Interviews

We’re pleased to bring you the last of a two-part interview with New York Times bestselling author Michael Gruber, a pioneer in literate suspense. If you missed part one of our interview, click HERE, then come back. Today we continue our chat about Michael’s latest novel, The Forgery of Venus, discuss risk-taking in genre and literary fiction, and receive surprising advice for aspiring novelists. Enjoy!

Part 2: Interview with Michael Gruber

Q: The protagonist of Venus, Chaz Wilmot, mentions fairly early on that talent isn’t enough to be a great artist: you must also take risks. Do you think this is true for writing as well? What, for you, are the keys to great writing? What are your personal goals for each novel?

MG: It depends on what you mean by risk. In commercial fiction risks are limited because most readers of commercial fiction want the familiar. That’s why they call it commercial. In genre, moreover, not only do they want the familiar, they want the same. Is the private eye going to stumble on a murder, and will the cops mishandle it, and will there be a corrupt force behind it, and will he or she have to talk to 12 people, each of whom have a piece of the real story, and will he or she be attacked and escape with the help of his or her colorful sidekick, and will he or she catch the killer in the end and will there be a final chapter in which all the loose ends are tied up? Yes.

Real literature, on the other hand, is by its nature challenging. It confronts the reader with life; in its highest form it’s life itself. Hamlet and Raskolnikov are in a sense more real than the people we see every day. Writers on this level risk everything, because it’s them on the page, their deepest hearts revealed to anyone with the price of a book or a library card. Rejection can thus be a complete obliteration of the psyche.

My personal goal for each novel is to sell enough copies to keep me fed and at the same time not insult the intelligence of the reader. I also have some ideas I think are interesting and I want to get them into circulation.

Q: Do you think it’s possible for genre fiction to transcend expectation? What, if any, genre fiction novels have you appreciated that have done so?

Michael Gruber is a New York Times best-selling novelist and master of smart suspense. His latest novel, The Forgery of Venus, explores reality and unreality in various forms, layered atop one another like coats of paint. We’re thrilled he took the time to chat with us about his novel and his process. Enjoy!

Part 1: Interview with Michael Gruber

Q: The Forgery of Venus is a brilliant novel that interweaves artistic creativity with the effects of a mind-altering drug called Salvinorin A–a drug that can make it seem you’re reliving parts of your past. When did you stumble upon research into this drug, and was that the inspiration for this story? How did the idea for this story evolve for you?

MG: I first ran into Salvia divinorum back in the 60s. I was living on a bus in a commune in southern Colorado and a group of people arrived who had been living with Mixotec indians down in Oaxaca and participating in shamanic rituals using that herb. I didn’t take it myself, since I didn’t much like being eight the first time around, but I heard the stories. I guess it stuck in my mind because when I created the character of Chaz and I needed something to make him crazy, the property of S. divinorum that enables the user to break loose from time and actually experience the past again, seemed a perfect fit. I did the research and found that they had refined the active principle into a drug, and read all the literature on it. The effects of the drug vary wildly among users and I chose to make Chaz one of the more sensitive ones.

Q: The protagonist of the story, Chaz Wilmot, is a talented artist who–he believes, at least–was born of the wrong time. Let’s talk about that. Is Chaz right to believe his natural works wouldn’t have been valued? How did you use cultural bias to influence theme?

Historical novelist Robert Low knows a thing or two about the subject matter of his Viking novels. A former journalist who’d covered rough assignments in Vietnam and Kosovo, Low turned to his love of Viking culture into fodder for his novels. An enthusiastic reenactor of ancient warfare, Low knows what he’s talking about when it comes to layering battle detail in his novels. His latest release, THE WOLF SEA, is the second book in his Oathsworn series, and I’m eager to immerse myself again in the grungy violent world of post-Rome Europe.

Low and his agent Jim Gill were caught in a bloody corporate power struggle when Gill’s then-agency PDF, angered agents and clients so much they fled and started a new agency, United Agents. I asked Low how the upheaval affected him, since the conflict reveals the seamier side of the publishing industry.

Enjoy part two of our interview with Robert Low (click HERE for part one).

Q: THE OATHSWORN SERIES is going to follow the adventures of Orm, the young Viking now making his way in a perilous post-Roman world. Did you conceive the story as a standalone or was it always supposed to be a series? What are some of the challenges to writing a recurring character?

RL: Initially, it was a standalone tale, in which the quest for the treasure of Atil’s tomb ended exactly the way it did in The Whale Road – they got it, they touched it, they lost it. End of book. My agent, Jim Gill, loved the book and actually thought I had teased him with the ending, so the idea of a Book 2 was planted. Then he went and sold three books to HarperCollins, the lovely man, so I had to come up with them! Writing Orm as a recurring character is no problem – he starts out at 15 and develops to manhood in these three books, so each one is like dealing with a different, new hero. There are few who end up coming with him right to the end of the three books – one reviewer on Amazon loved TWR, but could not see how I was going to follow it up, since I kept killing characters off faster than the Black Death.

Q: Do you plot extensively in advance, or let it unfold organically? Have you ever been so unhappy with a scene or a plot thread that you’ve chucked it and started over?

RL: I NEVER start off with a plotted novel.

My husband, a librarian (how convenient!), knows I love a good Viking yarn. So when he brought home THE WHALE ROAD by debut novelist Robert Low, I was pleased as punch and eager to be transported back to the time when my ancestors struck terror into the hearts of hapless dark-age peasants. I wasn’t disappointed. Low has a gift for sensory detail that makes the novel come alive. During fight scenes, he was able to get me inside the action rather than observe it, a rare feat for a writer. THE WHALE ROAD was a satisfying historical on so many levels, I knew I needed to interview the writer.

After a little digging around, I learned that Low, based in the UK, was a journalist and active in Viking battle reenactments. Ah ha! I thought. That’s one way to get that level of prized authenticity every writer covets. This interview was gonna be good, I thought. And it was.

Low’s latest novel, THE WOLF SEA, has its North American release on May 27, just in time for beach season.

We’re pleased to present part one of our two-part interview with Robert Low.

Q: You’ve been a journalist and a writer for many years, sometimes to dangerous war-torn areas of the planet. What drew you to writing historical novels, and in particular, Viking adventure novels? Do you feel that your years as a journalist prepared you well for novel-writing?

RL: I am child of the Sixties, brought up on epic movies such as Ben Hur, The Robe, The Vikings et al. A voracious reader, I discovered the joys of Nigel Tranter as well as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s ‘White Company’ novels and Mary Renault (The Persian Boy is still the best novel of that period), Dorothy Dunnett and Alfred Duggan (the best historical writer, in my opinion). I loved The Long Ships, but I never quite found any novel about Vikings which was not as dated in style as, say Havelock The Dane, or aimed at adults rather than children or teens. So I wrote what I wanted to read – a Henry Treece with attitude. Being a journalist has many advantages. Having earned my living as a writer for years, I was unafraid of the process of getting the words in my head out on to the page; so many aspiring authors have trouble simply sitting down and getting started. Also, deadlines are no problem. Unlike fellow Scot, the late Douglas Adams, I do not like deadlines because of the lovely whooshing noise they make as they shoot past you – I can actually work to them and HarperCollins loves me for it.

Q: Historicals are demanding and yours are richly detailed, exploring a post-Roman Scandinavian culture that isn’t widely known. What’s your research process, and how do you determine when enough is enough, and what’s your rule of thumb for giving the reader the feel of the period without resorting to the dreaded info dump?

Verla Kay is the author of nearly a dozen children’s picture books and an innovative marketer, having termed the phrase “cryptic rhyme” to describe her smart, lean style. If you missed part one of my interview with her, click HERE, then come back. Today we chat about publicity all authors can benefit from and some of the great misconceptions about writing for children. Enjoy!

Interview with Verla Kay: Part 2

Q: Tell us how you’ve promoted your work and yourself. What promotional steps did you take prior to publication, and what have you done since?

A: I started my website. It’s grown to be huge since I first put it up. The most used feature on it is the Children’s Writing & Illustrating Message Board. That board, where writers and illustrators go to share information, has gotten between 600,000 and 800,000 hits per month for a full year now (except for last May when it only got 595,500+ hits! Hmph!) It’s a very busy message board.

School visits and author talks are another way I’ve promoted my books. I love to do them and eagerly embrace invitations to come and speak anywhere I’m invited. A few talks I give locally for free to help out my community. A larger number of talks are done close to home for a reduced fee — again, to help out my community. One of my favorite places to speak is at library and educational conferences. The teachers always seem to “get” my books and they love having them in their classrooms. Speaking to other writers is another of my great loves. It’s so fun to share my love of writing stories for kids with other writers.

Q: What do you believe every writer must do to promote him or herself? And what promotional steps might a writer consider to go “above and beyond?”

A: You need to help your publisher by making a name for yourself. That only comes with time and “getting out there” in the public eye. When I first started out, I did a lot of free talks and talks for nearly nothing, just to get myself noticed. Learn to give a dynamic, fun presentation and you will find yourself becoming in demand. Ask your publisher if they will produce bookmarks or fliers or postmarks for you to distribute. Check out all the local and regional (as well as national) contests and awards and see if your book is eligible for any of them. If it is, be sure to send the entry information to your editor (or publicity person at your publishing house.) Any effort you make is better than none. There’s nothing sadder than to struggle for years to get a book accepted, wait for possibly several more years for it to come out, and then have it go out of print within months of its debut! It’s enough to take the heart right out of you….

Q: What are some of the biggest misconceptions about writing for children?

Verla Kay is the award-winning author of eight historical children’s books, with three more in the works. Verla’s work is unique, as she’s pioneered a phrase called “cryptic rhyme” and set herself apart from others who write in rhyme. Verla’s also founder of a huge resource for children’s writers, called the Children’s Writing & Illustrating Message Board, which averages between 600-800,000 hits monthly. We’re thrilled she took time out of her busy schedule to chat with us about her work. Enjoy!

Interview with Verla Kay: Part 1

Q: You coined the phrase “cryptic rhyme.” What is it and how did the idea of it evolve for you?

VK: Cryptic rhyme will not be found in rhyming textbooks. You won’t find it listed in the dictionary or in poetry books. Why? Because it’s my own term for my own style of writing. I’ve never taken a poetry course or read a book on how to write poetry, so I didn’t know there was a name for the kind of writing I was doing, and when I first started writing verses like this, I didn’t have any way to describe it to people — so I coined my own term for it — cryptic rhyme.

I call it cryptic rhyme because I write short, clipped, descriptive verses that paint vivid, concise pictures using almost no full sentences. Much is left up to the imagination of the reader, who has to “fill in the gaps.” Hence the term, cryptic — verses with hidden meanings.

Here are a couple of verses written in cryptic rhyme from some of my currently published books.

From Iron Horses: Black clouds scuttle,/Billow high./Lightning crackles,/Splitting sky.

From Tattered Sails: Tainted water,/Slimy vats./Wormy biscuits,/Lice and rats.

From Rough, Tough Charley: Bandit! Hold up!/Bullets shoot!/Bad man buried,/”Saved the loot.”

I first got the idea to write like this because of a wonderful picture book I saw by Dayle Ann Dodds called, On Our Way to Market. She had one page in that book that I absolutely fell in love with. It went something like this, “Stuck duck. Bad luck. How will we get to market?” After hearing that phrase in my head for several days, I thought, “Hmmm. What if you wrote a whole story like that? In just short, clipped phrases?” And cryptic rhyme was born. At first, I thought I’d “invented” a new style of writing a book. I have since discovered that many others have also written in a style similar to mine — they just didn’t “name” their style “cryptic rhyme.”

Hopefully, this will clarify cryptic rhyme and will save someone hours of research…looking for information on cryptic rhyme in poetry books…which won’t be there.

Q: How important do you think it was to have both a unique style and label as you marketed your work?

Last week, we spoke to YA author Caroline Says, and the hot YA series UPPER CLASS that are giving the Gossip Girls a run for the money.  Says, in partnership with fellow writers Hobson Brown and Taylor Materne, have crafted a series of character-driven novels set in an elite New England boarding school.  These books are impressive, and even more so when one considers that Says, Brown and Materne have somehow managed to take three authorial voices and distilled them into one distinct voice that is both literary and distinctly teen.  (Missed part one?  Click HERE).  I read both novels in a feverish weekend session and came away captivated with their fresh spin on what can be an admittedly cliched storyline: rich elite teens and the trouble they get into at boarding school.  They avoid those pitfalls and weave the lives of four students in a sophisticated, often heartbreaking narrative.

Their latest release, OFF CAMPUS, revisits Wellington’s rarified campus, and pushes the series in new directions.  Says also reveals how one should approach writing for the YA market, and the exciting prospect of seeing their novels adapted into television.

Enjoy part two of our interview with Caroline Says. 

Q:  Your target audience is teens.  What should writers be mindful of when writing for this readership? 

Caroline Says:  Often we forgot–somewhat purposefully–that we were writing for teens, and not adults.  Teens are so savvy today in what they read and watch and listen to, and we didn’t want to dumb it down at all.  What we did try to do, and struggled with, was anchoring the story in the teen’s world, dealing with what’s happening behind the closed doors of the teens in the book, and not acting like adults looking into that world from afar.  We tried to stay mindful of what matters to a teen, what the world looks like from that perspective, and where the drama lies.  The horizon is different.  What’s at stake is different.  There are no mortgages and no career decisions and no taxes.  There’s love and grades and detention and virginity, as well as that tension between craving independence and yet not being quite qualified for total independence.

Undeniably, the market for YA fiction has exploded in the last few years.  Hollywood is gobbling up hot books for film and television projects, and the range of titles for the ‘tween/teen market has never been more diverse. 

So we were all kinds of pleased to be able to interview Caroline Says, who, along with co-authors Hobson Brown and Taylor Materne, have written the hugely successful and critically acclaimed YA series THE UPPER CLASS novels.  Set in an elite boarding school, these novels explore the terrain of young adulthood in a realistic and elegant way.  I was wowed by the sophistication of the trios’ prose and crafting ability, and I gobbled them up in a week. 

Their next title, OFF CAMPUS, released April 22.

Enjoy our interview with Caroline Says.

Q:  Tell us about your journey to publication.

CS:  It was an unusual journey!  Taylor and Hobson were talking at a bar in Atlanta one night a few years ago, about their own prep school experiences.  They agreed that the depictions of prep schools in film isn’t really accurate.  The notion of prep school comes off more glamorous, less strange and less international than it is these days.  They talked about THE SOPRANOS and how HBO finally showed a specific world that has been glamorized in a dirtier, more “insider” way.  Taylor, Hobson and I had all gone to the same school–Hotchkiss–and when they decided to pitch the idea, they looked me up after reading a book I’d written, to help with the writing.  We wrote a 60 page treatment for TV, about six kids from really different worlds, that end up at the same fictionalized boarding school, and we tried really hard to tap into true boarding school life–with all its complexities regarding race, gender, power, wealth, and politics.  We sent it out via a script agent, but my literary agent thought it would be a good teen book series too–so we sent it out via Sally Wofford-Girand to publishers simultaneously.  And Harper Teen picked it up.

Q:  Writing fiction is generally an individual solitary process, and yet the three of you collaborate together on your YA Upper Class series.  How does that work in a practical sense?  How do ensure that the authorial voice, which is such an individual thing, stays consistent?  What are the strengths and weaknesses of collaborating together on a book?

CS:  It’s a process with obstacles and rewards, for sure.  Everyone involved needs to be ready to give a little, to be flexible.  We started by mapping out this world of Wellington, the fictional school, which was a composite of many existing schools, and imaginary schools too.  We literally drew the campus and town.  We filled it in with teachers and students.  We listed our pet concerns and themes.  We eventually created a “compost pile” of ideas and personalities and stories that we then used to fill in the storylines of the four books.  We did a lot of outlining before beginning, and then each took on different chapters or scenes.  We would each do some writing, then collect the material, put it together, align it, and move on to the next section. 

If you missed part 1 of my interview with author Billy Mernit, click HERE, then come back. Billy, an instructor with the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program and a story analyst for Universal Pictures, applied the tried-and-true rom-com formula to his debut novel, Imagine Me and You, with hilarious results. In part 2, we discuss his writing process, tackling clichés, writing with a screenwriter’s mindset, turning a novel into a screenplay and more. Enjoy!

Interview with Billy Mernit: Part 2

Q: What was your process for refining Imagine Me and You? What steps did you take to tighten the story, draft after draft? What technique, applied to your novel, resulted in the most significant improvement?

BM: I don’t think I’m alone in believing that first drafts are for finding out what your story is about. I was aided, after the first pass, by a fellow writer friend who read and offered suggestions, and by feedback from a few other trusted souls. Then it was an arduous process of continued discovery and discarding. You go, oh – this is what the book wants to be… in which case, I’ve got to rethink a lot of this material. And with each go round, you’re closing in on it: what the story really means. Which naturally points the way toward what has to go, and what needs to stay and be more deeply developed.

One early choice that made a big difference was that I shifted from third person past tense to first person present. Suddenly the story came alive. I felt comfortable in that voice. Later, the technique that yielded the most improvements was the notion of assigning distinct tasks to each step of each rewrite. I forced myself to focus on one thing at a time: okay, now I’m just going to track Jordan’s character arc. This time I’m just going to look at Isabella’s dialogue. And so on. This works. How else can you reasonably hack your way through that big-ass thicket of a manuscript without falling down any number of rabbit-holes?

Q: Did any part of the novel-writing process give you trouble? Any particular scene? Which moments provided the most satisfaction, and which is your favorite scene?

Debut author Billy Mernit knows a thing or two about romantic comedy: he teaches the rom-com template to aspiring screenwriters at UCLA. It’s no wonder he applied what he knows best when writing his novel, Imagine Me and You, released this past Tuesday. In Imagine, Mernit explores what happens to a man when he struggles, literally within a comedic framework (the main character, Jordan, also teaches rom-com), to reform his collapsed marriage. Jordan’s imagination not only gives him hope but ultimately pulls him through the worst time of his life. And the comedy is rich indeed when Jordan comes face to face with his imaginings in some unexpected ways and is forced to choose–deal with them, or deal without them.

We’re thrilled Billy took time out to chat about Imagine Me and You, and share an excerpt from his novel. Enjoy!

Interview with Billy Mernit: Part 1

Q: Tell us a little about your day job and how that influenced the creation of your debut novel, Imagine Me and You.

BM: I read scripts for a major studio and do notes on movies they’re trying to make. That can teach you a lot about what not to do when you’re writing a screenplay, but it hasn’t had much of a direct effect on my fiction writing. (The job of reader, however, with all its weird effects on one’s psyche and soul, is actually the partial subject of the novel I’m writing now; its protagonist is a studio reader who’s being so bombarded with other people’s stories, he’s lost track of his own.)

Q: The protagonist of Imagine Me and You is a rom-com screenwriter, and you’ve structured your novel based on the various known stages of a romantic comedy (e.g. chapter 2: Cute Meet. An inciting incident, or catalyst, that brings man and woman together and into conflict: often an amusing, inventive but credible contrivance that establishes the nature of their dynamic and sets the tone for the action to come.). Were there benefits and disadvantages to this approach? How do you work with these stages but keep the story fresh and unpredictable for the reader?

If you missed parts 1 and 2 of my conversation with Blake Snyder, the brilliant storytelling/screenwriting analyst and author of Save the Cat and Save the Cat Goes to the Movies, do yourself a favor and catch up: click HERE and then HERE. In this final segment of our discussion, we talk about the storyteller’s “flight of the arrow,” lifting your story beyond the average, why Blake’s favorite phrase is “force it,” why you should be able to see your whole story in your pitch and more. Enjoy!

Interview with Blake Snyder: Part 3

TW: One of my favorite lines in Save the Cat! is this: “By taking it all back as far as possible, by drawing the bow back to its very quivering end point, the flight of the arrow is its strongest, longest and best.” I love that. Can you tell us a little about what you mean by that and why it’s important for all storytellers to do this?

BS: This is such a great question. I think this is a key storytelling skill. I will reference the movie Romancing the Stone. We meet Kathleen Turner (Joan Wilder) and she’s this bestselling romance novelist who lives in her apartment in New York, has this very vivid imaginary life and never leaves. She has no social life; she sits there with her books and her cat and she doesn’t do anything. When the knock on the door comes and the message arrives saying “You’re sister’s been kidnapped. Come to South America to save her,” whereby she goes on the adventure and meets the dream lover realized, Michael Douglas (Jack T. Colton)—who turns out to be slightly different from her imagined perfect man, but beautifully so—that journey would’ve been lot less satisfying if we meet Kathleen Turner and she’s dating, she has a social life, she’s in society, she’s not lonely or isolated. The bravery that it takes for the real character in the movie to make the leap makes the adventure bigger, and it mostly makes her transformation bigger.

All stories are about transformation. Jim Carey in the movie Liar, Liar starts the movie as a liar (Fletcher Reede). Not a fibber. Not occasionally telling that little white lie. He’s a LIAR! And by the end of the movie, he’s not. So, what happened?

You want that journey to be opposite. You want that person to start back, as far back as possible, with lots and lots of problems. The first person I ask when people start telling me about their hero is, “What’s the problem? Why do we need to send them on the most important adventure that ever happens in their lives?” It’s to change them, and that’s why we want to see these stories. It goes back to the divine. You know, all stories are about transformation and transformation is about rebirth. The old way of life has got to die, and you’ve got to find a new way to live. And we can hear that story forever. Your job is to make that person go as far back as possible, so the journey is […]

Raymond Obstfeld is The Man when it comes to fiction writing.  A well-respected novelist with 28 titles in just about every genre imaginable to his credit, many screenplays and adaptations, works of non-fiction, and magazine articles as a contributing editor for Writer’s Digest, he also finds time to teach creative writing at Orange Coast College.

But it was his self-help book for fiction writers FICTION FIRST AID: INSTANT REMEDIES FOR NOVELS, and the followup NOVELISTS ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO CRAFTING SCENES that made us eager to interview him.  Both books should enjoy a prominent place on the writer’s bookshelf.  FICTION FIRST AID is one of the most useful books I’ve found because it helps diagnose the problems lurking in your MS immediately…. and offers lucid solutions for how to fix them.

Obstfeld’s latest release, a high-octane thriller ANATOMY LESSON is out April 1 from Iota Publishing (offering a 30% discount if purchased directly from the publisher).

We are pleased to present our interview with Raymond Obstfeld.

Q: Tell us how you started your career in the notoriously tough world of writing novels.

RO: I started as a poet.  My first published book, The Cat with Half a Face, was a collection of poetry.  In graduate school, I continued to focus on poetry, though I dabbled in fiction and screenplays.  Generally, the poets were at war with the fiction writers.  Poets thought the fiction writers were sellouts who wrote fiction because they didn’t have the brains or talent for poetry.  Fiction writers thought the poets were elitist snobs.  They were both right.

My literary studies were so time-consuming that I often spent twelve hours a day studying and writing papers.  Then, about midnight, I started working on a novel for relaxation.  I chose a genre far from everything I was studying—a mystery novel.  It was love at first sight.

When I finished my novel, I took it to a literary agent (Elizabeth Pomada of the Pomada/Larsen Agency) I found in the phone book and dropped it on her front door.  I couldn’t afford the postage.  She called me up a week later and told me she loved it and would represent me.  Three years later she sold it as part of a four-book deal.

Q: You teach fiction-writing at Orange Coast College in California.  What drew you to teaching and what keeps you there?

If you missed part one of my interview with screenwriting expert Blake Snyder, click HERE, then come back. Blake is an analytical genius when it comes to dissecting films to ID what makes them work–or fail. His book, Save the Cat!, and its follow-up, Save the Cat! Goes to the Movies provide aspiring screenwriters with the tools they’ll need to write a stellar script and improve their chances of selling in Hollywood. Novelists can learn much from Blake and his Cat guides as well. Today, we chat about Blake’s unique genre tags and whether or not they can be applied to novels and the pitch, his work with romance novelists, and the unique “laws” that can help you write tight (think Pope in the Pool). Enjoy!

Interview with Blake Snyder: Part 2

TW: Let’s talk about your ten genre categories (Monster in the House, Golden Fleece, Out of the Bottle, Dude with a Problem, Rites of Passage, Buddy Love, Whydunit, Fool Triumphant, Institutionalized or Superhero). Why are your ten genre tags better than traditional ones, like sci-fi, romantic comedy and drama?

BS: Oh, that’s easy. If you say you’re writing a sci-fi movie, it doesn’t tell me anything. If you say you’re writing a western, I’ll go, “That’s nice, but what is it?” I can name westerns that fall into each of my ten genre categories. And that is more specific. I think that’s what I’m really driving at here. What I love is that since the book’s been out, I’ve been getting questions from writers like, “I have this pitch, and I can’t decide if it’s an Out of the Bottle or something else.” The truth of it is, that’s exactly the discussion you should be having. That’s exactly how you should get to the what the heart of your story is. If you tell me it’s a western, I can’t help you. All I know is that it’s set in the old west.

TW: So your categories get to the heart of what the primal experience is where the others are general.

BS: That’s true. Yeah. And again, truth be told, there’s only one story. The other great discovery I had when writing this book was that it’s all getting us to a place of divine intervention. Whether it’s Die Hard or sci fi or anything else. The core essence is that we’re touched by something greater than ourselves. My personal mission is talking about storytelling, telling the tools so that anybody can use them, because if you can get to the essence of what your story is about, you have a greater appreciation for what your mission in life is. It’s a divine calling, your mission in life. And all of these stories are about essentially, at some point in the story, a moment of clarity for a character where they realize they’ve been touched by something remarkable. It’s why you’re telling the story and it’s why we need to hear it. Because we all need that.

TW: Do any of the genres you’ve identified tug at people more than others, or are they all equally capable of doing that?

BS: I think they’re all equally […]

Blake Snyder is a true authority on both the craft of storytelling and the business savvy required to sell a screenplay in Hollywood. He’s personally written and sold dozens of scripts, including some million-dollar sales (Blank Check to Disney and Nuclear Family to Steven Spielberg). His avid love of movies created a strong drive in him to understand the ingredients for a successful story. He’s analyzed hundreds of films along the way, and now believes he’s not only landed on the key to great scriptwriting—including a new interpretation of genre—but has also unlocked each story type’s DNA. This information composes much of his 2005 publication, Save the Cat!, and all of what you’ll find in his 2007 publication, Save the Cat! Goes to the Movies.

But can Snyder’s scriptwriting rules be applied to novels?

Snyder, who teaches workshops and speaks about his discoveries at universities and other prestigious venues worldwide, says YES. Great story, after all, is great story. Want to be enlightened? Grab a chair. Snyder is more than willing to let you in on a secret or five. This is the first part of our in-depth conversation. Enjoy!

Interview with Blake Snyder: Part 1

TW: In the first Save the Cat, you introduce the idea that every story falls into one of ten new genre categories–Monster in the House, Golden Fleece, Out of the Bottle, Dude with a Problem, Rites of Passage, Buddy Love, Whydunit, Fool Triumphant, Institutionalized or Superhero. How does your latest book, Save the Cat Goes to the Movies, expand on this concept? And in what other ways are the books different?

BS: In the first Save the Cat, I proposed that most well-structured stories fall into certain patterns. I pointed out fifteen points on the Blake Snyder beat sheet that I think are unique.

What I’m trying to get across is that there’s a function for every section of a story. As a writer myself, I’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure it all out. I’ve been lucky in that I’ve had a lot of success in selling scripts, and so breaking down the components of what makes any story work has always been my goal. That was the important thing in the first book.

The other important thing in the first book was the concept that there are ten story types. So what I wanted to do in the second book is basically prove my point, prove the case. In writing the second book, I wrote ten different chapters, each one about a different story type. I found five different examples of each story type and broke them out into the beats. It really is just proving the case.

TW: It did feel like a scientific proof, like we were peering into your personal notebook, what you’d worked out.

BS: The really nice part for me was that you always go into these adventures enthusiastically, that’s for sure. But I didn’t know the wonderful things that I personally would have light bulbs go off over my head for. There’s some stuff in the second book that just blew me away and I couldn’t wait to get out to people.

TW: Like what?