Reading through Save the Cat! The Only Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need and working through some of the ideas Blake Snyder expounds has been a real eye opener as to how much I still need to work at my screenwriting.

The biggest thing I’ve learnt is how concise you have to be. Blake specifically states that certain things should happen on certain pages, for example the theme of the film should be expounded on page 5. I went back through my last effort and realised there was an awful lot of fluff that needed to be trimmed down before I could do that.

Now whether you take Blake’s word as gospel or not, I’d still agree that the audience, however subconscious, does expect certain things at certain times to ‘tick the right boxes’ that helps them decide whether they are watching a decent movie or not.

Getting to that stage is even more tricky that I’d realised.

The other important thing I’ve learnt is how much I don’t have the second half of my stories mapped out properly, even though I think I do, especially after doing all the Dramatica analysis. The big thing I’ve got to get my head round is the difference between action and idea, or more specifically cause and effect.

I tend to think more about the effect, without really focusing on what action actually causes it. For example I might be focusing on a specific set of dramatica themes for the main character and end up writing, ‘the main character ends up in trouble.’ It solves the immediate problem of what happens in relation to the themes, but because I’m a lazy git I tend to overlook the actual mechanics of how he or she ends up in trouble, hoping that it will I’ll fix it when it comes to writing.

So I’ll end up with a treatment that describes the outcomes of events without nearly enough detail about how these events actually occur. I’ve noticed that these more nebulous descriptions tend to appear towards the end of the story, when I’m less clear on what should be happening. So I’ll start writing the main script and go great guns, then realise that the map has suddenly become vague and foggy and I don’t actually know what is the ‘hee’ is happening, only that something should.

So it’s no surprise that I run out of steam. Blake’s beat sheet system is designed to avoid these arbitrary ideas from slipping through into the treatment, and force you to focus on real actions with decent conflict that will be entertaining to watch and move the story forward consistently and keep the audience entertained. It’s a lot more hard work in the plotting stage, but I suspect, a worthwhile endeavor.

Save the Cat! is a good read (though the relaxed conversational tone does grate with my up tight British sensibilities at times). Even if you don’t agree with all of it, it should still challenge you to write tighter, audience focussed screenplays. I’d recommend it to anyone.

Interestingly, I’ve also been catching up on a few of Terry Pratchett’s books (Going Postal and The Wee Free Men), and it’s patently clear that he uses a very similar structure to the one suggested by Blake…

I realised that I’ve negelected to push House of Donn out to many film festivals since I started on Greetings. I did send it to the British Council late last year, but they sent it back last week saying they felt it wasn’t suitable for any of the festivals they submit to (which is most of the type I’d been focussing on).

I figured, why bother with Film Festivals, why not let everyone see it. It’s why you made the damn thing…

So, Ladies and Gentlemen, I’m very proud to present… House of Donn

I’ve just hit the midpoint of Greetings, which feels very good. I’d hoped to hit it over the weekend, but the last sequence is quite critical and has taken me a while to get it to a point that I was happy with. Now I can start to look forward to the light at the end of the tunnel. The rest of the film is less dialogue heavy and more action oriented (and because they started run out of time, there’s less takes to plough through and double check for better audio!).

I’ve also made some decent progress on my new screenplay idea. The working title is ‘The Jesus Box’ (though I’m not sold on that yet) and it’s kind of Shaun of the Dead meets Dogma. It’s about a sceptical scientist whose experiments in quantum physics have some unusual repercussions and he finds the Biblical end of the world starting to happen around him.

I’ve been working through Blake Snyder’s ‘Save The Cat’ which I must say is very, very good. And his Beat Sheet system dovetails nicely in with Dramatica, which is very cool. So I’m going to spend much more time with this one beating it out before I rush into writing proper (which I always say I’ll do, and then don’t).