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Save The Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need |  | Author: Blake Snyder
Publisher: Michael Wiese Productions
Category: Book
List Price: $19.95
Buy New: $12.66
as of 7/31/2010 07:05 MDT details
You Save: $7.29 (37%)
New (27) Used (19) from $12.66
Seller: BooKnackrh
Rating:  273 reviews
Sales Rank: 907
Media: Paperback
Edition: illustrated edition
Pages: 195
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 5.7 x 0.2
ISBN: 1932907009
Dewey Decimal Number: 808.23
EAN: 9781932907001
ASIN: 1932907009
Publication Date: May 25, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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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!
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 273
 Marie Jones, AbsoluteWrite.com book reviewer, states: June 19, 2005
Rev. Marie (Rev. Marie Jones)
144 out of 160 found this review helpful
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.
Unbeatable August 25, 2005
Jenna Glatzer (NY, United States)
109 out of 127 found this review helpful
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!
Aptly titled and Aptly Subtitled October 11, 2006
Jacqueline Lichtenberg (Arizona)
59 out of 67 found this review helpful
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
 The Last Book on Screenwriting You Should Ever Buy January 23, 2010
J. Gallino (NJ, USA)
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
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.
 Criminally Overrated February 1, 2009
M. K. Adams (Seattle, WA)
21 out of 25 found this review helpful
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.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 273
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