Snapshot Book Review: Save the Cat!

Save the Cat!: The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need by Blake Snyder
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Loved this book! The only drawback is, well, I'm not a screenwriter. But I read this book at the behest of a friend who told me it would help me devise a strategy for working out plots, and it definitely fulfilled that promise.

My favorite aspect of this book was its tone: it reminded me of a coach giving tough-love instruction to his or her athlete. The message--over and over again--is, essentially, "You don't want to do this tedious, agonizing, impossibly hard bit of work? Well suck it up, because it's the only way to get the results that you want. So here's what you've got to do." Snyder's writing style is chatty yet informative. He offers personal experiences and notes from other writers and producers in the industry to exemplify why certain things work or don't work. Yes, at times he gets a tad repetitive, but in a how-to book, you pretty much have to be repetitive to ensure that your point sinks in. So I'll forgive that minor annoyance.

I'm excited to try some of the strategies. Now, if only someone would write this book, exactly the same, only different . . . for novel writers!

View all my reviews