C.J. Wolfe lives in the vibrant New Orleans area where there isn’t a bad restaurant, music plays on the streets, and creativity is a way of life. She writes the kind of stories she’d like to see on the big screen. Her most current project is a series of thrillers starring boxer Stephanie Renaldo. C.J. holds a B.A. in English and has worked in marketing for most of her career, but her first love will always be fiction. She believes novelists can strengthen their command of the craft by studying what works in other media, such as movies and stage plays.
When she isn’t reading, writing, or over-analyzing movie plots, C.J. enjoys kayaking and fly fishing with her husband, gardening, and baking bread.
My Philosophy on Writing
From a craft perspective, I love Donald Maass’ The Fire in Fiction. His techniques are brilliant – particularly his concept of micro-tension, the key to creating a “page-turner.” Best of all, he illustrates every writing technique with examples from successful novels in a variety of genres.
When it comes to structure, I follow the Blake Snyder Beat Sheet method from the book Save the Cat. Blake’s fifteen story beats resonate with me in a way no other method of plotting ever has. They have successfully converted me from a “pantser” to an ardent “plotter.” Discovering this method of outlining a story has made me realize I never enjoyed the meandering process of writing “by the seat of my pants”; I simply lacked a method of plotting that made sense to me.
Overall, my philosophy on writing aligns most closely with what Blake Snyder teaches in Save the Cat: a good story is about transformation. As Blake puts it in Save the Cat Strikes Back, you can have all the flashy action sequences in the world, but if there’s no transformation, the viewer or reader will be left with a sense that they didn’t go anywhere. They’ll even question why they took this journey with the character in the first place. The stories that most resonate with us are the stories where the protagonist changes.
Therefore, character transformation is at the heart of every story I tell. It is my compass, guiding me through the wilds of plotting whenever I get lost in the details. My promise to my readers is that you will never come away from my stories feeling like you didn’t “go anywhere.” You’ll be able to trace the transformation journey of the protagonist, start to finish, and come out the other side with a sense of catharsis and growth. This is why we read – and why I write.
C.J. Wolfe 
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