BJ Markel first worked with Blake Snyder in 1986. He edited Blake's three Save the Cat! books and co-founded Blake Snyder Enterprises, LLC with Blake in 2005. In his other life, BJ worked in video acquisitions and entertainment marketing, including 20 years at the Walt Disney Company.
3 Comments
Mike Rinaldi
And as it should be.
A lot of screenwriting students struggle a bit with Story (not a bad book; it’s a good book, just a challenging read for some). One of the great things about Save the Cat! is Blake makes complex ideas simpler to understand. I recommend to students they read STC first as it will provide a framework that makes it easier to process other books/lessons. Screenwriters should be succinct, so it’s ironic that Blake is one of the few who is succinct at communicating his own ideas.
Save the Cat! by Blake Snyder is worth its weight in gold for all aspiring screenwriters and novelists. Although he designed it for movie scripts, the disciplined approach to planning your plotline (or “elevator speech”), inserting the right dramatic events by using the Beat Sheet, and finally by using the Board to plot out each and every one of the necessary scenes, gives writers a magnificent tool for constructing scripts or novels which grab the reader’s attention, keep a grip on the reader, turn the story into a compulsive page-turner, and reward the reader by delivering on the promise in the climax.
If you really want to improve your writing, spend the modest sum to buy this book, lock yourself in your study with a Do Not Disturb sign on the door handle, put the coffee on, curl up on the sofa with some colored pencils, and then dive into it. Read it fast the first time, then circle back and read each and every chapter two or three times.
You will be amazed by how much you will learn by doing this. These few hours will jump start a new writing career for you, fill you with hope, give you the tools to intelligently analyse any other writer’s novels you read, and break down each and every movie you watch with a keen, incisive analytica framework.
And as it should be.
A lot of screenwriting students struggle a bit with Story (not a bad book; it’s a good book, just a challenging read for some). One of the great things about Save the Cat! is Blake makes complex ideas simpler to understand. I recommend to students they read STC first as it will provide a framework that makes it easier to process other books/lessons. Screenwriters should be succinct, so it’s ironic that Blake is one of the few who is succinct at communicating his own ideas.
Save the Cat! by Blake Snyder is worth its weight in gold for all aspiring screenwriters and novelists. Although he designed it for movie scripts, the disciplined approach to planning your plotline (or “elevator speech”), inserting the right dramatic events by using the Beat Sheet, and finally by using the Board to plot out each and every one of the necessary scenes, gives writers a magnificent tool for constructing scripts or novels which grab the reader’s attention, keep a grip on the reader, turn the story into a compulsive page-turner, and reward the reader by delivering on the promise in the climax.
If you really want to improve your writing, spend the modest sum to buy this book, lock yourself in your study with a Do Not Disturb sign on the door handle, put the coffee on, curl up on the sofa with some colored pencils, and then dive into it. Read it fast the first time, then circle back and read each and every chapter two or three times.
You will be amazed by how much you will learn by doing this. These few hours will jump start a new writing career for you, fill you with hope, give you the tools to intelligently analyse any other writer’s novels you read, and break down each and every movie you watch with a keen, incisive analytica framework.
Congratulation !
But it isn’t a very ‘big surprise’ – because these 3 books are the absolutely best on international market!
Greetings from Germany !