Save the Cat!: The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need
Written by Blake Snyder
Narrated by George Newbern
4.5/5
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Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this audiobook
Here's what started the phenomenon: This book has been a best seller for over 15 years and has been used by screenwriters around the world! Blake Snyder tells all in this fast, funny, and candid look inside the movie business. Save the Cat is just one of many ironclad rules for making your ideas more marketable and your script more satisfying. Others include these:
- The four elements of every winning logline
- The seven immutable laws of screenplay physics
- The 10 genres that every movie ever made can be categorized by—and why they're important to your script
- Why your hero must serve your idea
- Mastering the 15 beats
- Creating the Perfect Beast by using The Board to map 40 scenes with conflict and emotional change
- How to get back on track with proven rules for script repair
This ultimate insider's guide reveals the secrets that none dare admit, told by a show biz veteran who's proven that you can sell your script if you can save the cat.
Blake Snyder
Blake Snyder (1957-2009) worked as a screenwriter and producer for twenty years. His book Save the Cat!: The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need and its sequels have guided screenwriters, novelists, and other creative thinkers for years and continue to be bestsellers. His methodology is also used by many development executives, managers, and producers due to its precise, easy, and honest appraisal of what it takes to write and develop stories in any medium.
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Reviews for Save the Cat!
129 ratings12 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A good one!! I take a lot away from it: Worth reading!!
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5By far one of the best books in how- to. - write categories.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Awesome book. It's actually the last book you need about screen writing. Such a legend he was.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Great Material No Matter Your Screenwriting Practice ...beginner friendly, for sure!
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I don't intend to write a screenplay but as a movie fan I love this book and listen to it at least once a year
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Good for story development. Definitely need to read/ listen to this book more than once.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Entertaining, informative, concise, and, most of all, I believe him.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Very helpful if you’re new to screenwriting or new to the movie business! I’m a fiction writer but learning these tips will really help me write screenplays later, and also add more cinematic suspense in my books. I think this is a very practical, specific guide, which I like.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Movie examples and some things mentioned are dated (“VHS and DVD sales”) but the storytelling instruction is sound and definitely still relevant. Wish he wasn’t passed on. Would love to have seen a modern/updated edition.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5As my first book on screenplay, I am extremely happy that I started with this one, because reading it is incredibly satisfying! It keeps everything simple, from the language it uses to the examples, and still makes it understandable even for beginners. It has all I wanted to learn before opening it: first impression tips, structure, hints&tricks, etc with on point examples plus summary and exercises after every chapter! Though I suggest you watch the movies Die Hard, Legally Blonde, Pulpe Fiction, Interstellar and 4 Christmases, as it mentions them quite a lot.
All in all, I highly recommend reading/listening to it as it is both amazing in explaining the creative and business aspects of writing movies and at the same time entertaining! - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5So much fabulous advice. No-nonsense manual to making your script happen!
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Nice practical advice on structure for someone who is just starting to write, but I couldn't give it more than 3 stars because I really don't like the films he wrote, almost as much as the films he used as examples of good scripts. They are mostly bland unremarkable films in the vein of legaly blonde. On top of that the examples of films he hates are the best films mentioned in the book (unbreakable, memento...). Use what you can from it, he went through the fundamentals in an easy to understand way, but keep in mind that if you go his way you'll never make anything people will remember in five years. You might make some quick buck with your iterration of legally blonde while your mementos might not make as much, but Nolan got to do everything he wanted after that, so did m. Night (with opposite results, but they, some 15 years later, still get to do a lot of films based on those 'terrible' scripts)
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