Save The Cat! The Final Ebook on Screenwriting You will Ever Want

Fantastic and informative
This book is an excellent writing reference! I’ve got it filled with highlighting and sticky notes and use it every time I’m plotting or replotting my novel. It was an easy read and filled with a ton of helpful information. It is an effective strategy to help your book deliver the most satisfying experience for your readers. Highly recommend!

My first screenwriting book
As a starter, this book has been very helpful to me. Step-by-step guide with very clear examples. Thank you very much!

Wowza!
This is the oft-cited standard for story-telling. The 15 beats help you keep your story on-track. It’s great for planners/plotters/plantsers. I tried pantsing a story once, and the characters complained to me about having no direction. Thanks to this book, I saved them from endless questing and made the story more concise and engaging.

Filled with useful information, very helpful!
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!

The original Save the Cat is a great place to start when learning how to write scripts. The STC 15 point story outline applies to almost all successful commercial movies.However, what makes the plot structure method really come home is through analyzing movies. The Save the Cat Goes to the Movies book comes with 50 plot breakdowns which teaches you how important and relevant the method truly is. A perfect example of “show don’t tell” teaching.STC an excellent book and can stand alone, but you will get even more out the methods taught by Blake Snyder if you get The original Save the Cat (STC) book is a great place to start when learning how to write scripts. The STC 15 point story outline applies to almost all successful commercial movies.However, what makes the plot structure method really come home is through analyzing movies. The Save the Cat Goes to the Movies book comes with 50 plot breakdowns which teaches you how important and relevant the method truly is. A perfect example of “show don’t tell” teaching.STC goes to movies is an excellent book and can stand alone, but you will get even more out the methods taught by Blake Snyder if you get STC Goes to the Movies as well. The first is the theory, the second is applied theory by example.Note: Blake Snyder sold multiple $1 million dollar scripts in his working career – working with celebrities like Steven Spielberg and Sylvester Stallone.

Your don’t need this