Customer Reviews

Save The Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need

5 star:		(246)
4 star:		(31)
3 star:		(20)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(17)

 

 

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.

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!

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

This extremely overrated book doesn't deserve the accolades its getting. There's nothing Snyder offers in this book that can't be found elsewhere and better. Snyder spends too much of the book stroking his own ego and bragging up his meager accomplishments -- he wrote Disney's Blank Check! -- and this self-importance imposes itself on all his advice.

I really lost my patience with the book when I reached his section on genre. Rather than discuss genre as most people understand it -- Murder/Mystery, Sci-Fi, Romantic Comedy, etc. -- Snyder creates his own schema and new categories. This encapsulates the whole problem with the book: Snyder devotes far, far too much time to reinventing the wheel, or copying better writers and imposing his own weird theories on their ideas. Vague and unhelpful examples litter the book, with Snyder making off-hand remarks about a bad script he read once in lieu of actual text examples.

Trottier's The Screenwriter's Bible: A Complete Guide to Writing, Formatting, and Selling Your Script and Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting contain all the information in this book, and present it in a clearer, more concise and less treachly manner.

The only "original" idea in the book is found in the title -- the advice to show your protagonist "saving a cat", i.e. doing something kind or good -- is hardly new advice, and is really nothing more than an obvious inversion of Syd Field's advice about"kicking the dog" -- the idea that you can make an audience loathe an antagonist by showing them being cruel to the harmless (i.e. kick a puppy).

There, I just saved you a labored reading of this entirely unnecessary book.

I'm a professional screenwriter, and here's a typical comment I get at parties: "Oh you're a writer? I have this great idea for a movie. All I need is someone to write the dialogue...I'll give you my idea and you write the dialogue and we'll split the money." These sadly misguided people are actually serious about this proposal. These people are the kind for whom "Save The Cat" is meant.

In other words, people who think so little of the art of screenwriting that it's just "an idea and some dialogue" to them. Ideas are cheap and plentiful, it's the execution of the idea that matters. "Save the Cat!" offers no insight into the art of screenwriting, but it is a concise guide to how to write a crappy script. The fact is: the author sold several hack scripts and made money on them. The implied reasoning is "I made money on crappy scripts, so you can, too!" There is no disputing that crappy scripts sell and get made all the time, but you can't build a career on them. And why would you want to? Clearly the author couldn't, either, hence this book and all the other products based on it.

If you haven't looked at his credits, he wrote "Blank Check" and "Stop or My Mom Will Shoot." These movies got 4.2 and 3.4 stars on IMDB. Of course, the writer is not responsible for the final product, but from the way he talks in the book, I'm sure these screenplays were only improved in the production process.

BTW, he had 3 co-writers on those movies, so we don't even know what his contribution to each of them was.

If you are a good writer with actual talent and something to say, you'll benefit from Robert Mckee's "Story." If your aim is much lower, then buy "Save the Cat." The concepts are simple and will propel you well on your way to hack-dom. If you want to write the next "Shakespeare in Love," this book ain't for you. But if you want to write the next Paris Hilton direct-to-DVD movie, the next woman-in-peril Lifetime Movie Channel schlock, or the next Tyler Perry movie, then "Save the Cat" is for you. (BTW, "Shakespeare in Love" has no "save the cat" moment in it. Shakespeare does not do anything to help anyone (or any cat) in the film. "Groundhog Day" has no such moment either -- which is kind of the point of the whole movie. Get the idea? If you want to be original, this ain't your book.)

I fully realize my review may sound snobby, and perhaps it is. To be fair, the types of movies that Blake Snyder's rigid cookie-cutter formula engender certainly have their place in the business. They've been made from the beginning of cinema and continue to be made. And if that's what you're meant to write, then go for it. Just don't expect this book to elevate your idea to anywhere in the realm of art.

It kind of reminds of the one and only class I ever took in filmmaking at UCLA. The teacher was an Oscar-winning producer. When he told the class the story of how he got attached as a producer to a film that won an Oscar, it was clear it was all kind of a fluke and that he personally had nothing to do with the artistic merit of the film. He concluded by saying: "My point is that if a no-talent schmuck like me can win an Oscar and make it in this business, there's no reason why you can't either." I will never forget his brutal honesty. But obviously, his career did not last since there he was teaching an extension course at UCLA. But his honest assessment of the business is oddly comforting.

The simple truth is that there are tons of people in the business with little or no talent who make a living. Seriously. I know -- I've worked with them. "Save the Cat" tells you how to be one of those people. Whether this is a good or bad thing, it's not for me to say.

On the flip side, there are tons of people with oodles of talent who *don't* make it in the business because they never actually finish their screenplay. Or more likely, they finish it but never do the necessary rewrites. So if this book gets you to write and rewrite, then it will have served a good purpose.


P.S. Other wonderful movies with no "Save the Cat" moment: Sunset Boulevard, Pee-Wee's Big Adventure (I don't count him merely feeding his dog), Muriel's Wedding, Barry Lyndon, Bullets Over Broadway, Being John Malkovich, The Man Who Would Be King, True Grit, Election, The Lady Eve, The Purple Rose of Cairo, The Social Network, and of course the highest-grossing movie of all time: Gone With the Wind. And these are only the ones I could think of off the top of my head.

Snyder's book is, as another viewer noted, a guide to screenSELLING. Judging by Snyder's advice and illustrious career (yeah right), it's apparent that he believes in making cheesy, gimmicky family comedies with stupid premises, selling them for millions of dollars and watching the second-week box office nose dive after everybody realizes the movie sucks. That obviously doesn't bother him, because he's made his career on the types of movies that film-lovers roll their eyes at. To be fair, he states many times in the book that his emphasis is on writing family comedies with mass appeal, and the book is by no means directed towards writers of indie and arthouse films.

That being said, there are certainly good kernels of advice in this book, including the importance of structure and pacing of a story, creating a likable and empathetic hero that the majority of people can identify with, etc. However his approach is awfully formulaic and closed minded, and you constantly get the nagging feeling that this guy has built a career on putting awful idea after awful idea over the same exact closed-minded framework, which explains why only two of his movies have actually been made and both have been major flops. He claims he's sold dozens of scripts and millions of dollars doing it. Great, but he's contributed nothing to the art of film and his scripts are obviously passed over on a regular basis after purchase in favor of better films. Everything in this book has been stated before in others, though I commend Snyder for his right-to-the-point writing style which makes Save the Cat a much shorter read than other screenwriting books.

I'm currently trudging through the 'bible' of screenwriting, Story: Substance, Structure, Style and The Principles of Screenwriting, but it's a heavy read with lots of theory before you get to the practice. Ultimately I would recommend Syd Field's books (Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting)as the best marriage of theory, practice, know-how and good advice that can be applied to any writer of any genre, unlike Snyder's book that demonstrates the best way to write and sell forgettable garbage and make a fortune doing it.

Save the Cat may be okay for your first screen writing book, but it definitely should not be your last.

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.

Don't buy this book for its title. It's definitely NOT the last book you'll ever need. Mr. Snyder does have very good ideas and good points to share with us, but if you really want to write a screenplay you'll need more than just this book.

If Blake Snyder had titled this book something other than "The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need" I would have rated this book higher. Unfortunately however, this book doesn't deliver what it promises. It delivers a few priceless concepts on screenwriting, but leaves out a wealth of other simple and practical advice contained in so many other books - advice it seems Mr. Snyder assumes we've heard before.

Having said that, I'm thrilled that I DID buy the book and if need be I'd buy it again just for Mr. Snyder's valuable insight.

The book should've been named "How to take the joy out of screenwriting."

Although Blake Snyder is at the top of the screenwriting industry (he has had two spec scripts that have been made into movies), it is fortunate that he wasn't born during the Renaissance and wound up teaching artists how to precisely paint.

Perhaps everything he states in the book may be the absolute gospel in Hollywood (ala Syd Field/Robert McKee at al), but Blake Snyder believes all screenplays must be severely structured:
- The script must have precisely 40 scenes for some unknown reason
- the theme of the script must be made by page 5
- the catalyst (a life-changing event) must occur precisely on page 12
- the hero finally making the decision to act must be on page 25 (end of act one)
- the B story of a script must begin around page 30
- there must be an identifiable midpoint (exactly on page 55 of a 110-page script) where the hero peaks or the world collapses all around the hero or vice-a-versa
- the hero's "All is lost" scene must be on page 75
- and so on.

True, he reveals previously unknown industry secrets such as all scripts must have a terrific logline, a great title, a likeable hero (thus the title of the book), and must have conflict.

On the plus side, the book is certainly well organized and extremely well written. Is it worth shelling out 3 bucks on E-bay? Check your public library.

This book definitely has some usable information, and its breezy tone makes for easy reading, but it's by no means the last book on screenwriting you'll ever need. Blake Snyder has certainly made money in the industry -- good for him -- and if that's all you're looking to do, then this is the perfect book for you. Not to say that I wouldn't love to make a living in this industry, but -- call me a naive idealist -- I'd rather do it by having a really good movie made out of my screenplay than by selling a formulaic spec script that never even gets made.

Don't get me wrong, I am no elitist who eschews the Hollywood formula; it has its merits and its uses. I've enjoyed many a formulaic movie and have no problem using those formulas when they work for me. However, I'd much rather have a movie like "Memento" to my credit than "Miss Congeniality"... even though, as Snyder points out, "Miss Congeniality" grossed far more at the box office.

The bottom line? If you're like me, writing something a little outside the mainstream, I do actually recommend this book (albeit with a little hesitation): his "rules" might inspire some ideas and, among other things, his breakdown of the beat sheet is useful (but be warned that you may find yourself a little annoyed at times). If you're a little more mainstream than me and want to write a Hollywood blockbuster, then I HIGHLY recommend this book for you; in your case, it may well be the last book on screenwriting you'll ever need. HOWEVER, if you have no intention of going the Hollywood route, or if you think that the Hollywood formula is cheesy, tired and/or a total sell out, I suggest that you avoid this book... you'll just end up throwing it against the wall with great force.

P.S. For those reviewers who seem to think that people who want to write indie or artsy films must be arrogant and/or not serious about writing a salable script, I have to wonder what you think about film festivals like Cannes and Sundance. (Just file that under "Things that make you go hmmm...")