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

Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting That You’ll Ever Need, published in 2005, is the best-selling book about screenwriting. Snyder, a successful Hollywood screenwriter, consultant, and author, wrote the nonfiction craft book to help would-be screenwriters develop and structure their movie ideas in order to achieve box office success. The title comes from his shorthand description of a scene that should aim to make the audience view the protagonist as likeable, an important element for success. By analyzing the deeper story archetypes and pacing the “beats” of the film, Snyder offers a formula for creating and packaging a film idea that is quickly understandable to studio executives and resonant with a broad base of moviegoers.

This study guide refers to the 2005 Michael Wiese Productions edition.

Summary

From the outset, Snyder asserts that Save the Cat! differs from other books on screenwriting in its use and explanation of the language and business of movie-making, its author’s credentials in the field, and its focus on what makes money. He contends that unless a movie can connect with viewers’ emotions, it will fail, either in sales or in getting made in the first place.

The first step Snyder delineates in writing a sellable movie script is crafting an effective logline. A logline is the one- or two-sentence explanation of what the movie is about. The logline should have an element of irony in it, suggesting the conflict; describe the protagonists and antagonists; and allow someone to “see” a mental image of the film. The logline is the pitch that either loses or captures the attention of not only potential moviegoers but also agents and studio executives.

The next issue screenwriters must address is what kind of story they are writing. Snyder finds terms such as “romantic comedy” to be too general to be useful. Instead, he looks at the older archetypes that underpin all storytelling, though he gives each archetype his own name: “Monster in the House,” “Golden Fleece,” “Out of the Bottle,” “Dude with a Problem,” “Rites of Passage,” “Buddy Love,” “Whydunit,” “The Fool Triumphant,” “Institutionalized,” and “Superhero” (25-26). Snyder emphasizes the need for writers to understand the genre in which they hope to write in order to avoid cliché yet touch on a recognizable, “primal” instinct in people.

All of the successful movies that Snyder discusses have a likeable protagonist, even if that character is an anti-hero. The hero serves as the audience’s entry point to the story, humanizing the events that unfold—even if the hero isn’t human. According to the author, the hero is the character who changes the most over the course of the story and for whom the actions in the plot hold the highest stakes. Those stakes should be based on a primal instinct or urge, such as protecting one’s family or finding love. These primal stakes make the movie not only understandable but also relatable.

Once the basic premise and the protagonist are determined, it is time to build the structure of the script. For this process, Snyder has created “The Blake Snyder Beat Sheet” (70), called BS2 for short, as a board for envisioning the story of an approximately 110-page script. The story is divided into three acts, with Act 2 having two distinct sections before and after the midpoint. The entire story is bookended by an opening image and a final image, which together show the progress the protagonist has made on their journey. Snyder suggests making an actual board with four equally sized horizontal rows (one for Acts 1 and 3, two for the two halves of Act 2) to better visualize the balance of the action and see where the turns and holes are in the story. He also recommends writers limiting themselves to 40 notecards for the entire film, with a minimum of nine cards per line. Each card represents a scene, and at the bottom of each card, writers should indicate the conflict and how the emotions of the characters change in that scene. This notation can help writers see whether a scene is unnecessary or too flat.

Snyder then turns to the “Immutable Laws of Screenplay Physics” (119), which are the principles of storytelling in film by which the author stands. “Save the Cat” is one such law, its purpose being to ensure that the audience cares for the protagonist and, as a result, wants to enjoy the story. “The Pope in the Pool” is a law governing how to avoid getting bogged down in exposition (123). Other laws similarly deal with things to avoid, such as having too many distinct supernatural elements in one story, taking too long to set up the background and premise, or piling too many ideas onto one concept. The “Watch Out for That Glacier!” rule advises writers to make the villains or the threat be imminent and closing in quickly, thus improving the pacing and raising the stakes (132). The importance of the characters’ arcs is addressed in “The Covenant of the Arc,” wherein Snyder states that the protagonists must change over the course of the story, while the antagonists do not (134). A more specific “law” is to keep the media out of the story unless the story is specifically about the press. Based on advice Snyder received from Steven Spielberg, this principle keeps the spotlight on the characters (the family in E.T., for example) instead of taking the viewers outside of the action to contemplate what else is going on in the world. These “laws” are similar to other problems that may arise in a screenplay, which Snyder describes along with remedies to fix them. The issues addressed also include an inactive or unimpressive hero or nondescript secondary characters and dialogue that’s ineffective or serving as a stand-in for plot to compensate for slow pacing and low intensity. Snyder reminds readers to keep asking themselves if their script is “primal” and keep working until it is.

Finally, Snyder addresses the business side of being a successful screenwriter. While some aspects of the advice may be slightly outdated (the book was first published in 2005), the overall message is that writers need to network, even if that means relocating to Los Angeles. Having contacts, especially in-person connections, is key. He ends with a mantra of sorts: “It is what it is” (179). The phrase, for Snyder, is a reminder that fate plays a significant role in the movie industry, and as long as the writer has done their best, they do not control the outcome.