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A review by thekarpuk
Save the Cat! Goes to the Movies: The Screenwriter's Guide to Every Story Ever Told by Blake Snyder
1.0
I wonder if every writer reaches a point where they stop seeking out books on writing? For me that point came when I had a series of screenwriting books foisted on me. This book, in particular, I found to be a crass exercise, so much so that I didn't think to review it until I imported my Amazon library and remembered I had it.
It's a complete money-grab. He takes those hacky exercises from the first book, where he shoe-horns movies into the heroes journey, and made a whole book of it.
Pulp Fiction does not fit the heroes journey, and only these hacks have a vested interest in doing so.
You can't create a formula for success. At a Comic-con panel I went to called "How to Break Into Comics The Marvel Way" put it, it's like escaping prison, once you do it, it's way harder for anyone else to do it the same way.
And trying to build a story using these formulas is just going to generate more terrible scripts and movies that all have the same beats that's movie audiences are already getting tired of predicting. These books backwards engineer their crap monomyth skeletons from movies impressionable young screen writers are familiar with (always Star Wars, ALWAYS) and convince you that because they can find some of these beats, ALL movies follow this.
They don't.
Seems to me all you really need to do, at least to meet the Karpuk standard of quality, is to do the following.
1. Make characters.
2. Have them need stuff.
3. Keep it exciting.
4. Increase the excitement as necessary.
5. Stop before it grows tiresome.
6. Avoid being boring at all times.
Tada! And you don't even need a "dark night of the soul" or a "belly of the whale" moment or anything! Seriously, everybody, just stop reading these books.
Write the book you would want to read, and keep doing it until you don't suck at it!
It's a complete money-grab. He takes those hacky exercises from the first book, where he shoe-horns movies into the heroes journey, and made a whole book of it.
Pulp Fiction does not fit the heroes journey, and only these hacks have a vested interest in doing so.
You can't create a formula for success. At a Comic-con panel I went to called "How to Break Into Comics The Marvel Way" put it, it's like escaping prison, once you do it, it's way harder for anyone else to do it the same way.
And trying to build a story using these formulas is just going to generate more terrible scripts and movies that all have the same beats that's movie audiences are already getting tired of predicting. These books backwards engineer their crap monomyth skeletons from movies impressionable young screen writers are familiar with (always Star Wars, ALWAYS) and convince you that because they can find some of these beats, ALL movies follow this.
They don't.
Seems to me all you really need to do, at least to meet the Karpuk standard of quality, is to do the following.
1. Make characters.
2. Have them need stuff.
3. Keep it exciting.
4. Increase the excitement as necessary.
5. Stop before it grows tiresome.
6. Avoid being boring at all times.
Tada! And you don't even need a "dark night of the soul" or a "belly of the whale" moment or anything! Seriously, everybody, just stop reading these books.
Write the book you would want to read, and keep doing it until you don't suck at it!