So, I've read Save the Cat, and am here reporting back.
First off, wow, it helped. But it also threw up even more questions that right now I can't answer.
I had several 'aha' moments as I read, and made some simple changes that make a huge difference with my MG rewrite. For example, because I'm changing the MC to a boy, I realized that the 'All is Lost' part was not lost enough. The skateboard needed to be trashed. Literally. For a girl, the potential of a trashed skateboard and a hurt sibling was easily enough. But for a boy MC, the board had to be top-of-the line, and it had to be trashed, until the wheels span around and fell off.
However, I'm now looking at my board wondering if the exactness of the Save a Cat beat sheet is necessary for a novel. Blake Snyder is very clear, when, for a screenplay, something has to happen on page 25, for example, it can't be page 23 or 27, it has to be exactly on page 25. So, when my 'fun and games' section goes on, proportionally, longer than he recommends, do I cut some out, I wonder, or is it only important to be so exact with a screenplay, which is going to last a specific number of minutes?
It is interesting looking at where my plot fits the beat sheet, and where it doesn't. I can make some simple tweaks to make it fit in some places, and I've already made some simple additions and alterations that I think improve it, but then toward the end I can't see a correlation for a while, until the final chapter.
So, now I'm brain-dead. Part of me wants to start afresh and storyboard my plot into his beat sheet and see if I can re-create the story that way, and part of me wants to shut Save the Cat and forget it, at least for a while, as I work on the manuscript.
I am sold, however. For future projects, I am going to work out plot using the beat sheet before I ever start writing.
But for this project, I just don't know right now. I really do recommend checking the book out though. I will watch movies in future and be checking off against the sheet. I will also read MG with this in mind now, to see if the same principles really do apply to older MG. It will be interesting to see.