… my writing life, anyway.

It’s this:

Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat.

A fellow Golden Heart finalist recommended it in one of our loops, saying she always had trouble with plotting, and this was the first book on plotting she could actually wrap her head around.

Since I have a sadly similar affliction (and am currently stuck on my current manuscript’s midpoint), I thought I’d give it a shot.

And WOW. Oh wow. …

I get this now.

I’d learned similar things in other classes — midpoints and turning points and writing in acts and whatnot — but Blake Snyder really spells it all out here with points in between those points. That’s what I needed! I needed to know how to get from Point A to Point B, where the subplot fits in, where you solve some of the “little problems” you brought up in Act I, how to make the midpoint different, etc., and he spells all this out and more. Yee-haw!

I devoured the whole book last night, and tonight I’m on my way to buy my whiteboard.

Ready to plot with some confidence!

Yee-haw.