Save the Cat

When they tell you that writing a script can help your novel–listen.

Like many writers, I am a rabid collector of writing books. Until fate brought Save the Cat into my hands, though, I’d resisted moving beyond novel-writing books. Not because I doubted they would help at all. Because I felt I should focus, since I can’t actually buy every writing book in existence.

All I can say now is that I was missing out.

I’ve heard many times that script-writing can help you learn dialogue. Also that you’ll learn to plot when you write a script. I’ve never done it, because my plots grow out of my characters, and so does my dialogue, and they do it like Jack’s beanstalk–fast and leading to treasure. Unfortunately, my first-draft plots also wander all over the place, growing wildly as untended growy things are wont to do. This results in months of clean-up, slash-and-burn editing. Hence my recent search for an understanding of structure.

Hey, guess what? Found it.

Save the Cat is a fast read, and a fun one. Blake Snyder uses movies I’ve seen, or at least heard of, to make his points, and he does it well. I’m not sure I could follow the book to write a script–he insists that the place to start is the “logline” and I generally find those after I’ve written the book. But then, I don’t generally find a structure till after the first major edit, so maybe I can learn both skills from him.

The important part of this book for me, so far, is the “beat sheet.” Snyder lays out genre (not the ones you’re thinking of) and talks about useful things like loglines and “the board” to lay out your scenes in proper acts, but these things I’d seen before. The beat sheet, though–that is new to me. And incredibly useful. I combined it with the four-act structure of his board (he works horizontally where Jennifer Crusie does it vertically, and somehow horizontal helped me visualize it better) and spent the afternoon working out the beats for Kolya’s story. I’d still like to brainstorm some scenes–but I could jump back into writing now and just blindly charge forward and still come out with a better first draft than I think I’ve ever accomplished.

My verdict? Get this book if you’re ready to study structure. While it is incredibly important, I don’t think structure is something to be studied until you have achieved competence with more readily useable tools, like character and description. I think, had I started with this, I would have cranked out a lot of formulaic crap and given up before I learned to write for real.

Yes, Snyder makes it seem that easy. Highly recommended, and right here.