Save the Cat

Process

	Status	Items
Highlights	Done	See section below
Claims	None
Questions	None
Output	None

Highlights

Location 82

Save the Cat, The Pope in the Pool, Double Mumbo Jumbo, Laying Pipe, Too Much Marzipan a.k.a. Black Vet, Watch Out for That Glacier!, and Covenant of the Arc.

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Location 318

The point is that a good logline, in addition to pulling you in, has to offer the promise of more.

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Location 556

The 10 types of movies I have categorized

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Location 616

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

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Location 717

first the “buddies” hate each other. (Where would they have to go if they didn’t?) But their adventure together brings out the fact that they need each other; they are, in essence, incomplete halves of a whole. And realizing this leads to even more conflict. Who can tolerate needing anybody?

✏️ Gilgamesh is the original buddy story.
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Location 961

trick is to create heroes who: > Offer the most conflict in that situation > Have the longest way to go emotionally and… > Are the most demographically pleasing

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Location 1195

THE BLAKE SNYDER BEAT SHEET

✏️ Useful basic outline
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Location 1354

The fun and games section is that part of the screenplay that, I like to say, provides: The promise of the premise.

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Location 1403

The rule is: It’s never as good as it seems to be at the midpoint and it’s never as bad as it seems at the All Is Lost point. Or vice versa!

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Location 1441

At the All Is Lost moment, stick in something, anything that involves a death. It works every time.

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Location 1631

Row #1 is Act One (pages 1-25); row #2 represents the first half of Act Two up to the midpoint (25-55); row #3 is the midpoint to the Break into Act Three (55-85); and row #4 is Act Three to the movie’s final image (85-110).

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Location 1665

I always try to figure out the major turns first.

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Location 1742

+/- sign represents the emotional change you must execute in each scene. Think of each scene as a mini-movie. It must have a beginning, middle, and an end. And it must also have something happen that causes the emotional tone to change drastically either from + to – or from – to + just like the opening and final images of a movie.

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Location 1753

The other symbol, ><, denotes conflict. To understand what the conflict is, I always like to think of a scene like this: As the lights come up, two people walk into a room from opposite doors, meet in the middle, and begin to struggle past each other to reach the door on the other side. They each enter the scene with a goal and standing in their way is an obstacle. That’s conflict.

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Location 1762

Only one conflict per scene, please. One is plenty.

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Location 1816

Ready for Your Deep-Sea Dive” Checklist:

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Location 1876

“A screenwriter must be mindful of getting the audience ‘in sync’ with the plight of the hero from the very start.”

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Location 1891

When your hero is slightly damaged goods, or even potentially unlikable, make his enemy even more horrible.

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Location 2096

guys are those who willingly accept change and see it as a positive force. Bad guys are those who refuse to change, who

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Location 2285

More must be revealed along every step of the plot about your characters and what all this action means. To that end, you, the writer of this plot, must show how it affects your characters as you go along. You must show flaws, reveal treacheries, doubts, and fears of the heroes — and threats to them. You must expose hidden powers, untapped resources, and dark motivations for the bad guys that the hero doesn’t know about. Show facets of that spinning diamond of plot, let the reflected light amaze the audience.

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Location 2335

Then Mike showed me this simple Bad Dialogue Test: Take a page of your script and cover up the names of the people speaking. Now read the repartee as it goes back and forth between two or more characters. Can you tell who is speaking without seeing the name above the dialogue?

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Location 2426

It Broken?” Test: Does my hero lead the action? Is he proactive at every stage of the game and fired up by a desire or a goal? Do my characters “talk the plot”? Am I saying things a novelist would say through my characters instead of letting it be seen in the action of my screenplay? Is the bad guy bad enough? Does he offer my hero the right kind of challenge? Do they both belong in this movie? Does my plot move faster and grow more intense after the midpoint? Is more revealed about the hero and the bad guy as we come in to the Act Three finale? Is my script one-note emotionally? Is it all drama? All comedy? All sadness? All frustration? Does it feel like it needs, but does not offer, emotion breaks? Is my dialogue flat? After doing the Bad Dialogue Test does it seem like everyone talks the same? Can I tell one character from another just by how he or she speaks? Do my minor characters stand out from each other, and are they easy to differentiate by how they look in the mind’s eye? Is each unique in speech, look, and manner? Does the hero’s journey start as far back as it can go? Am I seeing the entire length of the emotional growth of the hero in this story? Is it primal? Are my characters, at their core, reaching out for a primal desire — to be loved, to survive, to protect family, to exact revenge?

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