The Hero's Journey to Save the Cat | A New Story Structure for Writers

Hey guys, What's up? Megan Tennant here and I've got another video for you guys. Today. Today is very exciting because I'm gonna be talking about one of my all-time favorite things and that is outlining. When you're building an outline it's really good to follow a sort of guide. So these guides take the form of plot beat sheets which I'm sure you've heard of before and basically they're just kind of a foundations to go off of so you know where certain types of plot beats should fall. There are two types of plot pacing structures that I see used most of the time the first one being the save the cat and that was developed by Blake Snyder. So save the cat was actually developed for film so if you read it over you're probably gonna recognize the pacing of a vast majority of Hollywood films and because there aren't a lot of available plot pacing sheets for writers we tend to default to using save the cat. The second guide sheet is the hero's journey so basically the hero's journey is a list compiled by Joseph Campbell. He looked at mythology across dozens of different cultures and he found the common beats of a hero's tale. And that is an old one that's from... I believe 1969 was when he first published it. I used the hero's journey for Aletheia but I found that I really had to alter it to make it work for current day novels. The hero of this journey is kind of set up to go along a flat path. There isn't really a clear rise to a climax and then when it comes to save the cat there are also some flaws in that save the cat was designed for film. Everything from color grading to just the main shot can convey so much information because it's a visual medium that in writing is gonna take you chapters to convey. So the pacing is gonna be different than a book. So I went to re-outline Red River and I tried save the cat and I tried the hero's journey and neither we're working and I decided to combine the two. I slice and diced. I removed pieces. I rearranged pieces. And I merged them together into something I'm calling the hero's journey to save the cat and figured I went through the work of making this thing so I wanted to share it with you guys because maybe you've also encountered the issue where neither of these methods really worked for you and you wanted something that kind of pairs the modernis of save the cat with more of the writing based storytelling structure of the hero's journey. I do have a printed out version of this much more detailed and more coherent and this is available to patrons so if you go to patreon.com search Cloud Kitten Chronicles you will find Josh and my Patreon page moon kittens and above get a kind of writing aid and the sheet for October was this. Right okay so let's get to it. This is gonna be a long video so I'm gonna try to kind of go through these fairly quickly. Stage number one is hello world and this is the opening image of your story so this is gonna be where you first captivate your readers. This is where your hero's gonna start out in an exciting to them situation. Now keep in mind that exciting or stressful situation might be laughable to them at the end of the book but in their current context it should be stressful and this should be surrounding your hero in their current ordinary world which brings us very quickly in the stage number two the calm before the storm and this is where you're going to follow the character on in their ordinary world for a brief time to get a little more background and context and character description. You want to keep this stage really short because right now your reader just picked up the book. They're not sucked in yet so it's delicate at this stage in time. This is where you should kind of highlight what your hero is missing in their life so whether they know it or not they're missing something in this stage by the end they're either going to have acquired that or realized that they don't truly want it which brings us to stage number three which I'm sure you're very familiar with which is the call of the catalyst sometimes known as call to action, call to adventure, and this is where the plot is going to swoop in and smack your character in the face. So this is where our readers are gonna get a pretty clear idea of what the book is really gonna be about. This should come fairly quickly in the first chapter which brings us to stage number four which is avoiding destiny. No matter who your character is no matter how brave no matter how bad their current situation there's gonna be a brief moment where they are filled with fear and doubt and they don't want to walk into that new extraordinary world because change is scary and this is a good place to kind of highlight some of our hero's weaknesses and inner uncertainties which brings us into stage five which is falling into the upside-down. In some stories a new context or new information evolve the world around the hero but for the sake of simplicity I'm going to be referring to the extraordinary world of something located in a different geographic location. So falling into the unknown is the stage commonly referred to as crossing the first threshold sometimes it's an instant transition sometimes it's a very slow one but this is the point where our hero gets immersed in the new extraordinary and overwhelming world. So this is where both the reader and the hero have information and new creatures and new magic and all of that kind of thing thrown their way which brings us to stage six entering the cocoon where they show their willingness to change for the sake of the quest and the new world by shedding their skin either metaphorically or sometimes very literally. This is a generally kind of an outward appearance type of change like changing into the attire of this new place but sometimes it can be an internal change and basically this is just where the hero shows that they're truly committed to changing themselves for the sake of this new world which brings us to stage number seven a guide appears. In this stage a guide comes forward who has more context and knowledge about the extraordinary world than the hero does. They shouldn't be all-knowing or all-powerful because then we wouldn't need our hero but the guide should have more context and knowledge than the hero does so they can answer questions, and provide information that your readers are going to need to understand the story going forward. In the classical mythology this guide was generally a magical creature or an old wise man , in current day modern literature especially in YA this guide tends to actually be a love interest. I'm not gonna lie in Aletheia I am guilty of that. And I should mention here that the guide isn't always a person sometimes it can be a magical object or a journal. Stage number eight trial and error I'm also calling this the montage moment. This is the moment where you're gonna take your character and you're gonna throw them into deep water and you aren't gonna release the sea creature yet you're gonna save that for the climax this is the moment where you're going to throw them into deep water and force them to learn to swim such that when the climax comes they have this swimming ability to be able to be on almost even ground with that sea creature. This is where you're going to teach your character a lot of the tools and lessons that they're gonna need to know to survive the climax and the journey ahead of them. Think of this as the time where your character trains. Where they learn magic. Where they learn about the world. And in the beginning they're gonna get their ass handed to them but they're going to get better and better over time and through their failures they're going to grow and by the end of this trial phase they should be starting to grow confidence in themselves and their ability to exist in this new and extraordinary world which brings us to a very fun stage which is stage number nine the mushy middle. This is the midpoint of the story where our hero finally started to succeed and they're starting to fall in love with this new world and often with another literal person. This is the stage where everything is rainbows and butterflies our heroes tend to forget about the evil and dangers of the journey ahead and just enjoy the moment. This is the night of dancing and drinking under the stars. The first kiss with the love interest. The night where the hero shirks their duties and escapes for joy ride on the dragon. In this moment the hero is actually tempted to abandon their quest to just stay in this blissful moment in this new world. This is the stage where you as a writer get to really have fun and indulged because you can throw comedy and cuteness and scenes for the sake of fun at your reader and your reader is really going to appreciate getting this chance to get a nice deep breath of air before you swoop in with stage number 10 and punch them right in the guts because stage number 10 the evil crashes the party and this is the point where generally unexpected everything that the hero had been pretending didn't exist comes crashing down on their head. In the last stage our hero let their guard down. They stopped to enjoy that blissful moment and in that period of time where they weren't paying attention evil comes in and strikes a devastating blow. This should be a moment where a great loss is suffered whether its loss of life loss of resources there should be some hardcore blow to the overall goal of the book or the quest and it should hit the hero really hard because it's gonna take us into stage number 11 which is the heroes cliff. This stage follows right on the heel of the last one and this is gonna be the lofty cliff from which our hero is going to be falling. This is the moment where a credible character confirms our hero's worst fears where they hold the body in their own hands where they feel the heat of the burning village. This is the exact moment where they fall to their knees and the reality of the loss dealt in stage 10 comes crashing down on their heads and in their extreme anguish they roll right off of that cliff and they fall straight in to stage 12 which is the hero's fall and this is where our hero falls into the deepest pit of depression and despair they will encounter in this entire book. This is the lowest point where they're at true risk of giving up not to stay in the mushy middle but giving up on life or giving up on the extraordinary world entirely to return to their old world and this stage is often tainted with guilt because the hero often blames the evil crashing the party stage and the loss that resulted from that on themselves for letting their guard down which leads us straight into stage 13, it has two names because I couldn't choose one so it's either against all odds or a spark in the darkness and this is the stage where our hero finds the strength to start crawling to get up and stumble forward and the music starts rising in the background and our hero somehow finds the will to start running. A very very essential aspect of this step is that there needs to be a spark the hero can't just randomly find the strength there needs to be some sort of realization or gem of truth or they need to look at some information in new light that they gained through the loss of the recent few stages or sometimes another character comes and gives them a bit of information or accidentally gives them an epiphany or realization but there needs to be some sort of switch that flips in our hero's heads that gives our hero the willpower to walk forward into what is undoubtedly going to be more pain and suffering. And generally it's a really good idea to have whatever the spark is tie into the core central theme of your book and that brings us to stage 14 which is emerging from the pit. Your hero fell a very long way down and they're not just gonna be instantly back at the top of that cliff they fell off of there's gonna be a little bit of a climb. This is the stage where your hero regains the trust of people they might have hurt or betrayed during their fall when they were distraught. It's the stage where you gather up the army. Where your hero heals from any injuries they might have sustained during their fall. And this is the stage that ends in an inspirational moment. This is where you want to get your readers really riled up because this is gonna lead straight into the climax and you want your readers to be pumped for that so of course that leads us to stage 15 which is the final battle and this is when swords strike each other. This is when weapons are drawn. So in this stage things are gonna escalate very quickly. You're gonna have people getting injuries or dropping or dying. There's gonna be lots of action and everything's gonna be super fast-paced and this stage is actually gonna culminate in a point where it looks like our hero has lost where our reader is asking themselves how is the character possibly going to get out of this situation and then that brings us into stage 16 which is the final blow. This is evil falling either permanently or temporarily. This moment should be something that the hero achieves by using something they learned throughout the journey. They should find something in themselves that they didn't think they had at the beginning of the book or that they really didn't have at the beginning of the book and earned throughout the book and they should use that skill or realization or power to take down the evil. This is a very important moment because this is where our character truly shows how far they've come so that's the very very top peak of our story's progress and now we're gonna have a little bit of a downwards. So that brings us to stage 17 there's too many numbers now I'm getting confused which is the return so this is the stage where our hero is going to go back to where the battle started taking with them news of their losses and their victories and whatever boon they might have gained through the battle often in this stage allies appear to help carry the hero back over the return threshold because generally they're gravely injured at this point your readers are gonna start losing interest now that the climax is over so you should keep these last few stages kind of snappy. That brings us to stage number 18 which is waking to a better world I called this awakened to a better world because generally the hero ends the last stage in the state of unconsciousness and they actually wakes up if the last stage and basically your hero is going to be back in a safe place in the extraordinary world and they're going to have their injuries treated and there's going to be a moment of calm generally this is where there's a heart-to-heart discussion with the guide or a mentor or someone along those lines and the hero has a brief moment of introspection where they look at themselves and they for the first time truly see how they changed throughout the journey. This is also where our hero and our reader are going to get a little bits of information they might have lost in the chaos of battle so this is where you would give final casualties and final information about what happened to the villain if they fled or if they were captured which brings us straight into stage number 19 which is our final stage this stage is called a brave new world and this is where you're going to either wrap up all the loose ends or kind of tease at what the next book is gonna be if your story's gonna be continuing. This is where you truly reward your readers by showing them that all of the heroes sacrifices and all of the pain and the death and the hurt was all worth it because it got us to this point this is where you show your readers the people that are benefiting from the hero's sacrifices and the way the world is now a better place so generally if this is a last book or a standalone this is where you would have an epilogue and jump a bit in the future but if your book is the first book in the series that this is where you're going to kind of tease what the next book is gonna be maybe remind them of some still unanswered questions so that they're ready to open that next book and continue the story but they still feel satisfied in the context of that current book. And that was it! That was a long video but those were the 19 stages of the hero's journey to save the cat so that was my combination of Blake Snyder's save the cat and Joseph Campbell's the hero's journey. I sliced and diced them again if you want the printable version with more detail then you can become a patron cloud kitten Chronicles. This was the print out guide for October. Let me know what you thought about this pacing structure. If you've written a book in the past and didn't have a plot pasting structure did yours kind of matchup with these plot beats? To some people like these plot beats are very intuitive for me that was not the case and I really needed the hero's journey to follow as a guide for Aletheia's plot beats. So yeah that was it this for this video. Thank you guys so much for watching if you found this helpful please give it a like and a share it really helps this channel grow. If you're not subscribed subscribe if you are subscribed to make sure to ring that Bell so you can get notified as soon as we post a new video and thank you guys so much for watching! And as always I will see you in the next video!

Channel: Cloud Kitten Chronicles

Views: 8,961

Rating: 4.8997912 out of 5

Keywords: megan tennant, save the cat for writers, book beat sheet, 15 beat plot structure, joseph campbell hero's journey, save the cat beat sheet, authortube, story structure, plot structure, hero's journey beat sheet, save the cat, plot beats, joseph campbell, hero with a thousand faces, plot template, story template, writing advice, writing tips, three act structure, pacing, writers, writing, how to structure plot, plot, screenwriting, writing hacks, plotting, plotting basics, 15 beat

Id: dA7qGqHulFU

Length: 17min 57sec (1077 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 14 2018