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

Entertaining reading. Those who know screen writing best swear that this is the definitive book. Examples are a big outdated, 2005, but the concepts presented are easy to understand and very informative. After reading this, I enjoy watching movies more and feel that I understand plot lines better.

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!

This is a very good book on the craft of writing scripts that get sold, and if that is your aim (and what screenwriter doesn't want to sell a script?) this is an important book to read. Blake Snyder knows the territory. He makes a very good living selling scripts and has created a user-friendly guide to the process that has worked for him. I have read most of the other "classics" in the field, and this is very likely the best if what you want is both a clarification of the mindset of those who buy screenplays and a set of reliable strategies for appealing to them. Even if you never plan to write a screenplay, I would recommend this for someone who is interested in how Hollywood works.While the book is very well written -- Mr. Snyder knows how to make his point both clearly and cleverly -- I had an uneasy feeling while I was reading it. He illustrates his points with some very exceptional (and some not so stellar but reasonably successful) films, and I believe he convincingly shows that some of the best Hollywood films are in line with the strategies he suggests. At the same time, nothing he writes begins to suggest what the difference is between the very best films and the generic and forgettable films that "work" but have nothing special to recommend them (I guess that is what I mean by describing them here as the product of "hacks"). The criterion he continually points to is just that the films he admires were in fact sold and recuperated their investment. That is no small accomplishment, and Blake is to be congratulated for having written two films (and some smaller projects, including so-far unproduced films) that appear to fit this bill -- and especially for making clear that there are some more or less reliable guidelines to getting there. Still, as everyone knows (and this is what lies behind the usual critiques of Hollywood type films) there are a lot of films that do get made and even make money that will nevertheless be forgotten very quickly, and will never win awards or the admiration of critics. This book is not aimed to do anything more than help you in creating the latter. Blake Snyder's own films, while certainly evidence of craft and skill, are obvious examples: I can't believe that "Stop or My Momma Will Shoot!" or "Blank Check" will ever be on anyone's top 100 films list, or will ever stand out as films that were "worth" making apart from the fact that they earned back their investments.A lot of reviews are written here by people who have attended Mr. Snyder's seminars, and who obviously like him. He does seem like a charismatic (even if a bit self-important) man from the way he writes, and you certainly can learn a lot from his book. After reading this book, though, I would strongly recommend honing the strategies he outlines by watching the very best Hollywood films in the genres you choose to write in, films that are both "successful" and admired. What you will find is that while they usually do fit the strategies he encourages, there is usually much in them that a studio executive would not likely have embraced willingly and yet somehow is the special thing that makes the film stand out. In addition, it would be well worth your while watching the very best films made outside the Hollywood tradition (films from the Criterion collection of dvds would not be a bad place to start), many of which deliberately eschew the kinds of strategies Snyder suggests and yet have stood the test of time and stand as enduring examples of the power of the cinema (-- Snyder acknowledges that there are critically acclaimed films that don't fit the mold -- he uses Memento as his example -- but thinks he clinches the point about the value of his methods when he reminds us that these films rarely make as much money as more mainstream fare; he misses the point that while Memento was no cash cow, it will continue to be watched twenty years from now, and it did recuperate its costs and did fairly well for an indie; and introduced the world to a talented director who has since gone on to create extremely successful commercial films that are much less generic than most mainstream Hollywood fare). While Blake Snyder's book may well be the last book on screenwriting that you really need (since what all of us aspiring writiers really need is just to write and rewrite and get rejected and reflect on what went wrong and get advice from writers we admire and keep writing), still the guidelines he offers are only a starting point for understanding and creating unforgettable films that are worth making and that the world really needs.