Saturday » November 17 » 2007
Want to be a screenwriter? Just learn the story formula And once you've done that, Hollywood's Blake Snyder says, learn how to hide it
Yvonne Zacharias
Vancouver Sun
Saturday, November 17, 2007
If ever there were a paint-by-number, connect-the-dots approach to screenwriting, it would be the one offered by Hollywood's Blake Snyder. Just follow these easy steps and you, too, can write a screenplay, Snyder tells his readers in his book Save The Cat! It has been so popular, it is now in its 10th printing. And guess what it's easy to read, too.
The engaging Snyder, who offered eight-hour seminars Thursday and Friday at a film industry expo, sat down with The Vancouver Sun in the sunny lobby of the Le Soleil hotel on a dark, rainy evening to explain his approach. He offers hand-holding, a call to arms and step-by-step instructions to the jittery screenwriter wannabe who just can't seem to figure out how to put words to paper.
"What you want to get good at is learning the formula and then hiding the formula. This is what this is about. As you get better and better at your craft, the seams stop showing. That is where the expertise comes in," he said matter-of-factly.
Ah, so easy, so practical, yet so hard to do.
Snyder's visit to Vancouver comes on the heels of the visit of another noteworthy screenwriting guru, Robert McKee. Apparently, we up here in the north country are fertile ground. We should be turning out a bumper crop of fine screenwriters any day now.
Snyder is as ebullient and as mirthful as McKee is dark and crusty. Snyder's approach is easier than McKee's. Yet both men sing from roughly the same screenwriting handbook.
Both would tell you that there is a familiar pattern to almost every successful screenplay. Stray from it at your peril. Apparently, many of the screenwriters of today do. And it's a pity for all.
Both men, too, have enjoyed considerable success.
By Snyder's count, either he alone or in partnership with others he is a big fan of screenwriting partnerships, by the way has written 78 scripts. More than half have been sold.
Together with Colby Carr he inked a million-dollar deal with Disney for writing the script of Blank Cheque, which is about a kid who gets a cheque for a million dollars and goes on a spending spree. For another cool million, he and his partners sold a script called Nuclear Family to Steven Spielberg, who sent it back with helpful suggestions pencilled in. It has yet to be made into a movie, but, hey, he got advice from Spielberg.
But Snyder gets his real buzz these days from teaching others how to write. He gives an insider's view of the industry, complete with all the slang.
And it's an industry he knows well. While growing up in southern California, his father produced the zany kids' cartoon show Roger Ramjet in the 1960s and a show called Big Blue Marble in the 1970s. His great uncle was a publicist for RKO, one of the five big studios of Hollywood's golden age.
When he wrote Save The Cat!, he promised it would be the last book on screenwriting you would ever need.
Almost as soon as the words were out of his mouth, he came up with an apparently equally necessary sequel called Save The Cat! Goes To The Movies.
Here, he divides movies into genres and then dissects them. Now he is making a videotape of the books.
Snyder laughs when reminded that he told us we would only have to buy the first book.
He is only giving his audience what they want, he claims. The main thing, he says, is that people learn to write screenplays. He says he can teach them.

"Anybody can direct. There are only 11 good writers." ‹ Mel Brooks

Maybe just a rumor, but I heard that "Chinatown" was written with Dramatica.

I'm a big Save The Cat fan, especially for newbies who need to get structure down pat. It puts things in very easy-to-understand terms and, for formula films which, let's face it, represents 9/10 of the H-wood sales lays out exactly what you need to do. Like any other method, it can't teach you to be a good writer, but it does give you the building blocks you need. Highly recommended for new writers.

emg

Riight...! And that line came from a "punch card" from a 400 year old tapestry loom!