Save the Cat!®

If you’re like me — and don’t you think that’s a scary thought right there — then this is the time of year you like best.

It’s trial run week, BEFORE the new year starts, when you get to test out your resolutions, try them on for size, and see how they fit.

This year I resolve to write another book: the sequel to Save The Cat! So does it surprise you that I’m already three chapters into it?

I also resolve to help you sell your screenplay! That’s right, it’s true. Having sold lots of them and knowing what a great feeling that is, I want you to have the same experience creating movies that entertain, delight, and enlighten. After all, we’re in this because we have been given these pictures in our heads, and the ability to enunciate them.

In 2005 I wrote Save The Cat! and began doing seminars teaching its methods. It’s the most fun I’ve ever had. Students come in with all different opinions. Some are skeptical of “the rules” of storytelling I’m giving them, rules that have taken years — years I tell you! — to convince me of their value. I am a bear not for Hollywood, but for good storytelling! And when you write something that meets “the rules,” everyone comes running.

In the seminars I conducted this year, the most skeptical students became my method’s biggest supporters — and are starting to send me some remarkable screenplays. Seriously, good stuff. Scripts that will knock Hollywood on its ear because they’re so well told.

But I want you all to write one too. I want each of you to write and sell a script this year! Can we do it? Why, of course we can!

I will likely be coming to your town this year. I want to meet you, hear your ideas, help you succeed. Use this website to pitch me your ideas. I want to hear loglines, beat sheets, and even little hints of stories that are circling your brain so we can figure out if it’s just an idea or if it’s something that can be shaped into more.

To get us started, here’s a little exercise: it’s called The Blake Snyder T-bar Method. It’s something my buddy screenwriter Mike Cheda keeps touting to others, saying it’s the best thing I ever came up with for generating new movie ideas. And it’s so simple:

Draw a “T” on a piece of paper. Now in the first column make a list of protaganists. Make their occupations, characters, or quirks definite. In the second column make a list of antagonists. The opposite of the person in the first column. The ensuing conflict will be obvious — or should be. And since conflict is the basis of all drama — comic or serious — a flood of situations should come into your imaginations in which these two characters face off. But also the lists of antagonists and protaganists can be mixed and matched! Try that. See if the “bad guy” you thought linked only with one “good guy” might not make a better story with another.

Report back to me if this works for you. It should. It’s how I started to write several ideas that I went on to sell.

In 2006, it’s your turn.

TIP OF THE DAY: This comes from Tracey Jackson, my longtime friend and writer of The Guru, among other great screenplays. She is THE funniest human in Hollywood — not to mention one of the best I’ve ever seen “in the room” pitching ideas. Tracey told me one she tells her class at New School in NYC. It’s simple: when re-reading your pages, make sure you never repeat a word, phrase, or even a similar sounding word or phrase. Re-read your pages and see if you have this habit. Now’s the time to resolve to stop!