Save the Cat by Blake Snyder

Saint Fool said:

Hope someone's read this. Searched the forum and got umpteen threads but nothing with the book in the title. (Sue me, I'm lazy today.)

Got this as a Christmas present. I love movies but have no interest in writing a screenplay.

So if I were to ... erm ... regift this to someone, is it a good book? And what level would you put it at - beginner, experienced?

Thanks for any feedback you can give.

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Well -- how do you define an "experienced" screenwriter? I just read it awhile ago out of curiosity and I've been writing professionally for twenty years, so I suppose I would qualify.

Certainly there's nothing in the book that would count as highly technical. Snyder's an entertaining writer. A lot of people like the book. It has some good things to say. I wouldn't take any of it as gospel in terms of what a script *has* to have in it -- but then, I wouldn't take anything that any of these books say as gospel.

I would say that it's well thought of as books of this kind go and would be appropriate for anyone interested in screenwriting, from beginners on (but check to make sure that they don't already have the book, because its pretty popular and its been around for awhile).

NMS

It's a good book for laying out a generalised idea of screenplay mechanics. You could do worse than follow his structural outline for how to write a script but like Neal said, it's certainly not gosepl. It's an entertaining read with some interesting stories about the industry. There's probably something in there to interest a screenwriter at any level of experience.

I post to the Beat Sheet as (just) one essential outlining tool, and sometimes for laughs view his take on Genres and his Laws of Physics.
I'm no million selling spec writer, and I have low tolerance for family comedies so there's just a lack of appetite for the tone he puts forth. But his ideas are quite useful.

Concur with above comments; "Save the Cat" is a quick entertaining read with a few good tips, but it's insubstantial and shallow.

Your friend should read Campbell, Vogler, McKee, and Christopher Booker's "The Seven Basic Plots," among others. Go to the soul of storytelling.