Save the Cat!

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…