Save the Cat!: The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need

by Blake Snyder

Hero With A Thousand Faces remains the best book about storytelling ever.

They don’t put it into movies anymore. And it’s basic. It’s the scene where we meet the hero and the hero does something — like saving a cat — that defines who he is and makes us, the audience, like him.

In the thriller, Sea of Love, Al Pacino is a cop. Scene One

Al and his cop buddies waiting to bust them. So Al’s “cool.”

Al spots another lawbreaker, who’s brought his son, coming late to the sting. Seeing the Dad with his kid, Al flashes his badge at the man who nods in understanding and exits quick. Al lets this guy off the hook because he has his

In Hollywood parlance it’s called a logline or a one-line. And the difference between a good one and a bad one is simple.

A newly married couple must spend Christmas Day at each of their four divorced parent’s homes – 4 Christmases

A just-hired employee goes on a company weekend and soon discovers someone’s trying to kill him – The Retreat

A risk-averse teacher plans on marrying his dream girl but must first accompany his overprotective future brother-in-law — a cop — on a ride along from hell! – Ride Along (Please note: Anything “from hell” is always a comedy plus.)

The number one thing a good logline must have, the single most important element, is: irony.

A cop comes to L.A. to visit his estranged wife and her office building is taken over by terrorists – Die Hard

A businessman falls in love with a hooker he hires to be his date for the weekend – Pretty Woman

Insisting on irony in your logline is a good place to find out what’s missing.

The second most important element that a good logline has is that you must be able to see a whole movie in it.

David Permut’s pitch for Blind Date: “She’s the perfect woman — until she has a drink.”

There’s a lot going on in that one-line, far more than in the actual movie, but that’s a different subject altogether. The point is that a good logline, in

Another thing a good logline has, that is important in attracting studio buyers, is a built-in sense of who it’s for and what it’s going to cost.

Lastly, what is intriguing about a good logline must include the title. Title and logline are, in fact, the one-two punch, and a good combo never fails to knock me out.

one I still marvel at, is Legally Blonde. When I think about all the bad titles it could have been — Barbie Goes To Harvard, Totally Law School,

it doesn’t pass the Say What It Is Test, you don’t have your title. And you don’t have the one-two punch that makes a great logline.

I admit that often I have come up with the title first and made the story match.

That’s how I thought up a script I went on to co-write and sell called Nuclear Family. At first all I had was the title, th...

“A dysfunctional family goes camping on a nuclear dumpsite and wakes up the next morning with super powers.”

I’m proposing that before you head off into your FADE IN: you think long and hard about the logline, the title, and the poster.

I always spill my guts when it comes to discussing what I’m

working on, because: a. I have no fear that anyone will steal my idea (and anyone who has that fear is an amateur) and…

b. You find out more about your movie by talking to people one-on-one than having them read it. This is what I mean by “test marketing.”

And a “pitchee” who is thinking about being somewhere else is the perfect subject.

If you can get his attention, if you can keep his attention, and if he wants to know more about the story you’re telling, you’ve really got a good movie idea.

No matter who is encouraging you on the friend side of your life, it’s the strangers you really need to impress.

Along with a good “What is it?” a movie must have a clear sense of what it’s about and who it’s for. Its tone, potential, the dilemma of its characters, and the type of characters they are, should be easy to understand and compelling.

good one-line or logline — a one- or two-sentence grabber that tells us everything.

Irony. It must be in some way ironic and emotionally involving — a dramatic situation that is like an itch you have to scratch. A compelling mental picture. It must bloom in your mind when you hear it. A whole movie must be implied, often including a time frame. Audience and cost. It must demarcate the tone, the target audience, and the sense of cost, so buyers will know if it can make a profit. A killer title. The one-two punch of a good logline must include a great title, one that “says what it is” and does so in a clever way. This is all part of what is called “high concept,” a term that came about to describe movies that are easy to see. In fact, high concept is more important than ever before, especially since movies must be sold internationally, too. Domestic

Pitch your movie to anyone who will listen and adjust accordingly.

full-fledged knowledge of hundreds of movies, and especially those which your movie is like, is required.

I am shocked — shocked! — to find how many up-and-comers can not even quote from movies in their own genre,

Listen to Spielberg or Scorsese talk about movies. They know and can quote from hundreds. And I don’t mean quote as in “recite lines from,” I mean quote as in “explain how each

movie works.” Movies are intricately made emotion machines.

Trust me, your movie falls into a category. And that category has rules that you need to know.

I want you to think a little bit about the question after “What is it?” — and that’s “What is it… most like?”

Planes, Trains and Automobiles;

Breakdown

Chinatown, China Syndrome, JFK, and The Insider.

Being There,

Dave,

The name comes from the myth of Jason and the Argonauts

A hero goes “on the road” in search of one thing and winds up discovering something else — himself.

The theme of every Golden Fleece movie is internal growth; how the incidents affect the hero is, in fact, the plot.

This genre is also where all heist movies are found. Any quest, mission, or “treasure locked in a castle” that is to be approached by an individual or a group falls into the Golden Fleece category and has the same rules.

The Dirty Dozen,