Read 'Save the Cat by Blake Snyder' at http://www.SellingYourScreenplay.com.

If you’re a screenwriter or are trying to become a screenwriter and you haven’t read Save The Cat by Blake Snyder click this link immediately and buy a copy from Amazon.com and read it as soon as it comes.

Blake Snyder’s Save The Cat has really transformed the way Hollywood looks at scripts in the last few years much the way Syd Field’s Screenplay (also a must read book for any screenwriter) did in the early 80′s. A lot of what Snyder talks about is not new, he’s building on classic books about story structure like Field’s Screenplay and Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces among many others. But what Snyder does very well is boil it down into a nuts-and-bolts approach to coming up with marketable screenplay ideas and then building your story around those ideas.

Part of the reason Save the Cat has been so successful, I believe, is because it’s filled with so much great information about writing a marketable commercial screenplay. Many people criticize his approach as being overly formulaic, but I personally think that’s non-sense and I dare anyone to think of a great film that doesn’t fit into Snyder’s paradigm.

One of the things that’s happened in Hollywood is that Snyder’s terminology has become standard vernacular for discussing a screenplay. If you don’t know what the “fun and games” section of a screenplay is or you have never heard of “the dark night of the soul” you need to pick up a copy of this book right away because it’s quite possible that a producer will ask you about these sections of your screenplay and you better understand what they mean. It’s not unlike what Syd Field did for screenplay structure years ago, with his paradigm, plot points, act breaks, and three act structure (also terms all screenwriters should have mastery of).

Save the Cat is all about story structure. He doesn’t spend a lot of time teaching you how to develop character or write great dialog, it’s all about coming up with a marketable idea and structuring it properly so it sells. I think this approach is a great way to go, especially for beginning screenwriters. I know for myself, the first few scripts I wrote were so poorly thought out they really had no chance of going anywhere and if I had read this book before writing those scripts I think they would have been infinitely better.

Part of the reason I think Snyder’s Save the Cat has been so well received by the industry is because it gives tangible benchmarks for people to measure a script against. While these benchmarks aren’t always accurate, they do have merit and if you’re a development executive wondering if this script is really any good or not you can at least measure it against Snyder’s paradigm to see if it measures up or not. And it becomes easier to reject a script because it doesn’t have all the proper elements that Snyder outlines. Things like developed characters, well written dialog, or hilarious set pieces are very subjective so it’s not always that easy to know if a script is well written using them. But Blake Snyder’s beat sheet is an easy yard stick to use, however fair or formulaic that might be.

Snyder wrote three books before he passed away last year, Save The Cat!, Save the Cat! Goes to the Movies, Save the Cat! Strikes Back. I recommend all three books highly but found the second one, Save the Cat! Goes to the Movies very valuable as Snyder basically reverse engineers dozens of successful films using his paradigm. I found this very helpful to really understand the different sections that he outlines in his first book.

You can buy a copy of Save The Cat at Amazon.com by clicking this link.

Read 'My top 3 screenwriting books' at http://www.SellingYourScreenplay.com.

I got this question the other day via Twitter: “What are your 3 top books for screenwriters?”

I’m currently reading Save the Cat by Blake Snyder.  While it’s not in my top three (yet) I highly recommend it.  As someone who sold many spec scripts, Blake Snyder has a great sense of what it takes to write a marketable screenplay.  It’s much more than the usual babble on three act structure and gives the reader a practical nuts-and-bolts approach to writing a script that has a good chance of selling.

But if I had to recommend just three books to screenwriters they would be (in order of importance):

1. Syd Field’s Screenplay.  I doubt there’s anyone in Hollywood who’s sold a script and hasn’t read this book.  It really teaches the necessary basics about how to structure a screenplay.  You can read my review of it here: http://www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/screenwriting-books/syd-fields-screenplay/

You can buy a copy of it from Amazon.com by going here: http://www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/links/amazon/71

2. Lajos Egri’s The Art of Dramatic Writing . As a compliment to Screenplay I would also recommend Lajos Egri’s The Art of Dramatic Writing.  While The Art of Dramatic Writing was written for playwrights, it’s a great foundation for writing compelling drama and every aspiring screenwriter should check it out.  I wrote this review of it here: http://www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/screenwriting-books/lajos-egris-the-art-of-dramatic-writing/

You can buy a copy of it from Amazon.com by going here: http://www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/links/amazon/72

3. Jack London’s Martin Eden.  Everyone who wants to be a professional writer should read Jack London’s Martin Eden.  It’s a sad but poignant tale about a man obsessed with making a living from writing.  While it’s in no way directly related to screenwriting it is a sobering look at some of the problems you will face as a professional writer and the struggle to get there.  The first time I read this book was shortly after I had sold my first screenplay, Dish Dogs. About half way through the book Marten Eden sells his first bit of writing, unfortunately it gets horribly rewritten.  I was in the process of seeing my own first bit of writing get horribly rewritten, too.  Martin Eden thought that after he got his first sale things would start to get easier for him.  He was horribly wrong and the struggle continued.  I have sold and optioned several screenplays since my first sale and I can honestly say it doesn’t get easier.  Many beginning screenwriters have the misconception that all they need to do is sell just one script and then everything will open up for them.  This is not usually the case.  Mostly it’s Martin Eden’s work ethic and unrelenting commitment to being a writer that I find inspiring.  It’s hard to imagine anyone not succeeding if they put forth the sort of effort that he (and probably Jack London, too) puts forth.

You can buy a copy of it from Amazon.com by going here: http://www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/productlinks/amazon/Jack London Martin Eden

Read 'Lajos Egri’s The Art of Dramatic Writing' at http://www.SellingYourScreenplay.com.

This book was recommended to me by an actor who I met when I first moved to Los Angeles.  I was standing in line at a bank one day when I struck up a conversation with the guy in front of me.  He was an actor and writer who had been living in Hollywood for more than 50 years.  He had lots of wisdom to impart including recommending that I read Lajos Egri’s The Art of Dramatic Writing.

The book was written a long time ago and it was specifically geared towards playwriting.  All drama whether a play or a film is rooted in the same fundamentals and this book covers the fundamentals of drama like no other book I’ve ever read.

This book is an excellent compliment to Syd Field’s Screenplay.  While Field is all about screenplay structure, Egri is all about character and the character driven story.  All great drama revolves around a great character and Egri gives you lots of help developing solid characters.

Whenever I begin a new project I like to go back and read certain portions of this book to make sure that my new project is headed in the right direction.  For instance, Egri has a great way of describing the dramatic premise – which isn’t a logline – but helps a writer focus on the main conflict in their story.  I always like to figure out what my “Egri Premise” is before I begin writing a new script.

If you haven’t read The Art of Dramatic Writing I highly recommend that you do.  You can purchase The Art of Dramatic Writing from Amazon.com by clicking here.

Read 'Syd Field’s Screenplay' at http://www.SellingYourScreenplay.com.

Nearly 30 years after it was written Syd Field’s Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting; A step-by-step guide from concept to finished script is still considered a must read for all aspiring screenwriters.  It was one of the first books recommended to me by a producer after I sent him a half-baked query letter and it really helped me in my screenwriting development.

Field’s main contribution to screenwriting is clearly defining the three act structure into a concise paradigm.  I read somewhere that this “groundbreaking revelation” wasn’t a revelation to people in the industry, in fact the 3 act structure has been around for literally thousands of years, but he spends so much time talking about it in his book that it becomes very clear just how important this really is to writing a Hollywood movie.  The main thing you will get out of this book is how to structure your screenplay into the three act structure, or the ‘paradigm’ as he calls it, with a plot point at the end of the first and second acts.  Much has been written about the paradigm since and many people have tried to expand upon it, but there really isn’t a lot more to it then what Field covers in his book and most of the expansion on it that I’ve read usually overly complicates something that isn’t that complicated.

Field spends enough time on all the other aspects of screenwriting including basic formatting, character development, writing dialogue and he uses enough real examples that after reading this book you should basically understand the mechanics of how to write a screenplay.  Actually writing a great screenplay will takes years of practice but this book really does serve as a launching pad for anyone who’s ever wanted to write a screenplay.

You’ll want to see the movie Chinatown before you read this book (if you’ve seen it, watch it again) as he draws a lot of his examples from it.  You will want to read the Chinatown screenplay, too, so you can really dig into the syntax and pacing of a good screenplay and follow along as Field talks about it.

Field’s second book, The Screenwriter’s Workbook, is pretty good, too, and I actually found it a bit more easy to use as it’s a workbook for writing your script and goes through the process step by step always keeping the paradigm in mind.  It covers a lot of the same ground that’s covered in the first book but I think it’s worth reading, too.

Click here to buy Syd Field’s Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting; A step-by-step guide from concept to finished script from Amazon.com

Click here to buy Syd Field’s second book, The Screenwriter’s Workbook from Amazon.com.

Click here to buy the DVD of Chinatown from Amazon.com.

You can view the screenplay for Chinatown in for free here:

http://www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/wp-content/uploads/screenplay/scripts/chinatown_screenplay.txt