Blake Shhnyder is: The Guy that Wrote Save the Cat

Boy am I cutting this month close. Way closer than normal. There's probably going to be a bunch of quick, lame up updates just to get me on track.

This is just such an update.

I read through half of "Save the Cat!- The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need". The title pretty much explains everything. It's by Blake Snyder, and so every time I come across that name I think "Rob Schneider- needle scratch".

It's pretty good, especially since it makes no bones about being SPECIFICALLY geared towards mainstream movie success. Thus far Robert McKee's "Story" was the more instructive, not that that was ever in doubt, but this book has been good for familiarizing myself with Hollywood-esque parlance.

Except for the times when it doesn't. Sometimes Mr. Snyder uses his own personal names for things, and I'm always antsy waiting for the part where he actually defines his terms to something I can get. It isn't usually THAT long, but it still gets to me.

It's also recommended a good set of OTHER script writing books that I think I'll check out later too. It seems like "Save the Cat" is one of the big ones, fame wise. I've been waiting a whole buncha months for it to get through it's various holds at the library.

I'm a little worried I may be discounting things out of hand just because his biggest claim to fame is the Disney movie "Blank Check", and he points out that saying a movie is "Die Hard on a Spaceship" or "Unforgiven meets Back to the Future" (I just came up with those examples here, they weren't in the book... though maybe they SHOULD be...) is a bad habit, but he does it a LOT.

Still, it sounds like he's sold a lot of scripts- whether or not they ever get made into movies is besides the point. At least for a guy making his living off of that.

And if anyone asks, as far as I'm aware, there aren't any bigtime books on writing comics, but I'd be happy to read it when I hear about it- but also just because I want to write comics doesn't mean I wouldn't want to write a screen play as well.

Buh!

Hmm, well, I was all set to talk about this book tomorrow when I'd finished reading it, but I probably won't have that much more to say about it.

I typed this out quickly, but it wasn't that bad a post at all.

It just needed a little love.