Although this book is geared toward screenwriters, it's also been very popular for novelists, who can take away many lessons about story structure.
From the Back Cover:
He’s made millions of dollars selling screenplays to Hollywood and now screenwriter Blake Snyder tells all. “Save the Cat” is just one of Snyder’s many ironclad rules for making your ideas more marketable and your script more satisfying – and saleable, including:
- The four elements of every winning logline
- The 10 genres that every movie ever made can be categorzed by–and why they’re important to your story
- Why you hero must serve your idea
- Mastering the beats
Jami’s Review:
This book isn’t my favorite for learning story structure (and it’s geared toward screenwriters rather than novelists), but it is a good first introduction to story structure and is a classic that literally “wrote the book” on many story structure ideas and strategies (like the concept of beats and beat sheets).
It reveals audience (or in our case, reader) reasons for why stories are structured the way they are. Don’t miss my post about how writers of any length stories can use this structure.
FTC Disclosure: Some of the links on this site are “affiliate links.” Items purchased through these links result in an affiliate commission for the site owner.
