The Last Book on Writing You'll Ever Need

Blake Snyder was a confident man. He has written many stories that sell in the Hollywood blockbusters. So when he decided to wrote a book about how to write a story that sells, he named it "The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need". A pretty bold statement isn't it?

The complete title of this book is "Save the cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need."

Photo by Mikhail Vasilyev on Unsplash

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The title "Save the cat!" refers to the Snyder's concept about the characterization of the protagonist. He said that the protagonist of the story should be the one the audiences will root for. So, the audiences need to see, what is the distinctive quality of the protagonist. He has to be significant, he must do something noticeable since the earliest scene. For Snyder, a scene where the main character doing something good such as saving a cat, he will be easily noticed by the audiences. Snyder gave us many great examples of this kind of scene in the book.

This is actually not a how-to book. It's more about breaking your story plot into several points, which in Snyder's term, he called it as beats. In this book, we'll learn to analyze existing stories based on those beats criteria. It was fun to read. There are many books about how-to-write, but Save the cat is distinctive. It's fun, exciting and easy going. No high concepts, just breaking down the plot, analyze it into understandable sentences, in a very practical way.

Despite the fact this is a book about screenwriting, it will be a valuable reads for any fiction writers. Because all fiction would need a great plot, and that's is what Blake Snyder will teach us.

The Blake Snyder Beats Sheets

So what about the beats? How can we breakdown a plot into beats to analyze it and make it more solid?

Actually, there are tons of information about this online. Blake Snyder Beats Sheets is quite popular. People said that Hollywood blockbusters are using this formula. So, without further ado, here are the beats. I'll just copy-paste it:

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Opening Image – A visual that represents the struggle & tone of the story. A snapshot of the main character’s problem, before the adventure begins.

Set-up – Expand on the “before” snapshot. Present the main character’s world as it is, and what is missing in their life.

Theme Stated (happens during the Set-up) – What your story is about; the message, the truth. Usually, it is spoken to the main character or in their presence, but they don’t understand the truth…not until they have some personal experience and context to support it.

Catalyst – The moment where life as it is changing. It is the telegram, the act of catching your loved-one cheating, allowing a monster onboard the ship, meeting the true love of your life, etc. The “before” world is no more, change is underway.

Debate – But change is scary and for a moment, or a brief number of moments, the main character doubts the journey they must take. Can I face this challenge? Do I have what it takes? Should I go at all? It is the last chance for the hero to chicken out.

Break Into Two (Choosing Act Two) – The main character makes a choice and the journey begins. We leave the “Thesis” world and enter the upside-down, opposite world of Act Two.

B Story – This is when there’s a discussion about the Theme – the nugget of truth. Usually, this discussion is between the main character and the love interest. So, the B Story is usually called the “love story”.

The Promise of the Premise – This is when Craig Thompson’s relationship with Raina blooms; when Indiana Jones tries to beat the Nazis to the Lost Ark; when the detective finds the most clues and dodges the most bullets. This is when the main character explores the new world and the audience is entertained by the premise they have been promised.

Midpoint – Dependent upon the story, this moment is when everything is “great” or everything is “awful”. The main character either gets everything they think they want (“great”) or doesn’t get what they think they want at all (“awful”). But not everything we think we want is what we actually need in the end.

Bad Guys Close In – Doubt, jealousy, fear, foes both physical and emotional regroup to defeat the main character’s goal, and the main character’s “great”/“awful” situation disintegrates.

All is Lost – The opposite moment from the Midpoint: “awful”/“great”. The moment that the main character realizes they’ve lost everything they gained or everything they now have has no meaning. The initial goal now looks even more impossible than before. And here, something or someone dies. It can be physical or emotional, but the death of something old makes way for something new to be born.

Dark Night of the Soul – The main character hits bottom, and wallows in hopelessness. The Why hast thou forsaken me, Lord? moment. Mourning the loss of what has “died” – the dream, the goal, the mentor character, the love of your life, etc. But, you must fall completely before you can pick yourself back up and try again.

Break Into Three (Choosing Act Three) – Thanks to a fresh idea, new inspiration, or last-minute Thematic advice from the B Story (usually the love interest), the main character chooses to try again.

Finale – This time around, the main character incorporates the Theme – the nugget of truth that now makes sense to them – into their fight for the goal because they have experience from the A Story and context from the B Story. Act Three is about Synthesis!

Final Image – opposite of Opening Image, proving, visually, that a change has occurred within the character.

Source

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That's the beats sheets. You see, Blake Snyder has made a system so simple, make it easy to analyze a structure, with sentences that easier to reads rather than using difficult technical terms. With this approach, we could have a better mental image of the story, from the beginning until the end of story.

You'll also noticed how he structure the beats starting with opening image and end it with finale image. That would be his approach to make a well-rounded story. Or at least, well-rounded plot (since it's only a structure).

Knowing the motivation of the books, we'll learn that this book was intended to the scriptwriters who want to pitch a project to film producer. According to Blake Snyder, the concept paper should be crystal clear. Because producers are busy people, they will only choose the story that has proven before, that it will sell. There is nothing new under the sun, and Blake Snyder's advice was: “Give me the same thing… only different”.

The Genres

Apart from the Beats Sheets to analyze and build a well-rounded story plot, Snyder also provides a fun way to understand the genre. He believes that each genre has their own approach and traits.

Here is the genre according to Blake Snyder's system. Again, I will just copy-paste it, because there are so many sources for this.

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DUDE WITH A PROBLEM – Every story, in essence, is about a “dude with a problem.” But this particular genre dictates a certain type of problem: one that is life-or-death and immediate, that must be solved through some sort of physical battle, right now. The whole movie is essentially a chronicle of that battle (which might consist of a series of mini-battles). Think Die Hard, Bourne Identity, Misery, 2012, or Apollo 13.

GOLDEN FLEECE – This often seems to be the “catch-all” genre when no other will fit. But it, too, has its own specific requirements that must be met for it to really work. The key is that the main character’s “team” is chasing a very clear and definable “prize” that seems unreachably hard. You’ll know the movie is over, because they’ve achieved the prize, or not. Often, I find in scripts purporting to be a “Fleece” that the “prize” is unclear, or not big or challenging enough and the journey toward achieving it thus not as compelling as it could be. Think The Bad News Bears, Finding Nemo, Saving Private Ryan, Ocean’s Eleven, or Cast Away.

BUDDY LOVE – All movies have relationships with problems. But it’s not a “Buddy Love” unless the main problem of the movie has to do with a key relationship that seems essential to the main character, which is threatened by something. “Will they or won’t they end up together?” is the central question of the movie and the main issue that is explored throughout. Think The Black Stallion, Starsky and Hutch, Pretty Woman, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, or An Officer and a Gentleman.

INSTITUTIONALIZED – Just because a story takes place at an “institution” of some sort, does not make it fit this genre. And the “institution” does not have to be literal. The question is whether there is a group with its own rules and norms that the main character is exploring the costs and benefits of membership in – and ultimately deciding whether they want to be a part of it or not. It’s about deciding who they want to be in relationship to it, and the risks and reward of same. Think Full Metal Jacket, Goodfellas, Office Space, The Devil Wears Prada or Crash.

RITES OF PASSAGE – Similarly, just because a character is going through some sort of rite of passage (in the generic sense) does not mean it meats the criteria for this genre. The key here is that it is a relatable life problem (like adolescence, divorce, mid-life, loss of a loved one, or addiction), which the main character is avoiding by chasing something else. They are clearly on a wrong road, as they spend most of the movie in pursuit of some challenging goal that is entertaining to watch, but not ultimately going to work out well. Finally, they’re left having to face life after all, hopefully having learned something in the process. Think 10, The War of the Roses, Ordinary People, Trainspotting, or American Pie.

SUPERHERO – The key here is a nemesis and problem that is seemingly bigger than they are. It’s never compelling watching amazing people (real-life or made up) succeeding over and over again. Good stories are always about characters being pressed to their limits and overmatched – in hell, essentially – until the very end. (I cannot say this strongly enough. Stories are about dealing with big problems that only get worse when you try to deal with them. So are scenes, most of the time. This is the main issue that I work with on almost every story – making sure it’s a compelling problem that is big enough, hard enough, and complicated enough to take a whole movie to solve.) Think Erin Brockovich, the Harry Potter series, The Matrix, Gladiator or Spider-Man.

OUT OF THE BOTTLE – The “magical” catalyst should cause complications and challenges that never would’ve been there without it. Again, they make the hero’s life harder, in ways that demand to be solved. Usually, it’s easier for readers to swallow if the magic emerges from some sort of relatable, semi-explainable place (i.e. not too arbitrary or contrived) like a carnival wish machine, an electrical storm, or some established mythology like genies or witchcraft. And the magic should go away or be resolved in the end, with the character back to an essentially “normal life,” where they’ve grown in some way. Think Big, Aladdin, The Nutty Professor, Liar Liar or Field of Dreams.

Source
In the book, there are 10 genres, but for the purpose of this post, I'm just sharing a little information about this fun book of writing.

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Again we can see here that Snyder's system is meant to make learning less painful. He uses terms and sentences in a very pragmatic way. It seems he wants to help writers to pitch/sell their story. While it is true, understanding the genre will be a great valuable knowledge for fiction writers. At least it will make the writers itself understand their own story before they started to tell the story to other people.

Snyder believes that writers should stick to one genre per story. A mixture of genres in a story could bring confusion to the story building since each genre has their own set of rules.

The Other Concepts

Asides from Plot and Genre, Snyder also gave many pragmatic approaches on how to make stories that sell. One of the concepts is about the logline. The one sentence story that will be the core of our story. He said that if we still struggling with the logline, it's better to postpone our writing and work on the logline instead.

The logline should tell a story from beginning until the end, it has to have a character, it has to have a conflict. And the conflict should be primal. Something that even if we pitched it to a caveman, he will understand and buy it.

The other concept that captivated me was the approach of "The Pope in the Pool."

The Pope in the Pool is an approach on how to write a scene that isn’t boring. As a fiction writer, sometimes we need to tell a back story. This could be a difficult challenge. It could break the story's pace. It could make our story dull. Especially if we're still a total noob on the "Show don't tell" realm. Here, Snyder offers a fun way to write such scene.

The term The Pope in The Pool came from a script titled The Plot to Kill the Pope by George Englund. The story was a thriller and as such couldn’t afford a dull scene with people sitting around drinking tea and dumping information. So, the writer came up with a way to relay the information while keeping people’s attention. He put the Pope in the pool.
As Snyder points out, “We’re thinking: ‘I didn’t know the Vatican had a pool?! And look, the Pope’s not wearing his Pope clothes, he’s… he’s… in his bathing suit!’”

(source)

That would be a good trick for keeping the story exciting. The information may dull and boring, but a good writer should find a way to make it fun.

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I guess that's all folks! I remember how excited I was when reading this how-to book for the first time. It's very easy to read and made me learn a lot!

While the book is great and exciting, I don't think we need to adopt the system per se. It's not a magic formula. Keep in mind that the Snyder's system is a valuable knowledge to understand our story better. It does help to learn about the plot structure, to create a balance and good pacing.

Personally, I found a major drawback too. Since I read this book, now, whenever I see a movie, my mind will be busy analyzing the scenes based on the Blake Snyder Beats Sheets. And I'm glad when there are movies that couldn't be structured in the beats sheets. It's so refreshing! :p