing that the reader can cling to. Do they have a cute niece, nephew, or neighbor kid who looks up to them? Do they have a secret notebook filled with really bad, yet endearing, poetry? Do they volunteer once a week at the dog shelter? Give ’em something that we can latch onto and think, Well, at least they’ve got that.

  In my young adult novel The Chaos of Standing Still, the hero, Ryn, was struggling to get over the death of her best friend. And let’s just say she wasn’t exactly a bundle of laughs. When my friend and critique partner, Joanne Rendell, read the first draft, she said, “Well, the story’s good, but Ryn is kind of a downer. She has no passions. No interests. No hobbies. It’s sort of depressing to read. Can’t you give her something?”

  And of course, Joanne was right. Critique partners usually are! So we brainstormed for days trying to figure out what Ryn’s thing was. We finally came up with drawing. It was a passion she’d given up after her best friend died because her grief was clouding her ability to draw things the way she saw them. I was able to talk about her lost passion for drawing and flash back to times when she did draw and it made her happy. I truly believe this small tweak not only fixed my likability issue but also gave me a cool metaphor to use to show how Ryn gets over grief: by learning to draw again.

  Or think about The Hunger Games. Gruff, severe Katniss Everdeen is not exactly warm and inviting when you first meet her. What makes her likable? The fact that she’ll do anything for her sister, Prim—something we witness on page 22 when she volunteers for the reaping in Prim’s place. But even before that, the author gives us so much to love about this tough young girl. Like the fact that she’ll break the rules of the Capitol to feed her sister. Or, don’t forget page 1, where Katniss tells us she spared the cat’s life because Prim cried when she tried to drown him in a bucket.

  Save the Cat!

  GIVE YOUR HERO A (REALLY BAD) ENEMY OR SITUATION

  Recent studies have shown that reading fiction can make you more empathetic. It gives you X-ray vision into other people’s thoughts, feelings, and struggles. It allows you to peek in the windows of other people’s lives and see why they are the way they are. A gift we’re rarely given in real life. And learning about someone else’s struggle can go a long way toward helping us not only understand that person, but sympathize with them as well.

  Which is why another great way to bring a reader around to an unlikable character is to pit them against an even less likable character. A villain, a nemesis, a complicated best friend, even a horrible parent can do the trick. Once we see how horrible that person is, we no longer can bear to hate the hero! Instead, we understand the hero. We think, Well, no wonder they’re so horrible; look what they have to put up with!

  Understanding why a person is the way they are helps us sympathize with that person. It’s a lesson in empathy that I think we can all stand to learn these days. What makes someone act the way they do? What horrors is this person living with? Although in real life we can’t always go behind closed doors and find out, we can certainly do it in fiction. And we should!

  In The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, we’re introduced to the hero, Amir. Let’s face it: Amir isn’t very nice to his best friend, Hassan. In fact, he’s just plain awful to him most of the time. Why do we root for this character? Why do we keep turning the pages to find out what will happen to him?

  Because of his father.

  We get a peek at what Amir’s life is like: his struggle to win the affections of his seemingly cold-hearted father, his desperation to prove to his father that’s he not the worthless son his father thinks he is. And that is enough. We don’t forgive Amir for the things he does to Hassan, at least not until the end. But we can start to sympathize and understand his actions a little bit better.

  I used this same parental trick in 52 Reasons to Hate My Father. Actually, the trick is in the title. Lexington Larrabee is pretty horrible, but wait until you meet her dad. He’s seemingly unloving, uncaring, and never around. No wonder she acts like such an irresponsible brat! She’s trying to get her father’s attention.

  A similar way to accomplish this same task is to put your hero in a bad situation. Or at the very least, explain their situation.

  Emma Woodhouse in Emma by Jane Austen lost her mother at a very young age. No wonder she’s so wary of attachment! Rachel in The Girl on the Train was cheated on by her husband with a woman he went on to marry and have a child with. No wonder she drinks! Jean Valjean went to prison for nineteen years for stealing a loaf of bread. No wonder he’s been hardened and turned against society! Even the infamous Ebenezer Scrooge has a reason for how he turned out: he was kicked out of his house by his father when he was a boy. No wonder he has such trouble empathizing with others!

  Characters are never unlikable for no reason. They don’t emerge that way from the womb. We all start as a blank slate. So what was drawn on that slate to turn the hero into the person we meet on page one of the book? Giving us a glimpse of their past, their parentage, and/or their present situation can really help us wrap our head around who this person is and why they are the way they are. And once we get a firm grasp on the why, we can start sympathizing with the hero’s plight to fix it.

  Help! I’m Stuck
! Some Parting Words of Wisdom and Inspiration

  There’s no such thing as writer’s block.

  There! I said it!

  If you’re awake, you can write. If you can sit down in a chair, you can write. If you have fingers, you can write.

  I didn’t say the writing was going to be any good. But you’re never actually blocked from writing. You can always write something.

  Regardless of what stage you’re at, you will get stuck in this process. I guarantee it. You will have good days and bad days. You will write scenes you love and scenes you throw away. You will change your Catalyst beat a million times until you come up with the right one. You will get to the end of the novel and realize your Fun and Games is all wrong.

  It’s called a creative process for a reason.

  But that doesn’t mean I’m going to end the book without giving you some helpful tips for dealing with that process!

  So, here’s what I got for you.

  GIVE YOURSELF PERMISSION TO WRITE/PLOT BADLY

  There’s no such thing as writer’s block or plotter’s block. There’s only perfectionist’s block. (Thank you to author Emily Hainsworth for this brilliant, brilliant phrase!) We’re terrified that what we write or plot will be horrible. Well, then, just give in to that fear and let it be horrible. Write something horrible. Plot out a dreadful, disgusting, cringe-worthy beat sheet. Let yourself SUCK!

  Here’s a little secret for you: If you write something horrible, no one but you ever has to read it. And you can always go back and fix it later.

  Nora Roberts says, “You can’t fix a blank page.” And how true is that? Write something bad so Future You has something to fix! Otherwise Future You will be very bored and disappointed that Past You didn’t live up to your end of the bargain and put something down on that page. Don’t disappoint Future You. Don’t put Future You out of a job. Write something awful and let Future You deal with it. That’s what Future You does best.

  So don’t be afraid to write badly. Embrace the bad! Or as I like to say, “Don’t be afraid to write crap. Crap makes great fertilizer.”

  BE FLEXIBLE! BEATS WILL CHANGE

  Whether you’re a plotter or a pantser—whether you spend days, weeks, months, or even years drafting your beat sheet and making sure every single detail is figured out before you start writing, or you simply jot down a few ideas and hit the page—either way, your beats will change. It’s inevitable. You may get to the final page of your novel and realize that your Setup is all wrong. You may be halfway through your first draft (or even your final draft) and realize your All Is Lost needs to come way earlier, or be way more devastating.

  Your beats are not carved in stone. Nor should they be.

  Author Terry Pratchett says, “The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.” In fact, some people even call the first draft “the discovery draft.” Because that’s what you’re doing. You’re discovering the story. You’re exploring the world. You’re getting to know the hero. Plotting a novel and thinking you can stick to everything you planned is about as delusional as plotting your life and thinking nothing will ever go astray.

  Yes, hammering out your fifteen beats in advance can certainly help you figure out where you want to go with the story and will probably even set you in the right direction, but it won’t ever help you figure out exactly how to get there.

  Writing a novel is a Golden Fleece. The daunting white page (or screen) you face every day is your road. “The End” is your prize. I, and your critique partners and fellow writers, are your team. And there will be detours along the way. There will be road apples that stop your journey cold and force you to reroute. Rebeat.

  Be flexible and let your beats change as your story and your hero come more and more into focus.

  And when you get lost, remember to come back to your wants and needs. They are your signposts on this journey. As you drive toward the Midpoint, keep your sights on what your hero wants. And then, as you drive toward the Final Image, keep your sights on what the hero needs. These two things will help guide you through the dark spots on the road.

  DON’T COMPARE YOUR WORK IN PROGRESS TO SOMEONE ELSE’S FINISHED MASTERPIECE

  As you read the beat sheets in this book, and as you set out to analyze other novels and find the patterns in them, keep in mind that these are finished products. Not works in progress. They represent months, sometimes even years, of struggle. Not to mention countless revisions, editorial letters, copyedits, and professional proofreads. It’s hard not to compare ourselves to the great works we find on our shelves, because what else do we have to compare ourselves to? It’s not like any of our favorite authors are posting their messy, hideous rough drafts on their website for all to see. But I guarantee you, they exist. Those authors have them. We all have them. Novels don’t spill onto the page in finished form. Usually (at least for me!), they spill onto the page as grotesque, misshapen Rorschach test images that I have to squint and tilt my head at for hours on end to attempt to make any sense of.

  And along the same lines, try not to compare your beat sheet in progress to any of the beat sheets featured in this book. Remember, those are analyses of stories that are already finished and perfected. I can guarantee you they don’t resemble anything like the outline the author started with when they first sat down to write (if they even started with an outline!).

  This is what I call the difference between a Before Beat Sheet and an After Beat Sheet. A Before Beat Sheet is what we plotters create before we start writing—a road map for our story to help us stay on target to our destination. An After Beat Sheet is an analysis of a finished, completed, revised, edited, copyedited, proofread novel to study the patterns in the story.

  To illustrate how different these two beat sheets can be, and how much a beat sheet can change as you write the novel, I’ve included Before and After Beat Sheets for my novel The Geography of Lost Things. Read it, and you’ll see how sparse the Before Beat Sheet is, how many holes there still are, how little I had figured out before I started writing, and how much the beats changed as I spent more time with the story and the characters. In the After Beat Sheet, you’ll notice many of the beats have moved, while others are just more fleshed out, and some beats were rewritten altogether.

  So, be kind to yourself. You won’t have it all figured out at the very start. Or even if you do, as I said before, it most likely will change.

  The Geography of Lost Things

  BY: Jessica Brody

  STC GENRE: Golden Fleece

  BOOK GENRE: Young adult contemporary

  PAGE COUNT: 464 (Simon Pulse Hardcover, 2018)

  1. Opening Image

  BEFORE: An envelope arrives with the title and keys to the classic car belonging to Ali’s dead father, Jackson. She hates her father and the car (because he was always driving away from her in it). Jackson left Ali and her mother with a lot of debt.

  AFTER: A messenger arrives with an envelope from Jackson, Ali’s recently deceased father, who walked out on her and her mother years ago. What’s inside won’t be revealed until later.

  2. Setup

  BEFORE: Ali sets off to sell the car to a buyer in Fort Bragg. She needs the money to save her foreclosed house and help get her mother out of debt (A Story/wants). She can’t drive a stick shift. so her ex-boyfriend, Nico, has to come with her to drive the car. Somewhere, we see Ali throwing things away. She’s constantly decluttering her life.

  Her biggest flaw: She’s too quick to discard things before giving them a chance to prove their worth.

  AFTER: Ali’s mom leaves for a week-long catering job while Ali is left to pack up her house, which is being foreclosed by the bank. Ali wants to try to save the house, but her mother has given up on saving it. As she packs, Ali throws most things away (she is an obsessive declutterer) and thinks about what got them into this mess of debt. It was all Jackson’s fault.<
br />
  Jackson was constantly in and out of Ali’s life. He was never reliable and was constantly opening credit cards in her mother’s name (and not paying them off). We learn that Jackson’s two favorite things in life were his 1968 Firebird 400 convertible and a 1990s post-grunge band called Fear Epidemic. Ali is harboring a lot of anger and resentment toward her father.

  We also learn that Ali loves doing personality quizzes. She likes that they distill people down into easy-to-define boxes. This ties into her flaw of labeling people too quickly so she can “throw them away” just as quickly.

  3. Theme Stated

  BEFORE: While visiting Glass Beach in Fort Bragg, someone says to Ali (re: a piece of sea glass): “The ocean forgives.” Meaning the ocean can take something old and seemingly invaluable like trash and turn it into something shiny and worth keeping.

  This is a reference to Ali’s inability to forgive her father and how quick she is to throw things away (including Nico), deeming them worthless. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.

  Ali’s Life Lesson: Forgiveness (giving people the opportunity to show you who they really are before you label them and discard them).

  AFTER: On their last day of high school, Ali’s best friend, June, gives her a scrapbook she made, documenting their friendship. “You’re not going to throw it away, right?” June asks, to which Ali vehemently replies, “I’m not going to throw it away. Ever. I love it.” June then says, “That’s right. And you don’t throw away things that you love.”

  Ali knows June is referring to her ex-boyfriend Nico, but really this is the life lesson that Ali will learn about her father as well. Don’t discard people too quickly. There might be things about them that you don’t know or understand.