Save the Cat! Strikes Back: More Trouble For... Read online

  from Dean DeBlois

  co-writer and co-director of How to Train Your Dragon

  “Blake's whole approach was used in structuring the story that Chris Sanders and I brought to the project when we took it over. We had just over a year to rewrite, storyboard, edit, animate, and light the entire film. A crazy undertaking — and time was of the essence being that the release date was immovable. Our task was to take the world of the source children's book and broaden its audience by giving it a dynamic, fantasy adventure story that would deliver on the promise of the premise. Chris and I also saw an opportunity for strong emotional payoffs within its central relationships, so we made them our primary focus.

  Our first step was to lay out our concept according to Blake's Beat Sheet, and from there, we laid out the detailed structure. The Board became our foundation, and we never veered from it as we felt our way through the moments of the story. I'm a big believer in Blake's approach because everything he teaches was proven true in the years of story work I did prior to reading Save the Cat! The theories he touches upon are undeniable, universal truths of human storytelling, and Blake did us all a huge and lasting favor by putting them in a digestible form that people can immediately use and rely upon.”

  “‘How nice of Blake to write this book just for me.’ That's what you'll be saying after you read Save the Cat! Strikes Back. No matter if you're a newbie or a produced writer, Blake understands that the struggle never ends. Whether you're rewriting or getting rewritten, looking for representation or leaving your representation, he's got you covered. And on those days when you don't feel like writing and all you want to do is go on the Internet and ‘research,’ read his chapter on discipline, focus, and positive energy. I guarantee you will be up and writing. I love this book!”

  — Kriss Turner, Writer, Something New;

  Writer/Producer, Sherri, Everybody Hates Chris,

  The Bernie Mac Show

  “Written in his signature witty, conversational style, Blake Snyder has given us another gem. As relevant to the novelist as it is to the screenwriter, this is a book no writer should be without. I've read all of Blake's books, and never begin a story without his insanely useful ‘Beat Sheet’ by my side, but this time, Snyder goes one step further, sharing his own personal transformation from struggling writer to one who's seen great success. From the most generous and genuine writer/teacher of our time, this book will inspire the reader to scale all of those seemingly insurmountable brick walls and keep going — to choose getting better over getting bitter. This book is a must read!”

  — Alyson Noël, #1 New York Times

  Bestselling Author, Evermore, Blue Moon,

  Shadowland

  “A dazzling expansion on Blake's original insights, this essential screenwriting tool is practical and profound.”

  — Mark Hentemann, Writer/Executive Producer,

  Family Guy

  “Save the Cat! Strikes Back is Blake's best yet. It expands on his principles of storytelling in a breezy, colloquial style and gives us a deeper personal insight to the relentlessly positive mindset that powered his great success and his generous spirit. Blake's life was far, far too short, but his work and his inspiring legacy will remain timeless.”

  — Rick Drew, movieScope Magazine

  SAVE THE CAT!®

  STRIKES

  BACK

  More Trouble for Screenwriter's to Get Into… and Out Of

  BLAKE SNYDER

  Published by Save the Cat!® Press

  Cover Design:

  Brian Blevins

  Interior Book Design:

  Gina Mansfield Design

  Editor:

  Brett Jay Markel

  Photos on pages viii and 87, chart on page 47:

  Peter Bennett/Ambient Images

  Printed by McNaughton & Gunn, Inc.

  Saline, Michigan

  © Estate of Blake Snyder 2009

  ISBN 10: 0-9841576-0-3

  ISBN 13: 978-0-9841576-0-0

  TABLE

  OF

  CONTENTS

  FOREWORD

  THE INTRODUCTION: OH, YOU'RE IN TROUBLE NOW!

  You say you're a screenwriter? Great! But it doesn't always feel great. Why being “all typed out” and “hitting the wall” are just the start of your greatest creative breakthroughs, and why you must “strike back!”

  CHAPTER 1:

  WOW! WHAT A BAD IDEA!

  How come no one is responding to your movie pitch? Why “too plain,” “too complicated,” and “hiding the ball” may be fatal. Plus: Fresh from the Cat! lab, the Rx for logy loglines and the end of the logline log jam!

  CHAPTER 2:

  IN TROUBLE IN THE CLASSROOM

  So you've got the pitch down, where's the story? Step into a Save the Cat! workshop for new ways to “beat it out,” including the “Double Bump” and e-z solutions to “Spidering,” “Half-Stepping,” and “Blurry Beats.”

  CHAPTER 3:

  ALL LAID OUT… AND NOWHERE TO GO

  Feelin’ “formulaic”? Supercharge your storyline with the new “STC! Structure Map,” including insight into “The Magical Midpoint,” why “Bad Guys Really Close In,” plus Blake's new “Five-Point Finale.”

  CHAPTER 4:

  STRAIGHTENING YOUR SPINE

  The script's done, but your story is off track. Why? Blake cracks open his writer's casebook to reveal the cure for “story scoliosis” and the “Five Key Questions” you need to answer to make sure you deliver the goods.

  CHAPTER 5:

  REWRITE HELL!

  Going from the private to the public, now you're getting feedback… and a deadline to fix your script! Blake turns to his own Cat! Writers Group for answers on “How to Hear Notes” and face down problematic producers and executives.

  CHAPTER 6:

  CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE SELLING KIND

  Blake lets loose with hits and misses of selling — and why “The Agent Will Appear!” Plus tips that explain once and for all how to dress, pitch, and follow up on any meeting for maximum impact.

  CHAPTER 7:

  STRIKE BACK U.

  Need advice over the long haul? Blake reveals secrets learned at the school of hard knocks and provides the success stories to give you winning strategies to not just survive — but thrive! —at any stage of your career.

  CHAPTER 8:

  DISCIPLINE, FOCUS, AND POSITIVE ENERGY

  What does it take to succeed? What is required to elude the real“Dark Night of the Soul”? One man's journey to find the method to dare to dream — and win!!—in and out of the confines of Hollywood.

  GLOSSARY

  Final Terms of Engagement from the Land of the 310—all new favorite phrases for use in the trenches, including “The Shard of Glass,” “Double Dipping,” and everyone's favorite, “The Smell of the Rain on the Road at Dawn.”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  REMEMBERING BLAKE

  FOREWORD

  Of course, one can't help but begin this foreword with some sort of reference to franchises.

  If you're reading this book, you are most likely painfully aware that Hollywood is constantly in search of the perfect, key movie element that connects so well with people and manages to be so relatable and resonant that it leaves the audience wanting more. Discovering the magic formula that creates a movie franchise is tougher than it seems — for every Batman, there's an Electra — which means a celebration is in order when a filmmaker has successfully cracked the ever-elusive code.

  I'm fairly certain that when Blake Snyder started writing his first STC! book, the notion of being at the forefront of creating a “screenwriting h
ow-to franchise” hadn't crossed his mind. And if it had — he was a crafty guy, after all — I imagine the idea seemed as far away and inconceivable as Indiana Jones actually finding the Holy Grail.

  Yet, here we are.

  Before he passed away, Blake heard from so many of his fans, all telling him he had absolutely cracked the elusive code! This outpouring of praise from you encouraged him to press on in his quest. With Save the Cat! Strikes Back, Blake — as with any good franchise creator — brilliantly found his way to a completely fresh, chock-full-of-new-material, third book in a series. Amazing. George Lucas and Steven Spielberg should take notice!

  So let's take a moment to toast what Blake has accomplished in this third go ‘round.

  First, inspired by the workshops and lectures he'd held all over the world, Blake realized his audience wanted more — more guidance, more tough love, more common-sense advice on navigating and surviving Hollywood. He had his own experiences and anecdotes, to be sure, but he also spent the last few years listening. He heard thousands of questions and stories and woes from you, his loyal readers and students, and now he found the time to officially address them! So answers and reassurances to common screenwriting problems and random “what ifs” that plague rookie writers are in this book.

  Next, he realized many aspiring screenwriters were having great success from the tips and the lessons presented in his first two books and, with their well-received scripts in hand, they were looking for information about “what next?” So from personal insights about agents and managers to getting and interpreting notes and what to expect in meetings, that information is in here as well.

  But Blake also realized that with artistic success comes great pressure — screenwriting is a terrifying and exhausting chore on some days, an amazing but challenging career on others — so he gathered crazy tales and helpful advice from working, professional writers that present a realistic but uplifting look at the journey that is “life as a writer.”

  That's in here too.

  And, most importantly, Blake shares a powerful, heartfelt, and intimate story of the journey that took him from a guy who had lost his creative spirit, had stopped writing and was incredibly lost, to a disciplined, positive, and driven man with a newfound desire to write, write, write. The key to his massive paradigm shift? Blake realized his stubborn, selfish, independent streak was completely ruining whatever positive mojo he might have had, so he dug down deep, reconnected with himself, and began writing from the heart. He started believing in himself again, and hopefully, his story will help you do the same.

  With every word it is clear Blake wrote this book because he wanted you to know that when you decide you hate the story you're working on, when you think you've completely wasted the last six months of your weekends and free time, when you realize there's something off in your plot but can't figure out what, that you are not alone!

  He goes out of his way to assure you, if you know in your heart of hearts you want to be a writer, there are many, many preventative and positive ways out of your screenwriting black hole. He wanted you to know he understood the struggle of a creative, inventive soul — that he and his friends had been there, for the highs and the lows of pursuing a non-traditional career path.

  And that, in the end, it is all worth it.

  To quote the first Save the Cat!: This book gives me “the same, only different.” You have the same witty, wise, and kindhearted Blake, with his years of experience and positive outlook, covering a wealth of information that hasn't been touched in any other screenwriting books on the market. Blake's incredible knowledge of both the art and the business of Hollywood is only eclipsed by his infectious, passionate desire to share this knowledge with any-one looking for guidance. I'm so pleased he was able to get all this amazing, inspirational work down on paper before he died.

  I wish I could congratulate him in person, but I think he already knew the importance of the legacy he was leaving. This is the stuff that franchises are made of.

  No wonder readers were clamoring for more!

  We'll miss you, Blake!

  Sheila Hanahan Taylor

  Autumn 2009

  Sheila is a producer and partner of Practical Pictures, known for such movie franchises as American Pie, Final Destination, and Cats & Dogs. She is also a visiting professor and lecturer at various film programs around the globe, including The Sorbonne, UCLA, Cal State, Tokyo International Film Festival, and Cinestory.

  INTRODUCTION:

  OH, YOU'RE IN

  TROUBLE NOW!

  Let's face it, if you have chosen a career as a screenwriter, you're asking for a certain amount of pain.

  A hint of this happens right up front.

  No matter where you come from, what your good intentions are, or how talented you may be, when you even tell someone about the screenplay you're working on, you will invariably get looks.

  Just saying “I'm a screenwriter” begs for an “Oh yeah?!”

  And the question we all hate:

  “Is there anything you've written I might have seen?”

  The implication here is that if you were any good at this, you would already have something sold and made and playing at the Cineplex. And no, telling Aunt Fern about your YouTube short, or the option by the producer who almost had something premiere at a film festival near Sundance two years ago, is not enough.

  And that hurts.

  If you're like the rest of us who have picked screenwriting as your profession, you get used to it. You must — because you have to. It is who you are. It is what you are. Like Lee Strasberg as Mafiosi Hyman Roth says between coughing fits in Godfather 2:

  “This… is the business… we have chosen.”

  And p.s. ta hell wid Aunt Fern.

  She can barely write her name.

  And she smells like cabbage.

  That's right, just by checking the box marked “creative” in the list of skills you hope to turn into a profession, you are already in the trouble zone. And it's not just your concerned loved ones who stand in judgment of the ideas popping in your brain. The entire world at times seems like it's against you.

  Why?

  Partly because we're just different.

  “They” do not get the adrenaline charge we get when we see that a re-struck print of Charlie Chaplin's City Lights is playing down-town; “they” do not understand the economic sense behind signing up for the 16 movies per month plan on Netflix; their minds do not flood with quite the same images as our minds do when we hear the words: “Interior, Café, Naples, 1953.”

  They are thinking about other things.

  Cabbage, for instance.

  It's like that skit I saw years ago on Saturday Night Live. Bill Murray is Og, the leader of a group of cavemen, strong and dumb as dirt. Steve Martin is the smart caveman, with ideas that might save the tribe. So when Steve goes to sleep by the fire, Bill picks up a rock and crushes Steve's skull, then announces:

  “Now Og smart.”

  Yup.

  Those guys.

  They don't mean it personally.

  They're just waiting for us to go to sleep so they can crush our skulls with a rock — because that's what they do.

  And God bless ‘em!

  They need us, and here's a secret… we need them, too!

  And yet… the real pain starts when something else happens.

  We're going along minding our own business, being creative,

  running downtown to see City Lights, avoiding falling asleep by the fire just in case… and then one day something goes wrong.

  The script we spent months on gets rejected.

  The idea we thought was brilliant draws blank stares.

  The empty space in the finale of our story we thought we'd know how to fill in when we got there isn't filling in.

  In fact, the whole caboodle may suck big time.

  And that's when the panic sets in.

  The icy flush of flop sweat races down our backs.

  A
nd a horrible thought creeps into our minds:

  Maybe Aunt Fern is right!?

  You know what I mean. The real trouble starts not with what others think about us, but what we think about ourselves. The default position most writers have is: “I'm secretly not good at this!” And that is, indeed, not good; that will make us crazy. It takes us away from what we need to do to make it right.

  We have to avoid panic, doubt, and self-recrimination.

  And just fix it.

  We have to get up off the mat… and strike back!

  For a while now since writing both Save the Cat! and Save the Cat! Goes to the Movies, I've wanted to address that moment, the “dark night of the script” when it's just you looking into the black maw of nothingness to find your courage… and an answer. Since penning my first two Cat! tomes, I've had the privilege of traveling the globe teaching my method, and I've seen firsthand the looks on writers’ faces when I am the bearer of bad news — or at least the bearer of news that feels bad. There is nothing worse than when ideas won't work, when structure fails, when your career looks like a wasteland, or when the panic is so great all you can think about is finally checking out those late-night commercials to be a Doctor's Assistant.

  And btw, where is the University of Phoenix?

  It's not actually in Phoenix.

  I checked.

  What I want is to give you the tools to get you back up on your horse and ride like the wind like you're supposed to — every step of the way. And I'll tell you something else, the real truth of it, and what's always given me the most hope: