Save The Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need
Save The Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need
- ISBN13: 9781932907001
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
This ultimate insider’s guide reveals the secrets that none dare admit, told by a show biz veteran who’s proven that you can sell your script if you can save the cat!
Save The Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need
OK, maybe not the last book you’ll ever need, but if you are a screenwriter or play one on TV, this just may be the BEST book you’ll ever need, or read, on the subject of how to break into the big screen big time as a writer of tall tales.
Blake Snyder is a working, selling writer himself, so that gives the reader a true inside glimpse into what it’s like, what it takes, and what to expect on the long road to screenwriting stardom. Many screenwriting how-to tomes are written by guys and gals who have few or no real studio credits, so with this book you can be sure you are getting the info direct from the source of a successful member of the Hollywood elite.
Snyder starts out with a bang, describing how important a good title, pitch and concept are, and giving tons of useful advise for whipping those log lines into shape, the best shape ever in fact, for as the author points out, many industry powerbrokers won’t even look beyond a log line…so it better be good. Damned good. He then discusses how to make your story like everything else out there, only different, and if you can come to understand that paradox, you will be a success indeed.
We also learn about the importance of creating characters that fit certain archetypes, like the hero and the villain, and how the use of Jungian archetypes can help you shape and mold real people that resonate with the audience. Also covered is the importance of knowing your genre and how to best amplify the style of that genre.
Another chapter deals with the author’s own system of breaking a script down to 15 beats, and how every successful movie fits this same beat system. We also learn the art of building scenes and the use of those wonderful index cards for moving and changing scene progression, as well as following the basic rules of a great story, rewriting and reshaping the script, and of course, what the heck to do with the darned thing once you’ve finished. I really appreciated the glossary of screenwriting and industry terminology, something every writer should know (or at least pretend to know in meetings).
Although this book does follow the mold of many other screenwriting books before it, focusing both on writing and marketing the script and including summaries and exercises for the reader to expand their understanding, the difference that makes this book stand out is the honesty and directness of the author in giving the reader every best chance to comprehend and conquer the inner and outer workings of screenwriting. “Save the Cat” (I’ll let you find out what the title means on your own!) doesn’t hold back on doling out the solid advise, and presents it in a way that will not only inspire screenwriters, but also make them more aware of just how hard it really is to succeed. No sugar-coating here, but plenty of motivation and great info packed into one book.
So, “Save the Cat” may not be the final screenwriting book you will ever need, should for some reason the entire industry change and adopt some bizarro new standard of screenwriting that will require you to learn the metric system and Pig-Latin. But barring a drastic reshaping of the industry standard (I think most execs are too lazy to change much of anything), this is no doubt the one book that will do more to help you achieve success and get your two-brad-bound puppy through the door than any other I’ve read so far. And believe me, folks, I’ve read them all.
FADE OUT.
Rating: 5 / 5
Save The Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need
A fast-paced and entertaining read, this book could help you look at your craft in a whole new way.
This is a book that doesn’t get bogged down in rules and formulas. The funny thing about it is that it all feels like common sense… except it’s “common sense” that most of us haven’t thought about before! How do you make a “tough guy” character likeable? How do you paint mental pictures when pitching a script? Practical answers abound in this book.
Blake is a guy who really, seriously walks up to total strangers and says, “Hi. I have an idea for a movie. Can I tell you about it and you tell me what you think of it?” He does this even though he’s already sold million-dollar scripts to Disney and Spielberg. It’s this never-ending quest to learn more about the audience and more about what makes movies work that is so clear in Blake’s book.
He does an excellent job of explaining things in ways that’ll stick in your mind– funny little phrases and lists that are off-beat enough, yet simple enough to remember while you’re plotting out your next script. I felt like I was in the hands of a very capable teacher, and a real pro.
No matter how many (or how few) screenwriting books you’ve read, this one is worth buying. It offers a valuable perspective from a writer who is eager to share, never condescending, and knows his stuff. I give it two thumbs up!
Rating: 5 / 5
Save The Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need
The “Save The Cat!” title refers to a method of presenting your protagonist that draws the reader into the protagonist’s personal story, even if the protagonist isn’t actually very likeable!
It is, simply put, have him do something viewers feel a nice person would do — i.e. “save a cat.”
I just saw a jeans commercial where a bunch of guys go out on a clothesline to save a dog in order to impress some girls. It’s as if the writer of that commercial had just read this book and spoofed it. It works.
The method for finding the correct action to introduce a particular protagonist is explained in spare and direct detail in this book, as is every other point in this book.
And that brings us to the sub-title. It is indeed the LAST book you will need (and you do need it) to create saleable screenplays.
That means it isn’t the first one. This book summarizes and organizes, rearranges emphasis, and illuminates all the myriad other techniques taught in other books.
This book won’t do you any good if you can’t read a novel or watch a movie and identify the protagonist, antagonist, theme, Conflict, climax, resolution, denoument, and trace the plot, differentiating it from the story, and identify sub-plots, B-story, & C-story.
It won’t do you much good if you can’t write a story smoothly incorporating those basic elements, most especially conflict. (not necessarily a script, but a STORY. This book doesn’t teach storycraft.)
You have to master all that storycraft first — including spelling, punctuation and grammar (both common English grammar and script-ese.)
But this book will draw a picture in your mind — give you the image of exactly what it is you are trying to learn from all those other books on crafting a story for the screen, and save you lots of time as it points you to exactly what you must learn.
Once you’ve mastered what all the other books have to teach you, and then you read this book again — WOWWWWW!!!
SAVE THE CAT! is the AHA! book at the end of the learning cycle.
But it’s more than that. This is actually a thumb-reference book, a volume you keep on your desk and refer to over and over as you are laying out the structure of your screenplay from basic concept to blocked scenes.
This slender volume, in ultra-condensed form, delineates most of the criteria that you must meet in order to produce a saleable screenplay.
It’s a checklist reminding you of everything you already know about story telling — but keep forgetting when you write. Keeping it on your desk and referring to it often can cut your production time in half by saving you many mistakes at the conceptual level.
This is the book you will keep after you’ve thrown all the others into the recycle bin or given them to the library.
But this is not the place to start if you haven’t yet learned to turn a story on a clean conflict.
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
Rating: 5 / 5
Save The Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need
After reading all the glowing reviews of this book, I stopped into a bookstore and flipped through a copy tonight. I sat and read for a good 30 minutes or so and got a good feel for what Snyder has to say. You should do the same before buying this if you are thinking of adding to your bookshelf.
First, Snyder does an excellent job of not sugar-coating what Hollywood is all about. He focuses a bit too much on formula — any scriptwriting book that tells you the exact page on which something should happen should be approached with an open mind. However, Snyder is mostly right: this is Hollywood. Like it or not, there are formulas, and low-risk, high-return ventures are the way of the world. A lot of bad scripts get greenlit and make millions. But that doesn’t mean they were any good.
Snyder’s book breaks down what will sell in Hollywood, even listing story beats that should happen within certain page ranges. At least he’s flexible there (unlike Lew Hunter), and Snyder’s writing is breezy and to the point, not bogged down in theory. His principles for writing include lots of hints such as “Turn, turn, turn,” which is his shorthand for keeping the story moving and accelerating. That’s a good, albeit unoriginal tip. I own a couple dozen screenwriting books. I don’t find much new in Snyder’s.
Unfortunately, he seems to have an axe to grind with “arthouse” films such as Memento, to which he dedicates a few pages to bashing. He even includes his e-mail address and a comment daring readers to contact him to debate Memento’s merits. He knocks the film because it had a weak opening weekend and closed early, and he says, “I know how much that film made,” as if all blockbusters are good stories, and a movie that makes no money in box office receipts is somehow his trump card for showing you what a good story is or is not. Any screenwriter or film student or fan can tell you: good stories and box office receipts don’t always meet logically. Memento is an example of this, and Snyder appears to know this. He makes no mention of Memento’s home video receipts, which outstrip its box office by a large margin. Sure, one can pick apart Memento’s fairly weak story (watch it in chronological order using disc two and see for yourself how nonlinear storytelling makes that whole movie work), but people paid to rent and own it anyway. That has merit. Snyder overlooks that completely.
Good for Mr. Snyder for knowing about money and what will sell. He apparently has sold many, but only a couple were made into films, which tells me he’s been living off option money and turnaround purgatory for most of his 20-year career. That certainly is better than me and most other writers, but still nothing to shout from the rooftops.
I wonder why he’s so threatened by films that don’t make that much money. Could it be that “arthouse” films often don’t worry about box office receipts and stay true to film as an art form, and develop a following based on artistic merit and critical acclaim rather than selling out to the lowest common denominator? Memento’s director, Christopher Nolan, went on to direct Batman Begins, so I’d say Snyder’s criticism of Nolan’s work is a bit off, especially considering one of Snyder’s two big screen credits is Blank Check, which he co-wrote.
Snyder’s other title? It jumped out at me. I’ll try to remember the exact phrasing here, for full effect:
“While I was writing the first draft of ‘Stop, Or My Mom Will Shoot’…”
No kidding. The guy wrote (actually, co-wrote) Stop, Or My Mom Will Shoot. Don’t believe me, look him up.
This guy needed help writing Stop, Or My Mom Will Shoot?
Curiously, the back of the book only mentions Blank Check specifically, and omits Stop, Or My Mom Will Shoot. Hmm. I wonder why.
Yeah, okay, it sold, and yeah, it made SOME money on the road to Hollywood flop infamy, and yeah, that’s one more film than I’ve sold in my lifetime, so I have little room to criticize Snyder the screenwriter, but how dare he knock Christopher Nolan, considering his own resume. Snyder’s probably hoping nobody puts this together, because he sort of looks like an overstuffed Hollywood idiot: one who has capitalized on Hollywood’s need for formulaic tripe because that’s what sells more tickets to the masses. That, or one who got away with one of the biggest box office flops in Hollywood history and somehow still has work.
Seriously, if my resume included ‘Stop, Or My Mom Will Shoot,’ I think I’d just hang it up.
Snyder simply confuses “what will sell” with “what is a good story.” His definition makes those two one in the same, and he’s incredibly off base. He may have the receipt figures to “prove” his points, but just because you rooked a million people who walked out unsatisfied and ten dollars short before the critics could warn people doesn’t make your film a success, especially when your film has a strong opening weekend and then word of mouth and critical reviews kill it before the second weekend. Or before the first, as was the case with ‘Stop, Or My Mom Will Shoot.’
If you’re into screenwriting for the money and don’t mind adhering to formula and writing Hollywood cinema, then this is probably a good addition to your library. Snyder openly says this is a book for mainstream cinema writers.
However, if the demands of Hollywood don’t concern you and you write what you love regardless of whether you can market it to Hollywood (independent directors, film students and so on), then this is most certainly NOT a good find, and don’t let the glowing reviews fool you. You might get some use out of it, but it won’t be your primary, and there are plenty of books (anything by Linda Seger, for example) that present this information better, and without all the bashing of little films.
Put simply, Snyder is not interested in storytelling so much as storySELLING. The top grossing films of any year are not always the five nominated for Best Picture. Many of them are derivative, formulaic, and forgettable. Kind of like this book.
I reshelved it and walked out. I hope this helps you, but hey, if you don’t believe me, flip through it yourself.
EDIT 8/22/08: Since I wrote this review, Christopher Nolan has written and directed one of the highest grossing films of all time: The Dark Knight. Blake Snyder has done, well, nothing since Stop or My Mom Will Shoot in 1994 (other than this book).
Comments below are saying I’m bitter. Go ahead and read Snyder’s bitter resentment of Memento and consider how much money Nolan’s films are making now. Then tell me who’s bitter.
Rating: 1 / 5
Save The Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need
Hmm… I’m not quite sure how best to review this book. Was it an enjoyable read? Yes… I read it in one sitting and, by and large, found it entertaining. Was it informative? Sort of… a lot of the information can be found in other screenwriting books, but the author has some interesting spins on much of it (and “Save the Cat” has become part of my vernacular much as “Jump the Shark” did when I first heard that phrase, as in: “That guy that I was crushing on had a ‘save the cat’ moment when he leapt to my defence but he ‘jumped the shark’ when he didn’t tip the waiter on our first date”).
So why only three stars? Mostly to balance the overenthusiastic reviewers who seem to forget (or not care) that the book focuses on Hollywood comedies that won’t strain your brain. If I were only reviewing it for that genre, I would give it four stars. But, in my opinion, the book fell short on the other genres. Hence the measly three.
Rating: 3 / 5
Save The Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need