Save the Cat! Goes to the Movies: The Screenwriter's Guide to Every Story Ever Told [Paperback]

If Save The Cat: The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need is your main weapon in testing concept, building your screenplay, or pitching, then this book is your sidearm. I take both books with me everywhere I go.

Like his original book, this is a very fast, entertaining, and insightful read. Most importantly, it is inspiring because it reveals that anyone can apply this technique very easily to their projects or other's. There are many A HA moments in this book.

If you were unclear about the Blake Snyder Beat Sheet (BSBS), Blake shows you how he analyzes many classic, popular, and intriguing films within his genre/structural framework. Blake defines genre as a grouping of stories that share similar patterns and characters. By the time you finish both these books, you will be surprised how easily his method works with almost any film. Instead of merely saying, these are horror movies, he says they are Monster In The House movies, and then goes on to give you some baseline criteria to figure out if you are writing one. You think you're just writing a romantic comedy, but according to Blake you're actually writing a Buddy Love or Golden Fleece. He continues this method of analysis across 10 of his own genre definitions and 50 movies.

Finally, his website www.blakesnyder.com is a wealth of free information, resources, and links to other helpful websites. I also highly suggest taking one of his courses, or seeing him speak. Not only is Blake a kind, generous, and thoughtful teacher, but his energy and enthusiasm is downright infectious. He's also really tall.

Blake's 15 Beats: Opening Image, Theme Stated, Set-Up, Catalyst, Debate, Break into 2, Fun and Games, B-Story, Midpoint, Bad Guys Close In, All Is Lost, Dark Night of the Soul, Break into 3, Finale, Closing Image

Blake's 10 Genres: Monster in the House, Golden Fleece, Out of the Bottle, Dude with a Problem, Rites of Passage, Buddy Love, Whydunit, Fool Triumphant, Institutionalized, Superhero

50 films broken down beat-for-beat: Alien, Fatal Attraction, Scream, The Ring, Saw, The Bad News Bears, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Saving Private Ryan, Ocean's 11, Maria Full of Grace, Freaky Friday, Cocoon, The Nutty Professor, What Women Want, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, 3 Days of the Condor, Die Hard, Sleeping With The Enemy, Deep Impact, Open Water, 10, Kramer vs. Kramer, Ordinary People, 28 Days, Napoleon Dynamite, The Black Stallion, Lethal Weapon, When Harry Met Sally..., Titanic, Brokeback Mountain, All The President's Men, Blade Runner, Fargo, Mystic River, Brick, Being There, Tootsie, Forrest Gump, Legally Blonde, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, M.A.S.H., Do The Right Thing, Office Space, Training Day, Crash, Raging Bull, The Lion King, The Matrix, Gladiator, Spider Man 2

I still stand by what I said in my review of Save The Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need

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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. STC! summarizes and organizes, rearranges emphasis, and illuminates all the myriad other techniques taught in other books.
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STCGoes To The Movies is actually more a prequel to STC!, or maybe a Teacher's Handbook or as another review states a "Companion Book." Other reviews have described the contents of this book, but perhaps not explained the unique lessons to be learned by writers.

STCGTTM does the homework assignments of STC! for you. Blake walks you through the "Beats" from his beat sheet, or paradigm, for "The Great Classic Film" by breaking down dozens of famous movies and naming many others where you'll find the same form.

You'd think that doing the homework for you would be cheating, but it's more like the answers in the back of your math textbook -- it shows you when you've made a mistake but lets you correct that mistake yourself and thus become strong in problem solving.

Snyder uses movies you're familiar with -- but the beginning writer, and even many experienced published writers, would be tongue tied at trying to describe them. Even using Snyder's Beat Sheet (a list of points in a film script), a writer would make errors in identifying the beats from only viewing a film.

Do a couple yourself. Watch a DVD of an award winning blockbuster. Write down the content of the 14 pivotal moments in the film. Compare what you "see" with what Snyder sees when watching that film. Try comparing "Alien" and "Jaws" -- then read this book.

Snyder shows (without telling) what the producer's eye sees when reading a script. For a screenwriter, the producer is the "market."

The writer has to convince the producer that THIS story told THIS way will reach an audience big enough to cover the cost of making the film, and then some.

This isn't a book about the inventive, cutting edge of what's possible with the film medium. This is a book about how to reach BIG audiences with your favorite story.

But how can you learn to do that from reading beat-by-beat breakdowns of movies you've seen a dozen times?

Have you read the book Writing the Killer Treatment: Selling Your Story Without a Script? That will convince you that you must master the art of the Treatment to make a living at scriptwriting.

Any number of textbooks and courses insist that you must start writing your script by creating an original High Concept, a short sentence that gives the reader a vision of the whole movie as something familiar.

Those same courses insist that you start with an outline evolved out of a 1 paragraph description, expanded to 1 page, and then to perhaps 5 pages, maybe 10 as a Treatment. The Treatment is the key to the writing of the successful script.

Those 1 sentence, paragraph and page descriptions are to become your sales materials for the script -- that's what agents and production companies want to see in a query. They have to be polished, perfect and what they promise must be fulfilled in the script.

I have read a number of textbooks that say you must do the Concept, Logline, and Treatment, before writing the script.

I've seen formulas for what to include, how to structure the sentences, and how to choose what to highlight.

But never before Save The Cat Goes To The Movies have I found a book that actually explains HOW to use your writer-type brain and imagination to construct a High Concept or HOW to take a story idea and state it as a High Concept from which a Producer would visualize a complete movie that would be profitable to make.

Blake Snyder is a writer. He thinks like a professional writer. And he conveys that style of thinking in this book.

Snyder has constructed a writer's manual for creating the marketing materials (concept, logline, paragraph, and Treatment) that will sell your project. But very few readers will understand it that way.

This book looks like homework assignments. But actually it's mental training -- brain spraining mental training -- for hurling your ideas into "Theaters Everywhere!"

For each of the "Genres" of story Snyder has identified, he gives you the key variables, the moving parts of the Concept and Logline statements. Not the statements themselves, the ones that sold these film scripts -- but the mechanism for generating those statements.

Then he articulates the emotional payload the Genre delivers (which defines for a Producer what audience the film will draw in.)

Find the story inside you that fits one of these 10 paradigms and you will have an "Opens Everywhere" film.

But while you are writing your script, keep STC! at your elbow as a reference book. STC! is the roadmap through writing your script, and is indeed the LAST book you need. Before that, you need STCGoes To The Movies to construct the Concept, Logline, and precise beats before you start to write.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Proof, it's a beautiful thing.

Many reviewers of the original Save The Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need pilloried Snyder for advocating formulaic movies with his Beat Sheet (BS2). With this new book, he seems to have shown that formulaic screenwriting does not exactly result from using his "system".

With such a diverse group of movies as contained in this book, I hope those critics will finally understand that any particular screenplay structure system is not the important thing. What is important is to have a logical structure, and Snyder's just as good as any other, regardless of the hype.

Good on you, Blake!

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