Save the Cat

Save the Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need is Blake Snyder's 2005 screenwriting manual, "exploring plot structure in mainstream film," and its title is also its emblematic rule: the hero "must do something that makes the audience like them and want them to win," as when Aladdin shares stolen food with hungry kids. The book's famous core is the Blake Snyder Beat Sheet (BS2), fifteen beats from Opening Image and Theme Stated through Catalyst, Midpoint and All Is Lost to Final Image, each pinned to a page number; it "follows classic three-act structure but is more specific," with the acts labeled thesis, antithesis and synthesis.

The full treatment for novelists is the Save the Cat beat sheet; its glossary neighbors are the beat and three-act structure. The standing criticism, Peter Suderman's in Slate, is that the sheet "has taken over Hollywood screenwriting" and hardened into formula; use it as a checklist to interrogate, not a mold.