Save the Cat Beat Sheet Workbook Review

I read Blake Snyder's Save the Cat: The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need a few years ago because I was just getting back into screenwriting after having had an interest in it when I was younger, and it seemed like that was one of the primary books that was recommended. It wasn't the only book I read on screenwriting at the time, but I did find it to be particularly user-friendly and understandable when it comes to story structure in a screenplay. Of course, the book hasn't been without its share of detractors claiming that it's formulaic and even that it destroyed Hollywood movies because so many screenwriters started adopting it. But rather than being formulaic, Snyder's structure acts as a fairly loose blueprint to help you craft a compelling story for the screen. It's more like a playground with wide boundaries for screenwriters to play in, giving a lot of freedom of choice within the framework. I've written two screenplays of my own, and for both, I outlined first using Blake Snyder's Beat Sheet from Save the Cat.

Though Save the Cat itself is a great book, many writers have had questions throughout the years on how to implement its concepts. The answer to that is Jamie Nash's new book Save the Cat Beat Sheet Workbook. This is honestly the Save the Cat book I've been waiting for. I've read every Save the Cat book since the original and have enjoyed how the authors have analyzed film and television using the STC method. But I have struggled at times with how to handle things like Snyder's "fun and games" beat and how to develop realistic characters.

Save the Cat Beat Sheet Workbook is a creativity-generating workbook like I've never come across. Jamie Nash helps you to dig into who you are as a writer before helping you to come up with not just one but many potential story ideas before getting you to focus on one. There's even an element of "Choose Your Own Adventure" to it in that you can choose the path of an Inside Out approach to planning your story or an Outside In approach. Either way, you'll learn how to develop a solid plot and a cast of characters to inhabit your story. 

The book is designed as a workbook for planning and writing one story, so for someone like me who struggles with writing in books and wanting to be able to use this more than once, I'm working through the pages in a separate notebook, but it's a highly valuable tool for generating ideas not only for stories but for scenes and characters as well.

Save the Cat Beat Sheet Workbook is the perfect companion to Blake Snyder's original Save the Cat.

Note: A copy of this book was provided by the publisher for review. The book can be purchased on Amazon (affiliate link).

Review of Oriental Mythology by Joseph Campbell

The works of Joseph Campbell have illuminated much about history, mythology, and religion for many, and continue to do so. Oriental Mythology is the second volume in Campbell's 4-volume The Mask of God series, and in it, Campbell explores ancient Asian history and mythological thought. For readers of a Western background, this book shines a light on ancient Asian cultures, how they were formed, and their continued influence on the modern world. 

While Campbell perhaps takes a biased view at times (toward Western cultural thought), the sheer volume of information contained in this book is a good place to start if you're interested in ancient Eastern stories and religion. With this new edition published by New World Library, much has been updated to reflect new discoveries since its original publication in 1962. 

It's a deeply detailed read and dry at times, but Joseph Campbell is the person to read if you want a detailed overview of how religion and mythology have evolved throughout and impacted world history.

Note: Review copy provided by the publisher.

Save the Cat Writes for TV Book Review

I've been a fan of the Save the Cat screenwriting method ever since reading Blake Snyder's original Save the Cat book several years ago. Though many people claim that his method is formulaic, I've always found it to be a user-friendly tool to help me hone my story ideas into something coherent, and it's how I structured the first screenplay I ever wrote. Since reading Save the Cat, I've read every other addition to the Save the Cat series, including Save the Cat Writes a Novel, a helpful guide for applying Blake Snyder's ideas to writing a book instead of a screenplay.

In recent years, television series have become a powerful way of telling a longform story that is proving to stand in competition to full-length feature films. Marvel's WandaVision is one example, as well as the Star Wars television series The Mandalorian. Because episodic television allows you to dive deeper into a story world than a two-hour film, many writers are interested in writing for television.

Save the Cat Writes for TV is the latest edition of the Save the Cat series that focuses specifically on writing longform television series using Blake Snyder's beat sheet method to plot out both episodes, such as the all-important proof-of-concept pilot episode, and multi-episode story arcs and full television seasons. Save the Cat Writes for TV is Jamie Nash, a screenwriter and instructor who has used the methods he outlines in the book to create television stories. 

With plenty of examples, which is a characteristic of all he Save the Cat books, Nash shows how the Save the Cat method can be seen in some of the most recent successful television series. He also gives advice on how writers can pursue a career in television by using the method to prove they can write the kinds of stories viewers are looking for.

Save the Cat Writes for TV is another great addition to the Save the Cat methodology and worth diving into if you want to write for television.

Review of The Memory Thief by Jodi Lynn Anderson

The Memory Thief is the beginning of a series of books called Thirteen Witches by Jodi Lynn Anderson. In it, twelve-year-old Rosie Oakes has lived her whole life wondering why her mother feels nothing for her. The spark that causes a mother to dote on her child is just missing from Rosie's mom, and no matter how desperately she longs for her mother to show just the slightest affection to her, Rosie has learned that she's on her own. And so she turns to writing stories to bring her comfort. 

But even her stories have their limits, and on the night she decides to discard her stories, she discovers that the world she sees is just a veil over a reality that most people don't see. A world where ghosts roam freely. And a world where thirteen witches are the cause of all the world's problems. Rosie discovers that her mother owns a book about hunting witches and that her mother has been cursed by the Memory Thief, a witch who feeds off the memories of her prey. Soon, Rosie, along with her best friend Germ must find a way to stop the Memory Thief, who now has her sights on Rosie.

The Memory Thief was a book I decided to read with my pre-teen daughter because it looked interesting, and I wanted it to be something we could share. I've always loved the Harry Potter series, and this story seemed to be in that vein. While it is a middle-grade book, I thought it was a very powerful story. Rosie is a compelling character, forced to become strong in the face of a world that doesn't seem to care about her. And I thought the way the author showed Rosie and her friend Germ's relationship evolve as Germ was changing but Rosie was staying the same. It seemed like Anderson captured the kinds of feelings a young girl would go through in that situation. 

And you can't help but feel Rosie's pain throughout as she longs for a mother who just seems physically there but mentally and emotionally absent. And yet Rosie loves her deeply. It reminded me of Luke Skywalker's love for his father, who had become Darth Vader, in the Star Wars saga. It's a relentless love that is desperate to find redemption for a parent.

Rosie goes on a journey that requires the utmost bravery, but when she discovers that there's a reason for her mother's apathy, she's more than motivated.

The Memory Thief was a fun and emotionally resonant story that sets up well what is sure to be a powerful series.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

Review of The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel

Traditional storytelling advice challenges writers to focus on one character and take that character on a journey of ever-increasing obstacles that leads the character to a critical internal change and a climactic moment in which the character uses this newfound realization to overcome the story's primary conflict. It would seem that the more characters a writer adds to the story, the more complicated the story becomes because it's no longer one character's story.

The challenge of telling multiple stories in one novel is that all the stories need to have equal weight on a reader's interest level. For example, and I may be in the minority here, when I began reading George R.R. Martin's A Game of Thrones, which switches point-of-view characters multiple times throughout the novel, I found myself more interested in one character's story over the others, and I ended up stopping after 150 pages because the multiple storylines didn't equally draw my interest. I've read plot-driven stories my entire life, so a story with multiple storylines across multiple timelines shouldn't work, if traditional storytelling wisdom is correct.

But then there's The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel, the writer of the groundbreaking post-apocalyptic novel Station Eleven. The Glass Hotel could never be an example of the traditional plot-driven story, but it works so well, and it is the perfect example that there are multiple ways to tell an intriguing story.

It's actually a little difficult to pin down exactly what The Glass Hotel is about because it defies the typical synopsis you read on the inside cover of a new hardcover novel, and the actual synopsis of the novel itself doesn't quite do it justice. But like Station Eleven before it, The Glass Hotel is driven by multiple compelling characters and the unlikely connections they all share. There's no real main character because all of the characters are explored in detail, and unlike A Game of Thrones, when I moved on to a different point-of-view character, though I did want to get back to the POV character I'd just finished reading about, I was so caught up in the next POV character's story that I didn't want to skip ahead to get back to the story I found most interesting.

If there was a main character, it would be Vincent, a woman whose life is explored over the course of many years. We see her get wrapped up in a life of wealth and prestige as the wife of a man named Jonathan Alkaitis, whose orchestration of a massive Ponzi scheme provides the event that anchors the entire story. And we see the aftermath of Vincent's life after Alkaitis is arrested and imprisoned. All the way to the story's core mystery, which is, what happened to Vincent when she disappeared from a large shipping freighter out on the ocean?

What I love about Emily St. John Mandel's brand of storytelling is that she focuses on a character, but from multiple characters' perspectives, while also fleshing out those characters as well. Vincent may very well be the main character of the story, but so are all the other characters Mandel fleshes out in exploration of Vincent's life. The structure of the novel is very similar to the structure she used in Station Eleven by exploring the life of actor Arthur Leander from multiple character perspectives and timelines.

Speaking of timelines, Mandel is a master of the non-linear plot. The story jumps forward and backward multiple times, but not in a jarring way. It's all very compelling, and the way she presents the events of the story help to shape the reader perspective in a way that there are some very satisfying payoffs when she shifts to earlier or later times in character's life in the story.

Mandel has referred to The Glass Hotel as a ghost story, but not the traditional ghost story most readers are familiar with. There are, as I heard her say in an interview, multiple ways for a person to be haunted, and this story explores those ways beautifully.

The Glass Hotel was the kind of story I didn't want to end because Mandel's prose and voice are so addictive. I only wish I could craft the kind of story that would impact a reader the way Mandel's last two novels have impacted me.

Review copy was provided by the publisher.

A Review of Anyone by Charles Soule

She was searching for a cure for Alzheimer’s. What she discovered, however, was a new technology with the potential to change the world and everyone’s place within it. Gabrielle White is a scientist and the mother of an 11-month-old little girl she and her husband lovingly refer to as “the Kat” when she accidentally thrusts her consciousness into her husband’s body, becoming him and yet still herself. She calls her discovery “the flash,” and with it, she’ll be able to provide her daughter a future she once could only dream of, as long as she controls how her new technology is introduced into the world.

Flash-forward twenty years, and the world has been revolutionized. Gone are the days of paying hundreds of dollars to travel across the world in an airplane. Instead, traveling to anyplace in the world is as easy as sending your consciousness into the host body of someone already there. With the flash, you can experience things people never dreamed possible, and the opportunities are endless. This is the promise of Anyone, the large company behind flash technology. “Be anyone with anyone” is their motto.

But a world with the flash isn’t the world the flash’s creator envisioned, and a desperate woman named Annami finds herself in a dangerous fight for her life in the seedy underbelly of a world driven by flash technology, an illegal operation known as the Dark Share. Annami doesn’t know what the people do who flash into her body when she Dark Shares, but she knows she needs the money it provides. And she needs a lot of it because Annami knows something about Anyone that no one else knows, something that will once again change everything, and she’ll risk anything to expose it.

Anyone, the second novel by lawyer-turned-writer Charles Soule, grabbed my attention on the very first page and didn’t let go until the surprising conclusion on the last page. It’s the kind of story that keeps you up at night for just a few minutes longer when you should be going to sleep because you have to go to work early the next morning, which makes it the best kind of novel.

I discovered Charles Soule when he began writing the Star Wars: Darth Vader comic book for Marvel Comics. I’ve loved Star Wars since I was a child, and I had high hopes for the story of Anakin Skywalker’s early experiences as the Dark Lord of the Sith, and Soule’s treatment of Vader was truly groundbreaking. After that, I read some of Soule’s other Star Wars comics before reading his first novel Oracle Year.

Oracle Year was fantastic, but the premise of Anyone didn’t actually appeal to me at first. However, I’ve come to enjoy Soule’s style of writing, so I decided to try it out. I wasn’t expecting to be caught up in not just one, but two stories that are both gut-wrenchingly tragic and intricately plotted.

I’ve been a fan of non-linear stories ever since LOST, and Anyone’s non-linear plot reminded me a lot of Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven, which is one of my favorite novels of all time. The story shifts between Gabrielle White’s discovery and fight to develop the flash technology and Annami’s tragic story in a world revolutionized by two decades of the flash. Non-linear stories that focus on two different characters run the risk of losing reader interest after shifting to a different story. Shifts in point-of-view are why I was never able to get beyond a hundred pages or so of A Game of Thrones. I just found some character’s scenes nowhere near as interesting as others, so I’d struggle to read through one character’s story when I was desperate to get back to a story I enjoyed more.

Anyone wasn’t like that. Whenever the story would shift from Annami’s story back to Gabrielle’s story, I was ready to get back to Annami’s story, but I was also caught up in the progression of Gabrielle’s story, and vice versa. And Soule did a masterful job of weaving the two stories together, dropping subtle hints of how the two stories are connected throughout.

I won’t give away the end of the story, but my hope is that it’s not over and that Soule has an idea for a sequel. I’m often struck by a sense of bittersweet when I finish a novel I love because I hate that it’s over. I’ve spent so much time with these characters that they don’t feel like imagined people on a page, and the end of a novel means that time spent is over. Finishing Anyone was like that, which is why I can’t wait to read whatever Soule puts out next.

Review of A Dying Machine by Mark Tremonti & John Shirley

I've been a fan of Mark Tremonti since his early days as the guitar player for Creed, one of the most popular rock bands of the early twenty-first century before the band split due to personal struggles of lead singer, Scott Stapp. I continued to be a fan of Tremonti when he formed Alter Bridge with former Creed members (sans Stapp). When I heard that Tremonti was writing a novel, a couple thoughts went through my mind. First, this might be cool. He is my favorite guitar player and has written several songs that I enjoy listening to again and again. My second thought focused more on the lens through which I've seen Tremonti for the past two decades, which is not as a novelist. It's easy to get caught up in a personality. I'm reminded of when Michael Jordan decided to play baseball. Of course, Jordan fans wanted to see him play, but Jordan wasn't a baseball player; he was a basketball player.

Still, I wanted to at least check out A Dying Machine to see if it turned out to be better than I imagined. I was pleasantly surprised when only after a few pages in, I couldn't put it down. The story deals with artificially designed and programmed humans, which serve to meet the needs of their owners. The main character, Brennan, is a ball of emotion in the wake of losing his wife, and he wins a lottery that allows him to purchase one of these artificial humans, called vessels. Hoping to fill the hole in his life, Brennan brings Stella, his vessel, home, and all seems well at first. Until Stella begins to think for herself. Which isn't part of her design. She loves Brennan, but begins to doubt his allegiance to her, with violent consequences.

The rest of the story explores what happens when a cyborg's humanity refuses to stay buried. What I enjoyed about the story is that I wasn't sure who to root for and who to feel bad for. The novel wrestles with big questions in a way that doesn't ignore them. Tremonti and Shirley have produced an interesting and thought-provoking story that proves Tremonti's chops as a storyteller just as much as an expert guitar player. I hope he continues to write more novels in the future because I'll be sure to read them.

Note: This book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.