Tag: Save the Cat Writes a Novel
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Test Your Novel’s Potential
“Is my novel idea worth pursuing?” How can you know you will fall in love with your novel without spending hours of writing, stringing together thousands of words, and creating dozens of scenes before realizing it doesn’t work? Try this: Jessica Brody, author of Save the Cat Writes a Novel, recommends just writing the single…
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Friday’s Findings: Your Novel’s Word Count Breakdown
Have you ever asked yourself, “Is my middle too saggy?” Of course, I’m talking about the first draft of your novel. I have several novels in the first draft stage, and I plan to revise them over the next couple of years, Lord willing. Here’s the thing: before I start rewriting them, I want to…
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Friday’s Findings: My 50K Novel Week 2
As an alternate to NaNoWriMo, I’m doing a 50K word rough draft of a novel in 30 days. Here’s how the second week went: Day 8: My city has the best coffee shops. I’m sitting in one before I go to work and I’m going to outline some unfinished scenes. I swore I wouldn’t do…
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Can Save the Cat and the Snowflake Method be Used Together? Simultaneously?
I’ve taken most of the summer off from writing blog posts to concentrate on my writing projects. Now summer vacations are over, and school is back in session, I’ve decided to get back into posting. Right click to enlarge. To see step-by-step instructions on using this graphic, click here. A thought occurred to me: as…
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Friday’s Findings: Books on Writing
I’d like to share two books on writing I’ve recently purchased: Save the Cat Writes a Young Adult Novel by Jessica Brody Brody expounds on the Save the Cat beats with young adult novel examples. Even if you don’t write YA novels, or even if you are a pantser, you can probably mine out some…
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NaNoWriMo Day 21: Think before I write
Still on par for my word count, but I’m not ahead. I only wrote a couple hundred words yesterday. It was very cold out and I was lazy all day. I am finding the benefit of planning out my scenes before I write them. One last thing I do before I actually write a scene…
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NaNoWriMo Day 2: My four-steps
Was my first day of NaNoWriMo 2022 was a huge success? I wrote over 1700 words. The story is coming along wonderfully and I’ve come up with some ideas as I’ve composed. During Preptober, I made a list of phrases describing scenes. I also compiled a list of characters for the two novellas I’m writing…
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Is the level-down revision method helpful?
A couple years ago, I took an online course called Write a Bestselling Novel in 15 Steps by Jessica Brody. It was free through my local public library’s website and in it, Brody talks about her book Save the Cat Writes a Novel. She uses examples and exercises to ensure a vivid understanding for each…
Andrew M. Friday 