An interview with author and writing teacher Jessica Brody, where we discuss what makes a compelling story, how to apply story structure whether you're a plotter or pantser, and tackling large-scale revisions without ripping your hair out.
An interview with author and writing teacher Jessica Brody, where we discuss what makes a compelling story, how to apply story structure whether you're a plotter or pantser, and tackling large-scale revisions without ripping your hair out.
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Mary Kole: Welcome to the Good Story Podcast. With me I have Jess Brody. You may know her from a writing reference book that I recommend all the time called Save the Cat Writes a Novel, or from her works of young adult fiction. I will let Jess take it away and introduce herself a little bit more.
Jess Brody: Yes, hi. Thanks, Mary, for having me on. So as you said, I’m the author of Save the Cat Writes a Novel. I’m also the author of many young adult and middle grade novels like The Unremembered trilogy; 52 Reasons to Hate My Father; A Sky Without Stars; Better You Than Me; Addie Belle’s Shortcut to Growing Up—I have about 18 novels out right now.
MK: Wow. Wow, wow, wow. And I think one of the reasons I’m really excited to talk to you and share this interview with Good Story listeners is that you have a professional interest in plot. Which I think has led to these many novels that you have published. And that’s sort of the cornerstone of your work for Save the Cat. Can you talk a little bit more about the Save the Cat plot ideology and how writers can apply it to their own work?
JB: Yeah, sure. I was introduced to Save the Cat, which is actually originally a screenwriting guide, way back in 2005, when I was trying—and failing—to sell my first novel, and I was basically getting the feedback from agents of, “You have a good voice, but there’s no story. You don’t know how to tell a story.” And I was very confused by that feedback, because obviously I didn’t know what a story was. I thought I was telling one. So I was actually given a copy of Save the Cat, the original book, by a screenwriting friend. I read it and loved it and it sort of opened my eyes. I had no idea. I really did not have an idea what story was, and this was such a great resource. Basically what it did was, it broke all stories—across time—down into the same fifteen beat template and Blake (author of the series), he used it for movies. And he said, “Look, all movies follow the same template. If you break them down into these beats, any good story fits within these beats.” So I attempted to do the same thing with the novel I was working on, and I realized and it didn’t have any of the beats in the right place. I rewrote that novel and ended up selling it to St. Martin’s Press. It was an adult fiction novel I wrote many, many years ago. Since then, I’ve sold twenty novels to publishers, and I just keep using this same template. Now it’s become second nature. But this is how story is told, and this is how story has been told for thousands of years. There’s nothing new being invented here, it’s just a new way of explaining it. When I realized I was doing something with this template that other people could benefit from, that’s when I started to teach it to other novelists, and that’s how I ended up writing this book called Save the Cat Writes a Novel, which is all about how to take this 15 beat blueprint we call the Save the Cat Beat Sheet and apply it to your own story so you know you’re writing a satisfying story with a compelling end that readers are going to love, publishers are going to love, agents are going to love.
MK: I’m going to put you right on the spot and ask for a synopsis of…if you were to encapsulate the answer to this very vital question, I’m really interested in your take. What makes for a good story? And I’m not just asking this because my company’s called Good Story. I’m genuinely curious to see a story thought leader take on this question.
JB: That’s a good question. It just put me on the spot a little bit but that’s okay—I’m used to it. I think all good stories have four essential things. One is they have to have a hero who’s flawed. They have to have a hero who has some sort of brokenness in them. And I don’t mean that it has to be some psychological drama. I just mean there has to be something this character’s trying to […] about themselves or that they don’t know they need to […] about themselves. The reason for that is because we read stories because we want to see a mirror of ourselves, and as human beings none of us are perfect. We all have something in ourselves we’d like to change or we need to change. So we like to read stories about people who do just that. It’s why we turn to story. If there’s a character who’s not flawed or nowhere to go, then there’s no point to the story. So that’s the first thing you need—a flawed hero who’s going to come out the other end of the story a little bit less flawed. They’re not going to come out perfect, but they’ll have combated at least one flaw.
The other thing you need in a good story is an overarching conflict. Something that is presented at the beginning and doesn’t get resolved until the end. That doesn’t have to be something huge—in the first Harry Potter, the idea of Voldemort is presented in the first chapter and isn’t dealt with until the end of the series. In commercial fiction, in a romance, there’s some sort of conflict that gets introduced at the beginning and it’s not actually dealt with until the very end. So there’s a looming sense of conflict that continues to get worse.
You need to be able to pitch it in one sentence. I know that a lot of people say it’s impossible, but it’s not. Tell me any great book and I can pitch it in a sentence to you. What that one sentence does is it tells you who the hero is and why they’re flawed; what the looming sense of conflict is; and hints at what the fourth thing all good ideas need to have.
It needs to have some element of a fish out of water. You take this hero who’s flawed, and you need to put them somewhere else. You can’t have a story where they do the same thing for 300 pages, that’s super-boring. So you have to take them out of their comfort zone and put them somewhere new, and that doesn’t have to be physical. They don’t have to move house or go to a new school. But they have to do something new. And that’s essentially what act 2 of any story is—taking a hero out of act 1 and putting them in a new setting, world, or attempt at something.
If you use those other elements—flawed hero, fish out of water, looming conflict—you can tell your story in one sentence.
MK: I’m very tempted to just start throwing books and movies to you…
JB: Well, I have to have seen them or read them. But I could give you some examples if you’re interested.
MK: Yeah!
JB: I draw on Harry Potter because a lot of people have read or seen it, and they understand it. So I pitch it as “Orphan boy discovers his magical powers, gets sent to a school for witches and wizards where he discovers the evilest wizard of all is trying to kill him.” So you’ve got this flaw—he’s orphaned—and by the end, he comes into his own and has more confidence. You’ve got this fish out of water element—this world of magic he gets put in it. And then you’ve got this conflict—evilest wizard of all time wants to kill him.
MK: Just a little bit of conflict!
JB: Yeah, just a little bit! I teach this logline, it’s in my book Save the Cat Writes a Novel—essentially what I just gave you is a logline, which is a one-sentence description. And I teach you how to do that in the book, based on the 15 beats that you’re already creating. I teach you how to take those beats and apply them to a one-sentence description. And then I have lots of other samples in there.
MK: I know loglines, pitches, query letters—they really throw writers for a loop. Do you have any insights for my listeners who are looking down the barrel of a Twitter pitch contest or a query submission round…how can we—you come from an LA background, and you have experience in film. Is there any way you can make the average writer more comfortable with the idea of pitching, which is odious to a lot of people?
JB: It comes back to the same elements I gave. Any good pitch is going to tell the reader who the hero is or the main character, and why we need to read about them. And that’s where that flaw comes in. If you have a hero who doesn’t have anywhere to go or any flaw, there’s no reason to read the story. So that’s the first thing you need in your pitch. A longer pitch—a logline is a shorter pitch—so a query letter or a back of the book synopsis, it’s going to nod to something in Save the Cat world we call the catalyst. That's an inciting incident that’ll send the hero to this new place I talked about—fish out of water place or situation. In great pitches we hint at a catalyst because it shows the reader of the pitch right away that we have a story that needs to be told because there’s a character who needs to be fixed. That’s the main ingredient of a story that needs to be told. Then we know something’s going to happen to the character in the catalyst that’ll send them in a new direction. Then we hint at what that new direction is, and then by bringing in that conflict that looms over the story, we know it’s not going to be easy. That’s a very brief description of a pitch, but those are the ingredients you want—a story that needs to be told with a hero that needs to be changed. You want to show that something will happen to the hero that’ll change the direction of their life, and you want to hint at what that new direction’s going to be, and that it won’t be easy to get through it. Right there, you’ve got enough to hook a reader.
MK: You and I are both writing teachers in our way—I teach writers as well, we’ll get to that in just a second. I think we both have this underlying idea that the point is to make a reader care. That’s how we get into the world of story. Anybody’s story is more compelling if you give it in a way where readers are lured into the story, hooked into the story, and I think through a character who’s struggling, who’s flawed, their normal is about to be blown up by the catalyst—to use some Save the Cat terminology—that’s what we can only hope for writers listening in terms of them crafting their stories. That’s really the key.
JB: Yeah, I agree. I think the easiest way you can get readers to care very quickly is to one: not have a perfect character, because who cares? We want to kill those people or hurt them. “Okay, you’re perfect, we get it,” and we don’t want to go on a journey with them because they’re not realistic. The second thing that makes readers care about a character quickly is to give that character some kind of goal. Something we talk about in Save the Cat is a goal or a want, and that’s something the hero is actively pursuing. It’s very tangible. An example would be winning the game, or asking the girl/boy to the dance, or finding some sort of memorabilia relating to a lost parent. Something physical they’re actively pursuing is a great way to get the reader’s attention and to also keep them turning pages. We naturally want to find out if they get what they want, and what becomes of it.
MK: I completely agree. Wanting and striving and universal. We can all relate to it and that’s a key ingredient in getting readers to hook in. I really admire the Save the Cat teaching you do and what you lay out in your book. It makes certain allowances for different types of books. One of the arguments that could be made about any kind of plot system is writers worry their work will seem formulaic. Can you tell us more about how different writers from different genres and categories can find a way to apply Save the Cat system to their idea?
JB: We call “formula” the F-word in the Save the Cat world. People hear the word blueprint or template and think their story is going to sound like everyone else’s. The thing I usually say to that is, what I do in Save the Cat is break down novels from Dickens and Austen all the way through Steinbeck and King, Agatha Christie, and I’m showing they all have that 15 beat template. So it’s like saying all those books are formulaic, too. I guess if that’s the way you look at it, I guess it’s true—every story is a formula. You could say that. At the same time, all those stories are so different. They hook us in different ways, all play to different emotions—yet they’re all following this story blueprint, because it’s what makes stories work. And it speaks to something in our DNA as humans, that we’ve been using since we sat around campfires and told stories. It’s the same elements we’re programmed to respond to.
Beyond just the 15 beats that I’ve been talking about, in the book, we also break down story into 10 different archetypes. We call them story genres—not like comedy, mystery—these are more like what kind of story you’re trying to tell. One of my favorite genres is called “The Golden Fleece.” The stories that fall under this genre are things where a hero goes on a quest to find a certain prize or acquire certain things. Along the way, they learn something new about themselves, or they discover something about themselves. The books that fall in this genre are The Grapes of Wrath and Ready, Player One. Which, as we know, are completely different stories. Completely different types of authors. Yet they’re following the same beats, and they’re also fitting within the same archetypes. So after I teach you the 15 beats, I also teach you the story genres and the ingredients that go into each genre so you can get more guidance. “I’m trying to write this type of story”—well, here is a list of famous authors who’ve written that kind of story and how they did it. It really helps people—gives them a little more guidance—and shows them how different stories are within the same template.
MK: I really appreciated the examples and how you applied the beats and you really do show readers, “Hey, this is how this worked in this example.” It was surprising to see things broken out in that way.
JB: That was something that was important to me to include. As I explain the different beats, I have lots of examples. On top of that, I have 10 full beat sheets in the book. These are novels that you’ve probably read or at least heard of or seen the movie—very famous stories. Misery by Stephen King, Ready, Player One by Ernest Cline, The Help by Kathryn Stockett, Girl on the Train—very big books. I break them down with 15 beats so you can see the entire beat sheet in its completion. I think that’s really important. I don’t think people learn from theory. I think they learn from example. I do. When I learn things, I like to get both—I like to hear, “Okay, what’s the theory behind this.” But I’m not going to fully get it until I see it in action with something I understand. I read 100 books when researching and broke them all down and looked for the best examples for certain kinds of beats. I’m going to talk about that. I really wanted to show the beat sheet in its entirety.
MK: I’m going to play devil’s advocate with two types of writers. These are two types of writers I’ve encountered in my career, whether it’s being an editor, speaking at conferences, being a writing teacher. I’m curious as to what you’d say to these types of writers. The first type says, “My character is the anti-hero. They really don’t change from beginning to end. That’s very modern, change and redemption angle are a little phony. So my character’s not going to change.” But your idea is predicated on some kind of arc for the character. What would you say to our stubborn anti-hero writer?
JB: I hear this a lot. There’s two answers. One is that I’d argue that every hero changes. I’d also say, “What’s your definition of change?” because change doesn’t always have to be for the better. A lot of these anti-heroes or villains—the story of the antagonist—we’re telling the story of how they became the way they did. Which means they didn’t start the same way they ended. When we say “all heroes change,” I think it’s perfectly acceptable to want to tell a reverse change. But then again, you’re still telling a story of change, otherwise, where do we go?
The other answer I give where we do sometimes see exceptions to the rule of every hero has to change—the place where we do see this is in more classic detective stories where the detective often doesn’t change, because they’re not actually the main character. The main character is you, the reader. Any time you read a mystery, you are the detective. That’s the whole reason we read mysteries. So the detective is more like our guide. We’re the Watson and they’re the Sherlock. We are going to come out somehow changed by the end, we’re going to learn something about the darkness of human nature; the heroes or characters in this world…that’s where I start to see the exceptions.
That being said, I’m finding more modern mystery novels as the genre evolves where the detective does change. I just finished reading Robert Galbraith’s Cuckoo’s Calling—JK Rowling’s pseudonym. And the main character, Strike, has this messed up relationship with his ex, and he can’t escape her psychologically. He can’t get away from it. And it’s a small sub-plot, comparatively, to what’s going on with the murder. But at the same time, he’s dealing with that. And by the end, he does make great strides. So I’d say that he’s flawed, too, and he’s working on it. Of course that’s not the biggest thing to happen in this story, but it’s still in there. So I think more and more we’re seeing—maybe because our tastes are changing, and as readers and viewers we’re getting used to a certain pattern—I think we’re seeing even in the exception a little bit of arc.
MK: One writer that I see quite a bit is a writer who may have multiple characters who could compete for protagonist status. Whether it’s a multi-narrative situation, or the main character is more of a narrator and something else is more interesting that’s happening to another character…what’s your rubric for determining who’s the main character? Who’s the protagonist?
JB: That’s a great question. The thing that instantly popped in my mind when you said “The narrator isn’t the person who changes” was the Book Thief. Death is the narrator and I guess you could argue that Death changes a little. But the story is about Liesl, and Liesl definitely has a coming of age storyline. Yes, there are situations where the narrator is different from the main protagonist or hero. That’s totally fine—you just have to have a hero who’s changing. When you have multiple heroes—multiple POVs—you need to track arcs for all three or five or however many you want to do. The author I always use as an example is Lianne Moriarty. She does amazing multi-character POVs where all the characters have very complex, realistic arcs. And she balances really well. I tell people: regardless of how many heroes you have, you need to really figure out who’s your “One True Hero.” Who’s the one who changes the most? I use the example in Save the Cat of the Husband’s Secret by Lianne Moriarty. She’s got these three very complex dynamics—protagonists—they all change. But the title is The Husband’s Secret, and the main character is the wife of that husband. They’re all affected by that secret, and yet it’s her husband, so she’s the true main character because she’s the one who’s going to change the most. But they all have compelling arcs. It doesn’t matter who it is—you want to keep that main one in mind, because that’s the one you want to keep in the forefront when you’re tracking arcs through the story.
MK: I’m gonna get back on the road with the second type of devil’s advocate writer I can imagine coming to you: the hardcore pantser. They write by the seat of their pants, they turn their nose up at outlines, they don’t believe in planning where you’re going. How does my pantser—who doesn’t want to apply beats, plan anything in advance, maybe doesn’t know what they’re going to write until they sit down to write it—how do they find utility or even a new perspective from this method which, I would imagine—and please correct me if I’m wrong—appeals more to the plotters, the outliners.
JB: I love the pantser question. I will correct you—I think that the obvious answer is that a method like this would appeal to plotters more than pantsers. But you’d be surprised—when I do speaking events about Save the Cat, I always ask at the beginning, “How many of you are plotters, and how many of you are pantsers?” And I find that a majority of people in that class are pantsers. I think it’s because pantsers often find themselves needing more plot help, because they plot after the fact. Here’s the thing: Structure gets added in no matter what. You have to have structure or you don’t have a story. Either you plot in advance, and then you write it and probably it’s going to change from what you had in mind because you can never plot with 100% accuracy. Or you’re going to get inspired and you pants your way through a novel, then you have to go back and add the structure—because it’s not gonna be perfect when you pants it the first time. It’s sort of like: when are you adding the structure? And that’s when you’re going to come to a method like this, whether it’s this or something else like it that appeals to you. But structure gets added in somewhere. A lot of time I get pantsers coming to me because they have this first draft and they know it’s problematic, but they don’t know how to fix it. So I say to them—and I’m very upfront about it in my book: I’m not writing this to convert pantsers. I don’t want to change anyone’s process, because we all have our sacred process and it works for us. Don’t question why I have to stand on one foot and eat peanuts while I write. It’s just what works. I’m not there to take away your peanuts or make you stand on two feet. I’m just here to help you put the structure in when you need it. Whether that’s when you’re revising or when you’re starting or when you’re stuck in the middle.
MK: I am a little bit surprised, but this leads me to another question. By the way, I’m happy to be wrong and learn something about this larger world of writers and plotting and pantsing and this crazy world that we belong to. Let’s say I do have this mess. In no way am I saying that everyone who pantses is left with a mess at the end. But frankly, even people who have a perfectly good outline can get a mess.
JB: You can’t see me, but my hand is raised in the air. Because here’s a plotter who always ends up with a mess.
MK: I think Save the Cat is a great way of thinking about plot, a great way of thinking about story. But let’s say we have a hot mess on our hands, 70,000 words of it. Do you have advice for revision? How do we dive in? Do we zoom out and try to reverse engineer some plot from the mess? What do I do?
JB: This is a great question. My next course that I’m trying to tackle—I teach online writing courses—and the next course I want to put out is about revision. I’m struggling to figure out how to teach revision. I feel like it’s so particular to that book, and every book I’ve ever revised—it’s been a whole different process, and I’ve had different things to work on. So I’ve been trying to figure out the answer to that question: How do you revise a book?
I think it depends on the process you prefer, or the way that you work, the way that your brain works. For me personally, I’m a plotter, and I still end up with big messes, as I said. Because the book never goes the way you plot it. It never happens. But for me—I’m a control freak—I don’t like to start a book until I’m pretty sure I know where it’s going, and then over the years I’ve had to learn that I’m a know-it-all; I can’t read the future, I don’t know what the book’s going to look like, I don’t know what I’m going to stumble on. So us plotters have to learn to let go and let the story go where it needs to go. The first thing I do with my hot mess: I do zoom out. I zoom out and I create a beat sheet of what I want it to look like. You can do that in multiple ways: You can create a synopsis of what you already have and compare it to the 15 beat template and see where you’ve gone off kilter. Or you can just start from scratch and go, “Okay, I kinda have it in my head, and now I’m gonna create a beat sheet and that’s gonna be my revision plan.” It depends on how you want to do it. But I think zooming out is a really important skill—to be able to synopsize what you have. You’re not going to be able to find out what’s broken until you can look at it in a bigger picture way.
MK: That’s a really good point. You zoom out, you craft a beat sheet—do you then go in and slash and burn? At what point are we concerning ourselves with the sentence level, for example. What happens when we zoom in?
JB: I usually create some type of board—index cards or a virtual board, there’s actually Save the Cat software you can purchase and it’ll help you with that. There are other programs, too—Scrivener has virtual boards. I like to board when I do my zoom out. I’ll take each chapter and I will try to condense down into what’s the essence of that chapter and I’ll put that on a card. And it’ll say “In this chapter, what’s happening is the character is trying to find out why her best friend isn’t speaking to her.” And I’ll synopsize that into 1-2 sentences so I can see it on a higher level. Once I have the whole board, I can start moving things around or maybe fleshing things out. That’s how I see it from a higher level. I personally don’t think it’s worth revising anything on the sentence level until you have a structure. The sentences are going to change based on what happened before that and what happened after that. As much as we get this urge to tinker with our sentences: “But it’s not quite right!” Trust me, Future You is going to knock that sentence out of the park. She or he will have such a better understanding of what the story’s going to be about. Present You’s only job is to figure out story. Let Future You, who has so much more knowledge about the story because that structure is there—let them tinker with the sentence. I guarantee you they’ll tinker with it with much more authority, confidence, and knowledge. It’s going to be easier to tinker with. When we get really lost in these minute details, and we get obsessive about them—the reason we can’t quite get it right is because we don’t have the story down yet. We’re trying to write in the dark. Getting the structure down first is important before we start to get on that sentence level.
MK: I’m writing a webinar right now about the next step. If you’ve put whatever system towards your manuscript, you’ve done revision, you’ve even gone on submission to an agent or publisher. Something doesn’t seem to be working no matter what. How do we deal with a story that seems to check all the boxes and hits all the beats, but just isn’t working?
JB: That’s a great question. There are so many levels. Is it not working because the industry’s not ready for that story or there’s no demand for that type of story? Or is there something structurally wrong with the story or emotionally the beats aren’t there? This is going to sound bad, but I feel like every time you revise from scratch, you take a little bit of the soul out of the story. I say this having books in the past I had to revise multiple times—where I had to really restructure it. You lose a little bit of that love that you went into it with. I’m talking personally. And it gets to be kind of a slog. When you have to go back to the same story for the fourth, fifth time, and you’re going, “Oh my god, I don’t know how many times I can move this scene from here to there and have to connect everything around it before I pull my hair out.” That’s the worst state to be in when you’re writing, to feel like you hate something or that you’re angry or you’re frustrated. Unfortunately, when we’re in—this book I’m thinking of, I won’t mention it, because people love this book, it’s just…
MK: Because you love all your book children equally!
JB: Yeah. It doesn’t show on the outside, but for me, it was a hard book. It was due, and it was scheduled to come out, so I had to keep going with it. That being said, if you’re in the place where this book doesn’t have to be done at a certain time and you’re getting rejection and you’re hitting your head against the wall and you can’t quite figure out what’s working…leave it. Come back to it. Again, I love to talk about Future You. Future You might have all this new perspective because they’ve been working on a new project, and that’s opened new doors in their mind. There’s a gift in not writing on deadline. Whether that’s because you’re not published yet or you’re working on a project and you haven’t shown anyone yet—there’s a gift in that. There’s no pressure to make something work. The more we try to force things, the worse it gets. When you’re at that stage, where you’re getting these notes and it’s making you want to cry because you spent so much trying to get this to work and it’s still not working—that’s your first clue you might want to work on something new you’re really excited about. Remember how much you love to write. Remind yourself with a new project. And then come back to it after a couple months after you’ve had some time to let it marinate.
MK: One last question before we start to wrap things up. What lights you up the most when you sit down to do your own writing? Is it voice, character, or plot?
JB: It depends on where I’m in in the story. When I first start a book, it’s voice. I love discovering the character’s voice. Sometimes it doesn’t come right away, or it comes after the second chapter and I have to go back and rework the first. So when I first start a book it’s voice that inspires me, but then towards the middle it’s the plot. The middle of the book is where all these plot points converge and things are twisting and new information’s getting revealed and the plot’s going in a new direction. In Save the Cat world it’s the midpoint, and a lot happens there. It’s the fun plot part. But then I love—there’s a beat called “The Dark Night of the Soul,” which comes about 2/3 of the way through the book. And it’s after the character’s hit a low point. They’re wallowing in this low point. It’s a very important beat because it’s where they finally come up with the inspiration or the epiphany they need to break into act 3 and resolve all the things that need to be resolved. It’s an important lament they have to do. And for some reason, I just love writing those scenes. My co-author, who I write a sci-fi trilogy with—she’s like, “Okay, it’s the Dark Night of the Soul—Take it away, Jess!” because I just love writing these wallowing beats. It’s when the character’s the most real to me—when they’re down in the dumps. I don’t know why—it’s angsty teenage self comes out. So yeah—it just depends on where I am in the story.
MK: I love that answer. There’s so much nuance there. So you are a writer, you’re a writing teacher. Let’s wrap this interview on a mention of Writing Mastery Academy, do you want to tell us a little bit about that?
JB: Thank you for bringing that up. I’m so excited. I just launched my very first online writing school. It’s called Writing Mastery Academy. You can find it at learn.jessicabrody.com. I’ve been developing these online courses for years now, and it’s everything from the Cat course, to how to be more productive, to how to come up with high-concept blockbuster ideas, to how to sell your novel to a publisher—lots of different topics around things I’m familiar with that I’ve developed into courses. It’s the first time ever all the courses are available in one place for one price. It’s a membership, and you enroll in the academy and you get access to all of the courses plus I do a monthly live webinar, only for members of the academy. You get access to me and ask questions and chat with all of us. I’m really excited—I’ve been working on it for over a year now, and it’s finally out. I hope you all get to visit and enjoy.
MK: I’m excited about it. Like I said, I love Save the Cat Writes a Novel. I love your style of teaching. I’m more of a character person when I think about my entry point into story. I’ve always considered myself a little weaker on plot, so I love this way of thinking about story, especially because there are so many allowances you make for type of story. I love your teaching, I heard you speak at an SCBWI conference we were both at. So if you guys are new to Jessica and her work, please do check her out. Again, the Writing Mastery Academy is at learn.jessicabrody.com. Check out Save the Cat Writes a Novel. Jess, thank you so much for joining us today.
JB: Thank you. This was really fun. The questions were quite stimulating.
MK: Oh, yeah, man—that’s how I roll. I like to bring the good stuff. Well, thank you. My goal is for writers of all kinds to get something out of it. No softballs here! Jess, the pleasure was all mine. Listeners out there, here’s to a good story. Thank you.