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

by Blake Snyder

[inlibrisveritas]

Some of you are probably wondering why I’m reviewing a screenwriting book. Well not only is it November which is NaNoWriMo month but this is also incredibly helpful for those out there who are writers,editors, and agents. I was recommended this by someone in the publishing industry, she felt that it was a great tool to use when looking at a story and seeing if it works as a whole and if it’s capable of selling to both publishers and customers.

My book is full of sticky notes…like it has sticky notes on the sides and then also inside to point out even more things that will be incredibly helpful when I look at manuscripts, especially mine, with a critical eye.

Obviously this deals with movies and screenwriting, but it is broken down in an easy to understand way that you can easily apply it to novel. It was incredibly enlightening to see how similar the two writing practices are and that a lot of the techniques could be applied with ease. I also loved seeing the movie examples which kind of made it easy to see how the techniques are applied. Of course there were things that couldn’t be translated over but I still really enjoyed learning about the movie industry and how screenwriters make a living.

One of the neat things is this helps with the things you don’t really think about while writing, like your ‘logline’ and synopsis. It helps build it in a way that sells the story but doesn’t reveal all the little tricks.It helps you think about the core necessities like what does you character truly want, it reminds you of the importance of showing and not just telling and it gives some great ideas for how you can pre-plan your story. Of course there is a ton more packed into a this thin book.

Overall I’m super happy I bought this one and I plan to use this for my own stories, especially this really cool chart idea for story planning. If you’re looking to polish up your story and get it ready for the world I definitely think it’s worth a look. If you’re a screenwriter then I can definitely say this is a great accessible bit of info that may help you out.