I finished reading Blake Snyder's guide on screenwriting entitled "Save the Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need." While I initially found Snyder's casual writing style a breath of fresh air in it's simplicity and laid-back voice, after awhile I have to admit it did start to become more grating. Mostly this just occurred when he was trying to be funny, but really he was just coming across as being over-opinionated to the point where he was sounding a little full of himself.
For example, this happens a lot whenever he's bashing the movie
Signs (which he does like to do a lot). Okay, so the movie may have it's flaws, but the way he just so unabashedly rips in it as if he is the ultimate say in what is good and bad in films kinda got to me. He even goes as far as to encourage anyone who disagrees with him about the film to challenge him via email.
The thing that's probably most unique about his screenwriting guide when compared the vast amount of other books on the subject that are available, is his quirky examples for remembering certain rules when writing a film. The title of this blog is a mashing of five of these examples. As silly as they sound, they really do work for remembering the rules of screenwriting. I remember studying for vocab tests in high school, and how a trick I'd use to memorize the troublesome words was to come up with a phrase or trick to remember them by. This tactic, in theory, is exactly the same as Snyder's technique for remembering such rules as: in order to make your protagonist likable, have them do something at the beginning akin to "saving a cat." I like his goofy examples, because it truly does help me memorize the rules he lays out.
No comments:
Post a Comment