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

I am a screenwriter, and, yes, I actually make a living selling screenplays. If you want to write a screenplay that everyone loves and nobody buys, read something else. However, if you actually want to write a screenplay that earns you money, "Save the Cat" is where you should begin. Is it the last book on screenwriting you'll ever need? Probably. But after you read this book, it's not the last book on screenwriting you'll ever want. That's because Blake's insight and humor will leave you wantting more from this author. It's not that he needs to change any of his advice (he definitely doesn't), but he is apparently taking the lessons taught in "Save the Cat" and showing how they apply to theatrical releases. I can't wait. As for his resume, anyone who knows anything about screenwriting knows it's extremely difficult to sell a screenplay, even more difficult to get a movie made, and nearly impossible to have anything to do with the script once it leaves your hands and lands in the director's paws. Blake's imdb credits might not be your favorite films, but he is one of the few, if not the only, screenwriting authors who have sold anything much less gotten it made. After years of reading virtually every screenwriting book and attending a host of seminars, I can assure you there is nothing better for your career than this book. This is hands down the best book I've ever read on screenwriting. Hell, I even bought the software.

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

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!