Save the Screenwriter!

So...here's the deal on screenwriting. Its hard. No, its really, really freakin' hard. Hard to do it well anyway. Holodad is the first screenplay I have "finished". I put the word "finished" in quotes because a screenplay isn't finished until the movie is shot. Directors commonly make last minute changes to dialogue, based on a glimmer of insight into that character's inner workings as the movie progresses, and I expect I will end up doing the same.

But "finished" in the sense that I have written 90 pages, 3 acts, I know my genre, I know my theme, my character arcs...finished. And I couldn't have done it without Save the Cat! Like many aspiring screenwriters, I bought books on how to write screenplays. And some of the authors are quite good- Syd Field, Robert McKee, Viki King, Christopher Vogler, and many, many more, as well as the obligatory "Adventures in the Screen Trade" and other books that are not so much about how to write a screenplay, but more about the business of writing screenplays.

As helpful and/or entertaining as these books are, none of them, and I mean none of them hold a candle to Save the Cat! It's that good. Why? One word. Structure. Huh? Structure. Structure is what makes a movie a movie, and not a novel. Currently, I am slogging through the bestselling book "Battlefield Earth". Not a book based on the horrible box office failure Battlefield Earth starring John Travolta, but the original bestselling (thanks to the church of scientology buying the book to boost sales figures) book.

Novels can meander here and there, letting the author take his or her sweet time to develop the plot and the characters, and you know what? We like it. It's great. A good book is a pleasure to read, and we don't want it to end in 90 minutes. We want it to last for days. Movies don't have that luxury. 2 hours tops. More important than length though, is the emotional roller coaster ride that we all hope to go on when we go see a movie. Emotional involvement is key, and Save the Cat's author Blake Snyder shows what works. I can't recommend it highly enough. Go buy a copy already!