The Big Problem With Save The Cat Is That It Doesn't Apply To Every Genre - Daniel Calvisi
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- čas přidán 7. 08. 2023
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In this Film Courage video interview, Script Doctor, Writing Coach, and Author Daniel Calvisi discusses the differences between his approach to storytelling and the Blake Snyder "Save The Cat" method. He critiques Save The Cat, stating that while it made screenplay beats accessible, he disagrees with some of its categorizations.
DANIEL P. CALVISI is a Script Doctor, Writing Coach and the author of Story Maps: How to Write a GREAT Screenplay and Story Maps: TV DRAMA: The Structure of the One-Hour Television Pilot. He is a former Story Analyst for major studios like Twentieth Century Fox, Miramax Films and New Line Cinema. He coaches writers, teaches webinars on writing for film and television and speaks at writing conferences. Many of his clients have worked with the top networks and studios in the industry, such as Netflix, HBO, Warner Brothers, Disney, Sony, ABC, Showtime, Apple TV+ and more. He holds a degree in Film and Television from New York University. He lives in Los Angeles.
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Does Save The Cat work for every genre?
Personally, I would rather have a book that could teach me how NOT to write a movie like "Stop Or My Mom Will Shoot."
Not horror, action, drama, nor plot twist material. I used to use it as a script doctor, but now I follow the string of spaghetti.
To me, it looks like a tool that anyone can use to start learning scriptwriting. It's very reassuring for beginners to use a set structure that tells them exactly how and where to go. So it's great at first. And after you learn the rules, you can start breaking them. I think that somebody who has something to say will want to write a piece that's original and different eventually.
NOTHING does
Doesn't even work for all works in any one genre.
Not discrediting this guy at all but it’s very funny to be like, “save the cat is not it, MY BOOK is” lol
As someone who has learned from many industry readers, but more importantly-I, one, who simply appreciates a good story.
Do this :
If possible and in each scene-Thread in questions that make the reader curious enough to turn the page in hopes to find an answer within the next sequence. Do that for every page that you write to ensure the clear progression of the story, and you will find yourself becoming both the gardener and the architect.
Thanks. Sounds interesting.
The problem is, all these sytems by readers (of course there's a book to sell) are geared toward what sells scripts, not specifically what makes a good, enjoyable story.
Exactly
it seems that people who have it all figured out and sell a method dont have any movies
It's a "those who can't, teach" situation. It proves that there is no magic formula for a great concept, it still comes down to creativity.
How is that relevant? Most writer or filmmakers can't analyze their own stuff objectively, it often takes viewers from a distance to see patterns and come up with these theories. That's absolutely normal, not a mark of incompetence.
@@RM_VFXblake snyder made millions of dollars selling movie scripts and was a full-time screenwriter. I wouldnt say he "can't."
Now "can" (could) he do it at the highest level? No. But he was good enough to make a living at it.
I'm studying it now after reading a lot of other books. I'm not a professional writer, but i WAS a professional painter for 11 years. (As in, I made a living making paintings for 11 years -- enough money to buy a house, go on vacations, have two kids, not be in debt, etc, but not rich). So I'm in the arts but not this exact field. IMO, it seems like a good way to understand how things are structures. There are similar ideas in painting, and I'm sure music. I think what it lacks is what John Truby talks about with having philosophical conflict as the theme/meaning of the story that ties everything together.
I'd love to see something change with story structure 'rules'.
Most shows and movies are SOOOO boring these days, no surprises, no matter how far-fetched, the structure just telegraphs the same old yayayada.
Story structure is useful and soothing, in a sense, to the audience. However, when you want them unsettled, I feel that just going sideways or straight down works best.
Yes, OP. Far too often people that follow formulas like Save The Cat and similar hamstring themselves trying to stay within the confines of those "beats" rigidly. That removes any chance at nuance.
Yes, OP. Far too often people that follow formulas like Save The Cat and similar hamstring themselves trying to stay within the confines of those "beats" rigidly. That removes any chance at nuance.
I distinctly remember Blake snyder pointing out that that he is wasn’t telling you why his beat sheet makes good movies, but strictly telling his readers at that time this is what resonates with Hollywood producers/ script readers for getting a movie noticed.
when i hear save the cat, i have to think about it because my best script has to do very much with actually saving a cat. Its a story based alot on my childhood. When i was 5 or 6 years old my drunk angry dad threw my cat through the kitchen window. I have also worked very hard in the past 20 years to save as many cats as i can.
a true hero
@@vantablack6288 thanks, i agree
Dan's Story Map approach is incredible. Seriously the best I've ever read/used.
Thanks for posting Jim! We know coming from you that the praise is earned!
Id love to hear your opinion on using beats, 1, and two, how one would use them with a multiple genre script. The future of story telling.
I haven't finished the video, but just the title alone resonates with me. But I don't know where to switch to something like the Hero's Journey, for example, whenever I think of a story, but I don't want to write something with no structure neither. I'm still learning though.
You may find this video helpful - czcams.com/video/OPxxJ2wBNTA/video.html
@@filmcourage Thank you 🙌
I was just researching this earlier today, here's a helpful variation on the hero's journey that, for me, inspires more than it limits creativity
Stasis
Establishing the world - the status quo.
Trigger
Promise to take the story somewhere
‘Hale knew, before he had been in Brighton three hours, that they meant to murder him. With his inky fingers and his bitten nails, his manner cynical and nervous, anybody could tell he didn’t belong…’ Now I’m hooked. Who is Hale? Why do they intend to murder him? Are they going to succeed?
The Quest
What’s your character’s desire and how does it drive the story?
Surprise
There’ll be surprises along the way - unexpected events that heighten the drama.
When I write I know what might happen, but then I ask the 'What If' question. What if this happened? The 'What If' question helps you to undermine your own expectations of where the story is going and how things will unfold.
Critical Choice
This is where the protagonist makes a critical choice and commits to the quest or accepts the new reality.
The Climax
A novel will usually build up to some sort of crescendo. It doesn’t have to be a big battle or a matter of life and death, it can just be something intimate between two people but it needs to be consequential for the characters on some level.
Reversals
This is where we’re surprising the reader again. The worst thing that could happen, happens.
Resolution
A resolution doesn’t always have to be happy, but it must be emotionally satisfying.
This is where theme comes in. Structure is important and it makes you think: how am I going to finish this? But theme is how you make the ending stay with the reader long after they close the book.
The Heroes Journey is extremely flawed and doesn't hold up to scrutiny, there are better structures out there. I see so many new writers I see buy into Campbell to their own detriment.
There's a common flaw with all of these story frameworks: They reinforce the idea that you don't need to understand your audience in order to write for them. Still, I do love to read these sorts of craft books. 😄
Here are some mistakes screenwriters make with Save The Cat Beat Sheet - czcams.com/video/AKezNZUO2b4/video.html
A couple of points. Yes, films in the 1970s did tend to be more leisurely, but that was after decades in which they had usually been much more brisk. (films of the late 30s and 1940s tend to tear along) I credit and/or blame the influence of the French New Wave for the slowing down i.e. much more general messing about (temps mort) and the notion that if something happens more slowly it is automatically more profound.
My other point is that the more detailed a screenplay system is, then the more each element should be taken skeptically as a possibly useful suggestion and less like holy writ.
How wonderful is this. Very helpful, instructive.
opening image is important. even if you 'forget it', it could be the reason you even make it to the next scene
I use a combination of the 24 plot point structure where I divide the story into four acts by splitting the second act in half with elements found within Save the Cat.
I think the thing that people need to understand is that these are guides. I had a 150 pg script make semifinals of a competition this year and the Hollywood rule tends to be no more than 120. The notes I received was that the story kept the reader engaged, it was a real page turner with well established stakes.
The point is, its good to know the rules so you can break and bend them to your creative will.
I kind of wish he gave examples of what compelling beats looks like. The opening Wonder Woman 1984 is a great example of cliche on-the-nose storytelling, so how could you change that scene into something compelling?
NOTHING applies to every genre. STC probably is LESS applicable to more genres than anything. But that is not the Big Problem. The Big Problem is that writers fall for it and ASSUME it applies. Usually, it doesn't. The onus is not on the concept. It's on the writer.
There are fewer things that are helpful in STC than in many other concepts, and if you allow yourself to assume it applies, there is more danger than in many others. There are no shortcuts. STC will not let you leapfrog the artistic judgment calls. You have to do the due diligence of making those calls yourself, based on what you, as the artist, decide. Every single one of them.
I have Dan's Story Maps for TV Drama. There's an especially important little comment that applies to the midpoint and how its contents apply to ending. Didn't appreciate it until I saw how it applied to the the Garak - Sisko scene at the end of In The Pale Moonlight (DS9 season 6). A review of other scripts for DS9 have the same effect.
There is no magic bullet book. You should read multiple books and find the tools that work for you. When you build something, you don't just use a hammer. That's the problem I have with any of these screenplay "How To" books. Also, I think Film Courage should do a segment about what people really make as a screenwriter. People have unrealistic expectations on having a career that pays the bills year round.
Please do an interview with john truby for his new book anatomy of genre
Standing on the shoulders of giants allows us to seeing new possibilities, taking an axe to them...
Facts!
I am reminded of record producer Mickie Most who was being criticised by some A&R dweeb from EMI. Most stated "If you know so bloody much, where's your Lear Jet? Mine's at City Airport - but where's yours?"
STC is now in its 40th reprint and the 15 beats fit every good story ever told from The New Testament to Pinocchio, from Christmas Carol to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, from Fargo to King Lear. STC applies to every story that WORKS!
Mickie Most? I was more of a Tony Hatch fan. 😆
Breaks down the opening of Breaking Bad then says see I can’t remember it so having a powerful opening image doesn’t matter! You just told us the opening image! What other level of memory are you expecting! And you literally have read hundreds of scripts & watched hundreds of films 🎥 how much memory in your head is doing to go to a show that wasn’t yours! Opening image is important period. Just cause you don’t use it in your little map doesn’t lessen its importance. Show me a great movie with a terrible opening image -
I’m trying to do novels, and while I get the idea that you shouldn’t hamstring yourself to one beat sheet for your stories, I think, especially for beginners, the sheets should be followed simply because you’re not yet good enough to know how and when to bend or break them. Isaac Asimov had the ability to stop and have philosophical discussions in his books, but he knew how to do so in ways that didn’t annoy the reader. Because as a writer he’d developed that sense of pacing. He knew better than to do something like put the information and discussion of psych-history in the middle of the action. A beginner would not yet have discovered this. He might take years to figure it out. And until you learn the proper ways that rules can be bent or broken, it’s better to stick with a good framework that allows you to tell the story in a consistent way that works.
The best advice I’ve ever gotten in any art I got from a ceramics teacher in junior college. First learn the proper way to do things. Learn the techniques properly. Learn to construct the ideal form. Then you can learn to break the rules.
Snyder said another character should state the theme, which the protagonist won't understand.
In my story the main character stated the theme as a guiding principle her parents taught her, but she doesn't understand that she's not actually following it yet.
Story beats and story maps are just two ways of doing the same thing. Laying out the fundamental elements of stories as have been used for thousands of years. The elements are the same, but the two methods give an author two different ways of thinking about them. And that gives us more ways to find a framework that resonates with us.
Surely the opening image, isn't so much about laying out the concept of your story, for a reader, but declaring, visually, what genre you are working in, the mood, the tone, the pace, of the film, perhaps even the language, for the viewer. Sometimes, mumblecore for instance, you are stating your budget level, so the viewer can adjust their expectations. If your film starts in black and white, handheld, grainy 16mm, then you are extremely unlikely to see fantastic visual effects and massive explosions at the climax of the movie.
What DOES apply to EVERY genre? NONE!
*If you are forgetting the first thing you read at the top of page 1 when you're half way down....then you shouldn't be reader.*
Love it when the talk is purely marketing schlock.
All these things work and have their flaws. the only thing i found in here that doesnt add up is the whole if he personally cant remember something its not important. memory varies from person to person and most of us forget really important things after we watch films so thats a silly argument about lets say, the opening image. opening image and of course final image, even if technically not a beat are extremely important. i seen a whole instagram page dedicated to both and its amazing.
As is demonstrated via slight variations in cuts and/or deleted scenes, of the likes of 24 and Terminator 2, what the audience gets is not that which is rendered in stone. By extension, it is possible to take a movie or TV episode, and recut and re-audio it, to make an entirely new piece of work. So . . . don't get too obsessed about the details that apply to only one possible iteration :-) I foresee a time, via the assistance of AI systems, for one to have the option to be free of the one size fits all approach.
Crazy part 27
I always roll my eyes when they have a jerk hero do one nice thing and think "oh, I saved the cat, now we're good!" Lol, that's not what they meant.
I've been struggling with save the cat. The very title is referring to an act that makes the character likeable. A publisher told me that my book was great, but I needed to use save the cat trick to give the reader an affinity with the character as early as possible. But I disagreed and replied the following. And I just desperatly hope someoen can help me with this problem.
It feels too obvious, forced and formulaic, and EVERYONE is doing it, and it's very vey boring. Charles Bukowski never had his character save a cat. It never happens in John Fante's Bandini Quartet, or Jack Kerouac's Dharma Bums or any of the authors write in that beat style. So what I want to know is how did those authors create an affinity that we "need" to have with a main character? Because as far as I can tell, they didn't.
If I had my character simply find an abandoned chick and raise it and it flies off by the end of the prologue, is that really creating any depth to the narrative? In John Fante's book the kid gets a BBgun and goes down the beach to massacre hundreds of crabs, it was an evil act, yet I wanted to read more and more.. What did he do differently that has the effect of "saving the cat," so to speak? Albert Camus' character starts his very first line with "Mother died today. Or it could have been yesterday." And it goes on with him having zero concern for his mother's death, just inconvenienced and bored.. Why did I want to read more? Charles Bukowski's character was a horrible and quite nasty person who masturbated as a vouyer and never redeemed himself, he was an alcoholic and treated women badly, yet people devour his books. John Fante's character was cruel and heartless a lot of the time, even as a child in the first book he was proud of his father for cheating on his mum. These stories were compelling despite being in complete opposition to this save the cat forumale that has made it onto the current wave of literary popularism in recent years. How is that the case, in your opinion?
There must be a more genuine solution. Something with an authenticity that doesn't require some act that reflects a Jesus quality. Like, I'm not writing a script for a Hollywood movie where you just insert hero name here, pick an outfit, choose a weapon, and blam you got the next batman/wolverine/superman/gladiator/braveheart so long as you follow these bullet points. It's a beat-style memoir of a busker overcoming hallucinations of his dead brother by facing his shadow self through music. He takes drugs. He's not a hero. He's not spiderman. He doesn't rescue cats. So how can writers do what Charle Bukowski and John Fante and Jack Kerouac did? Or do you feel like times have changed now, and writers should just use the cookie-cutter, paint-by-numbers kind of thing because it ticks the boxes that accept manuscripts into the current trend?
Blake is no longer with us, to offer a defence, other than that which is -- to my dim recall -- covered in Save The Cat Strikes Back :-)
Careful pumpkin 45
Says he doesn’t believe in the concept of an opening image; explains his alternative exactly the same way 🤦🏾♀️
Vince Gilligan introduces the character as "under pants man" for the first few pages before we know its Walt.
Hard jet 99
Hes talking the talk and walking the walk.He must have the goods. This can be a problem if you take advice from a writer who hasnt been produced yet. Definitely if they disagree in a significant way with one who has. Beware the bald barber who sells U a hair restorer
there's no book or framework that will ever work for all situations
there's at least three books that will work for all situations
Enthusiastic water 78
This hammer doesn’t work in the pool. Okay.
You SHOULDN’T kill yourself coming up with a great opening image?
Uh, what??
You should kill yourself over every freaking page, man 😂
What else do you have to do? Do you really want to read a script where the writer isn’t REALLY THINKING about how to start their script?
Sure, you can say it’s a bonus to have a great opening image, but to say don’t kill yourself it? That’s insane. I will 100% deliver an interesting opening image that tries to set the tone for the script even if YOU don’t remember it.
Also, a reader is different than an audience. A strong visual opening will 100% stick with an audience. And the fact that most don’t seem to might be a problem.
Think of your favorite movies. I’d hope that first image would stick with you. The tumble weed drifting through Los Angeles. A first person POV of something cutting through a murky ocean with an ominous score. An unseen, dirty man constructing a metal and leather glove with knives for fingers.
Cat scratch fever.Check it and see
Catch scratch fever! Look at me!