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Wednesday, 4 August 2010
Blake Snyder wrote over 75 screenplays for Hollywood before his death, and captured many of his best methods of building screenplays in his seminal work, Save the Cat.
In STC he sets out a checklist of four items to determine whether the "hero" of your screenplay "needs more oomph".
Let's assume that a politican who wishes to become the prime minister of Canada needs to have a high HQ (hero-quotient – you heard that first from The Cat!), and that the checklist could be validly applied to any such politician. How does Michael Ignatieff shape up as Hero?
Snyder's first test in STC is: Is your hero's goal clearly stated? Is what your hero wants obvious to you and the audience, Snyder asks.
The Cat would not give Ignatieff more than 3 out of a possible 10 for this feature. Snyder's advice to writers is to "make sure the goal is spoken aloud and restated in action and words" throughout the story.
Ignatieff needs a bit of work here.
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