Those new to this site and the Save the Cat! oeuvre, will no doubt wonder what The Board is.
We have a couple of pictures posted of smiling seminar students in front of their Boards, and what a happy bunch they are!
The Board is that thing where we can lay out the beats of our screenplays prior to writing. We not only get a better “view” of what our movie is, but are able to troubleshoot dull spots and amp up the action through character conflict.
For a unique version of this, take a look at Patricia Burroughs’ terrific site at:
The Board can be applied to screenplays AND novels. In fact, it works for anything where a story is required. We have a commercial we will be putting up soon that was written and directed by a seminar student using the beats of Save the Cat!
Point is: It works! And we’ve had great success with several participants at the seminars using this method.
We only started last summer and have already had one script read by a major talent agency, another receiving great coverage from a certain studio in Burbank. And yet another is about to be submitted to Working Title Films.
All thanks to starting with the basic building blocks of… The Board.
What does your Board look like? Show us and we’ll supply the links so that others can see how you’re doing it.
1 Comment
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Hi Blake,
My husband and I write together. We just finished reading STC and are diving into rewrites on our (Dude with a Problem) thriller using STC and the board. THANK YOU for the book. What you wrote has helped us so much already, and we just finished reading it last week. We can’t wait to see where following your advice takes us. Something tells me the sky’s the limit.