This is the one. Forget all the books you've ever read on screenwriting, this is the best one, the one that's going to turn you into the next Quentin Tarantino... except that's what they all say...
Screenwriting guru books are textbooks usually written by an experienced writer for film and television so they may impart their wisdom onto the new generation of up and coming talent. They can cover anything from the craft and theory behind good storytelling as a whole or a more practical approach.
I tend to go in and out of favour with these books from moment to moment. Either they are the magical answer to all my problems or I'm a chapter away from throwing them out of the window.
I have often caught myself wondering if I'm wasting my time with them. Will reading this really make me a better writer? Do they actually work?
So today I am aiming to answer my own question by looking at three major screenwriting books and assessing what effect they've had on my own writing.
1. Save The Cat
This is the one I've wanted to throw out of the window the most. I'm sure Blake Snyder is a great dude and there are some genuinely useful and practical tips in this book but his writing tone just makes him seem like a bit of a dick. His insistence that certain events must happen on specific pages because "it just does. Do it!" makes him seem arrogant and full of himself. I don't always disagree with him, he could have just written it a bit nicer!
Sometimes his bluntness works to his advantage. I don't want to be sifting through hundreds of pages to find the piece of information I'm looking for and sometimes I want "do this", "don't do this" advice to stop me getting up in my own head. Save the Cat is a great book to knock you off your high horse and make you think about what it is you're actually writing.
I find myself reading these books to procrastinate on actually writing. I never had that problem with Save The Cat. It's a quick dip in, dip out, kind of deal and for that it might be the most productive book on this list!
As for the advice itself. There are two main philosophies that come from Save The Cat. The first is the name of the book. The Save The Cat scene is a sequence at the beginning of a film where a character will perform a task that will endear them to the audience and make them want to follow the character, like saving a cat from a tree. It doesn't always have to be something good it just has to be something that gets the audience on-board with who they're going to be following from very early on. I have used this technique in any feature film script I've attempted since reading the book and I can say with certainty it's improved those vital first five pages needed to grab the audience's attention.
The second is the Blake Snyder Beat Sheet. This is essentially a break down tool that outlines a basic screenplay structure. Everyone hails the Beat Sheet as being the best thing about this book. I disagree. Although I've started using it for planning in some cases I've found myself modifying it, a LOT. I don't think writing to a beat sheet is a good way to write I think it limits creativity. Applying the beat sheet to a story after the writer has already come up with a basic narrative themselves will help identify gaps and lulls in your story. It's a good tool but not to be depended on in my case. Early attempts to use it have resulted in a rushed thought process where I came up with plot points just to fill in a box and not because of narrative purpose.
2. Story
I really love this book. Story is more the theory of screenwriting than it is telling you how to write and covers a much wider, more flexible range of storytelling. This book is about craft and principles and understanding conventions and why they are the way they are, telling you what the rules are so you can break them effectively.
The biggest issue is this thing is a brick and the contents page is not very helpful!
I know that seems like a strange problem to have but to find anything specific in the book you have to first search the index because the sub-chapters aren't in the contents page. This isn't a book you can use to find quick answers, it's a book you have to read through fully and absorb and if you're a slow a reader like I am that can be frustrating no-matter how useful the information.
There is an audio version of this book but I would advise against that over a physical copy. The diagrams McKee uses are incredibly helpful in understanding what he means as some of his descriptions tend to be a bit more on the wordy side. It is a much nicer read with a cup of coffee though!
I'm really glad I read Story before Save The Cat because it taught me to take Save The Cat with a grain of salt. Humans have been telling stories ever since cavemen started drawing on walls and we are exposed to them every day, in the news, gossip, films, books, tv, our facebook feeds. Story taught me the craft so I'm able to take a more instinctual approach to planning and that first draft. It's all about understanding what you're doing or not doing.
3. The Anatomy Of Story
For a lot of people John Truby is like the happy medium of the writing world. He's all about craft over dictation but he's more practical than McKee. Unfortunately Truby didn't impact me much, probably because he wasn't telling me anything I didn't know by now, just worded differently.
The step by step approach to learning is definitely more practical than Story but his points never go into the detail that McKee's do and at times I felt like I was getting half definitions. I also found his writing style the hardest to read through. Snyder writes quick and to the point, McKee is more academic but never to the extent that he bored me. John Truby unfortunately bored me.
There isn't much else I can say about this one. I think it had the least impact because it was the last one I read or maybe because it's the one that felt the most like a textbook. However if you're not prepared to wade through 419 pages of McKee then I would definitely pair this with reading Save The Cat.
4. Do they work?
If there's anything I've learnt from these books it's that reading them does not make you a screenwriter, writing does and IT'S HARD! I've been trying to write a feature for about a year now but strangely I've made way more progress away from this "advise" than I ever did turning to them for solutions. It can be easy to get wrapped up in methods and structures and wanting to write something "good" over writing anything at all. What none of them tell you is to embrace the madness of your own brain and see what you can learn by running with your own idea. Structure, methods, making something "good" is for draft 2!
That isn't to say they haven't helped me though. Guru books are all about learning the craft and helping you figure out how to tell the story you want to tell. The best way to use them is to read them and store all that in the back of your head. Don't think about them when you write, but think about them when you read back because that helps bring purpose to your writing and makes for more constructive re-drafting.
No book in the world is going to make you a great writer only practice and persistence. The guru's shouldn't be there to intimidate you or dictate to you, they are there to assist your idea.