Friday, March 18, 2011

Guest Blogging Today

Posted by Robin L


I was very excited to be asked to guest blog today over at the official Save the Cat blog! As you guys know, it's one of my favorite plotting tools ever.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your post on applying Blake Snyder's Beat Sheet to help with structure was very interesting. When you say "BS2" I'm assuming that you're referring to the Beat Sheet listed under Tools on the Save the Cat site. Was there a BS1? Also is there more information explaining what some of those concepts are? Clearly some (e.g. Bad Guys Close In) are self-explanatory but others like "Break into Two" and "Break into Three" aren't. Where should I look for an explanation? You mentioned that you use it like you would a baby gate. Does this mean that you constantly refer back to it as you're writing or do you just have an awareness of the guideposts it gives you for your first draft and use it explicitly when you're rewriting?

3/20/2011 10:24:00 AM
Robin L said...

Sydney, I don't know if there was a BS1 or not. I just used BS2 because that's what they call it both on the site and in the book.

As for more information explaining each of those concepts, those are explained in much greater depth in the book and one of the reasons I highly recommend it. There is much more to them than is clear from the names on the beat sheet.

I go back and forth on how I use it. Sometimes I'll jump in with a first draft and not refer to the sheet, but more and more I at least glance at it so I have an awareness when I write. It saves me a lot of time. HOWEVER, everyone's process is very different so that might not work for some people. They might rather wait until they're rewriting.

And I refer to it during the writing process when I get stuck. :-)

3/20/2011 02:59:00 PM

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