Savin' the Cat

Didn't do much (any) blogging last week, but it was all for a good cause. In last weekend's mail I received my copy of Blake Snyder's Save the Cat! While Syd Field still deserves the honors for writing the original, indispensable handbook on screenwriting and laying out the important groundwork for screenplay structure, for my money (under 20 bucks), Blake Snyder's new book is now my personal favorite as it gets in far deeper and really cracks the code of what makes movies work.

I read the book in one night and was able to put it to work the next morning, and it kept me busy all week, helping me to figure out how I could go about figuring out and fixing what I didn't like about my first draft of my Carbon Harbor screenplay. I was already about half way into my second draft -- already a drastic rewrite -- when my copy of the book arrived, but I don't think any of that work will be for naught. I've added a new, short introductory scene for my main character, Sheriff Chic Kitchel, which gives him an entire new dimension while enhancing his existing role in the story. Other work will have to be tweaked and honed to make full use and pay off on his character strengths and weaknesses, which will also go a long way towards better serving the story. Finally, I think now I can now also work a lot smarter in my approach to the rest of the work that has yet to be done.

Seriously, read this book. Even if you are only a big fan of watching movies, it offers a lot of good insight for understanding why some movies suck even when you want to like them, while others, ones you thought sure you might hate, turn out to be way better than you expected. If you write movies, then this book is like hiring a script doctor for $20 or less. That's a bargain of a lifetime.