Save The Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need Paperback – May 25, 2005

If you’re wanting to write anything (eg. A book, screenplay, comic, rpg, short film) this book will help! It’s not law, but it will ask you very good questions and help you build a story using an age-old formula that has been effective for years. Immediately improved my comic series I had been working on for 5+ years. Pointed out things I had missed and by including them and changing the order of my story, it immediately improved!It’s short and an overall easy read. The chapters are broken up well, the pages are well organized, and the writing is conversational like you’re being spoken to not spoken at.

I bought this book cause I've had some ideas floating around in my head that I wanted to see if I could perhaps make into a screen play. I have no formal education in screenwriting and the information I do know about writing a movie, I learned from online resources. So for a beginner like me this book was filled with TONS of useful information how I could turn a basic idea in my head into a fully fledged movie script. I was debating on which book to buy to help me get started and bought this one because every online resource I looked at, all of them mentioned this book. Some people bashed it but I think that's cause they're more advanced writers and have their own formula for coming up with the structure for a movie.What I like about this book is that it takes out the guess work for you. It lays out a structured outline for you to follow. Snyder created what he calls the Blake Synder Beat Sheet and literally every movie I could think of follows its formula. He tells you "you should introduce your main character by this page, set the theme of the movie by this page, create a conflict by this page, etc..." Snyder also uses movies as examples, showing how they followed this tempo. He has good ideas on how to create meaningful, 3 dimensional characters and even how to create a B story that helps the main story flow better. I wouldn't have thought of any of this had I not read this book.What I don't like is how Snyder is sometimes a little too "by the numbers" when it comes to writing a script. He literally says the break from act 1 to act 2 HAS to happen on page 25. Not page 24, not page 26 but on page 25. I don't agree with that. While you obviously don't want it to come too early or too soon, I don't see a need for it to happen on exactly page 25 of every single script ever written. He goes to make it sound like the big wigs at studios reading your script will toss it in the garbage if they don't find it on page 25. That's simply not true and I feel like it's forcing people to pace THEIR story at HIS speed.He also goes on to bash other great movies cause they didn't follow HIS pace. This guys claim to fame is writing Disneys "Blank Check" mind you. I don't believe in making others look bad to make yourself look good and that's kind of what he does for a bit in the book. He disses movies like Dantes Peak, Memento, Along Came Polly, etc.. but raves about other mediocre movies like 4 Christmases and miss congeniality cause they followed his cookie cutter methods.So to sum it up, I'm glad I bought this book because I did learn a lot by reading it. I definitely feel more confident in writing my script now and figuring out how to fill in the blanks when I wasn't sure in what direction the story should go in. While I don't think his "by the numbers" method is ideal for every script, it does help me know how to set my own pace for my own movie so I don't get carried away with one act of the story over the other. If your a beginner like me and are looking for a little guidance on how to create a story, this book is a great help!

Anytime someone can write a book and present ideas in a fresh way, then that book is helpful and worth a look. This book is a fast read and entertaining. There's a few ideas in here that I haven't seen expressed in the same way before. The entire concept of saving the cat is not a very new one, but Synder makes a better point out of the concept here. Your hero needs to do something that tells us something about him, okay, got it. Here, Synder gives that theory a name, the Save the Cat scene. His theories are clearly and insightfully expressed and he has a direct friendly way of talking to the reader with a bit of comedy. This all adds up to a quick and fun read.Another thing to keep in mind is that some people are totally against any type of formula writing. If you're one of those writers stay away from this book. Remember that the formula is not to help structure the story itself, rather it's to structure the pacing. Believe it or not movies have a very tried and true structure and if you want to break out of that mold you better just start ramming your head into a brick wall because you have a better chance of busting through that wall than the Hollywood wall with your spec. I once asked a professor about a poem we were studying, how much of the poem was by chance and how much was by design. He frowned and said "nothing, it's all his design."And another thing, remember that your goal as a spec screenplay writer is to get something sold! That's it! Why the hell are you worried about it getting made and people ruining your beautiful work of art? You can do whatever you want to do with my 120 pages AFTER I get my check for half a mil! Can any of you out there really say that M. Night is a good writer? Hell no! But for the millions of people that didn't see the end coming in the Sixth Sense (a movie that had about 6 plot lines, one of which didn't start until act 3!) those are the ones going to see his next opus of crap and that's why his stuff sales. What about Akiva Goldsman? Look up that one on IMDB and you'll be scratching your head. How can anyone survive after Batman and Robin (it's because of what came before BTW)??!! Sell something, then worry about it getting made, then worry about the fact that Synder has only had two movies ever made. He's sold 13!!! 'nuff said! How many Goldsmans (13), Goldmans (30), or Koepps (24) (all those numbers are produced) do you think Hollywood has? After all that go here: [...] and have a laugh about the writers strike.