Kieran Kramer Saves the Cat… and So Much More 

Our thanks to guest blogger Kieran Kramer, the author of the funny Regency-set historical series called The Impossible Bachelors. Kieran, a former CIA employee, journalist, and English teacher, lives in the Lowcountry of South Carolina with her family. One of seven children, for 40 years she’s been singing Beatles, Eagles, and Billy Joel harmonies when her musically-inclined family gets together and holds jam sessions, is a huge fan of all zany movies (especially Spinal Tap and Billy Madison), and is a devoted viewer of The Office. Her insightful and inspirational words follow the cover of her upcoming novel below.

Whimsical.

That’s me.

For most kids, it’s a negative—heck, for most grown-ups, too, at least here in America, where fitting in is a way of life. It wasn’t until I became a writer that my unique take on things became a positive.

Although it was still kind of a negative. How could I get a contract when I was so capricious I couldn’t stick with one plot? When ideas were multiplying faster than kids around a freshly cut watermelon, and every one of those ideas looked like it had potential?

At least I come by my whimsy honestly.

In the final countdown round of Family Feud, which my family appeared on in 1982, Richard Dawson asked my mother, Rosanne, to name an unpopular spectator sport. Mom said, “Backgammon.”

(FYI: wrestling and bullfighting were the top two answers.)

Oh, well.

There went the $5,000 we’d been hoping to win. But the audience and Richard loved that answer. Oh, boy, did they love it!     I’ll never forget when Howard, the harried Hollywood TV producer, came running over at the commercial break, looking half-exhilarated and half-horrified.

“Rosanne,” he said with a mixture of wonder, affection, and pity, “your answers are so… whimsical.”

Oh, yes. We knew what he meant. Whimsical is not what you want to be if your aim is to win a pot of money on national television.

But Howard was clearly glad Mom was on the show. Let’s face it: she was good TV. How many Family Feud watchers talked about her crazy answer that night at the dinner table? How many were going to tune in the next day to see what other zany sound bites she’d come up with?

Probably lots.

Well, the same way my mother was good TV, I wanted to be good writing. But I wanted to be good writing that wins the countdown round, too.

I wanted to write stories that sell.

But I didn’t. I was writing manuscripts that shouted, “Backgammon!” (which isn’t possible, but you know what I mean).

People looked, but no one showed me the money. I wasn’t sure what to do next, until I read SAVE THE CAT!

SAVE THE CAT! saved my dream. It helped guide my whimsy in a marketable direction.

It’s a huge reason why I got my four-book contract with St. Martin’s Press. Of course, I have to give tons of credit to my amazing agent, Jenny Bent, and my sterling editor, Jennifer Enderlin. But the truth is, without Blake’s guidance in the story department, I think I might still be unpublished today.

Blake knew — and got a big kick out of the fact — that all writers are blessed and cursed with some degree of whimsy. It’s that seething creative energy inside us that rockets around our psyches and almost dares us to grab a hold of it — kind of like a fly in the window blinds. (My cats, Benny and Joon, will stare enrapt at a buzzing fly in the window blinds for hours.)

Most of the time, poor Benny and Joon never trap buzzing insects. And for most writers, the perfect plot points — which serve the truth we’re trying to portray in our stories — elude us on a regular basis as well.

But Blake’s take on story structure in SAVE THE CAT! illuminates truth’s hiding places, lending swiftness and precision to our attempts to capture the shimmering, painful, ugly, funny and/or glorious — to make our stories a thrumming something that other people want to read or see on the silver screen.

With SAVE THE CAT!, Blake turns a writer’s fear of the unpredictable nature of creativity into a predatory excitement, into confidence that truth can be caught.

It will be caught.

And when we do, two things will happen: it’s gonna be fun —and it’s gonna be good!

I re-read CAT!, CAT! GOES TO THE MOVIES, and now CAT! STRIKES BACK, all the time when I’m stuck on a plot point, and they still help pry me loose from whatever rut I’m in. I ask myself CAT! questions constantly as I use the BS2, work the Board, and write my drafts. These questions are second-nature to me now.

Here are just a few: What’s this story about? Seems obvious to ask, but how many of us do? To help answer that, I mull over a possible movie poster (even though I’m writing novels, I find this activity really helpful to capture the gist and tone of a story idea). I ask myself tons of other questions, too. Where’s my whiff of death? Who are my upside-down characters of Act Two? What’s the midpoint, and is it going to be a false defeat or a false victory? What’s the All Is Lost moment? Is my story spine sturdy and straight? Is my Act Three a synthesis of the worlds of Acts One and Two?

These questions, of course, are only a few from the writer’s tool belt Blake gave us to help us hone our craft. I use them all and learn more about myself as a writer every day.

But even more than re-reading Blake’s books for plot help when I’m stuck, I read them because it feels good to have someone in our corner, someone who’s been there, struggling, someone who celebrates our writing lives with us, who says we’re okay. Blake’s words give me faith that my whimsical nature contains something important and real and true. Yes, the stories will change with each book, but not the basic message, which Blake understood better than most: life is one great big, messy, grand adventure.

Jump in and live it!

With the help of more than a few deft tricks up my sleeve from SAVE THE CAT!, I’m doing just that. I’m writing whimsical books that I hope will inspire my readers to see the wondrous potential in each and every one of us to live amazing lives — to create our own stories.

Spreading that message, I believe, is the essence of the storyteller’s role.

Learn more about Kieran at www.kierankramerbooks.com!

Check out our other novel-writing blog posts.

Jessica Brody will consult on your novel and analyze your beat sheet according to the Save the Cat!® principles. Learn More>>