Write a Screenplay in 15 Steps: A Save the Cat! Course

Turn any idea into a well-structured and compelling 15-Beat story that’s ready to be written as a screenplay! With the popular Save the Cat! approach, you’ll learn the language of storytelling and the universal story structuring principles that are widely used by successful Hollywood screenwriters to craft stories that resonate. This course takes you step by step through the methodology to help you discover, organize, and tighten your story.

What you'll learn:

• How to properly structure a story with the 15 key beats detailed in Save the Cat! -- Blake Snyder’s groundbreaking, time-tested set of storytelling principles used by professional writers throughout Hollywood and around the world.

• How to write an attention-grabbing title and logline – the two basic components of any good movie pitch.

• How to plot a hero’s “transformation” through a journey that will resonate with audiences on a primal and emotional level.

• Understand the narrative differences among the10 genres under which every movie can be categorized.

• Crack the “Magical Midpoint”—the secret of every story’s power.

• Improve the plotting and pacing of your existing and future scripts, novels and stories.

• Discover the plot elements that are present in all great stories.

• How to test and troubleshoot your story idea for viability.

• Create a solid beat sheet that will serve as the blueprint, road map, and “backbone” of your story.

• Gain the ability to analyze movies and novels the same way many storytelling professionals do, and to recognize how these can inspire improvements in your own work.

Requirements:

• A copy of Save the Cat! (Find it on Amazon or any major bookseller.)

• A computer/tablet

• An idea (or many ideas) that you think would make a great story!

This course includes:

• Over 3 hours of on-demand video lectures, written and hosted by award-winning writer/director, Jennifer Zhang

• 10 story structuring worksheets and guides

• Full lifetime access

• Access on mobile and TV

• Certificate of Completion

Course detail:

A good, solid story is a good, solid story no matter the subject matter, page count, or runtime.

And the thing all of us know, and that author and screenwriter Blake Snyder himself admitted --- is that the Save the Cat! methodology is not magic... though it may feel like it when you discover that you've taken an idea and transformed it into a full story that's ready to be written out as a gripping screenplay.

The reason Save the Cat! has been such a driving force behind so many films throughout Hollywood – from acclaimed indies to major blockbusters… is that Blake Snyder simply cracked the code on the basic elements of a good, compelling story that resonates with a wide audience, and then he made this code widely accessible and easily employed by any writer. And that’s the magic of Save the Cat! in a nutshell. And learning it in detail is what you will be embarking on over the next 4 weeks.

This course is very comprehensive. It pulls lessons from all 3 of the books Blake wrote, as well as the blogs, worksheets and other teaching materials he developed… so you’re going to gain a solid understanding of the Save the Cat! principles and be able to apply them right away to your own work. And even if you’re familiar on a basic level with the material, this course will build on your understanding in a valuable, substantive, and thought-provoking way.

Throughout this course, you’re going to learn what makes a good, attention-grabbing movie pitch, and then you’ll be writing your own title and loglines for your ideas. And then the bulk of the course will be focused on learning how to properly develop the 15 beats or plot points that will map out your story as detailed in Save the Cat!. You’re going to take your best idea and put together YOUR beat sheet for the whole story. After that, you’ll be refining this beat sheet until it’s perfect…. and that perfect beat sheet will form the roadmap, the blueprint, and the backbone for your entire script.

A few final notes: this course is designed for screenplays, so all the references will be from movies – all kinds: blockbusters, award-winning films, independent films, animated movies, live actions movies… However, if your plan is to use these lessons to write a story for another medium, all the structuring tips are just as applicable to novels, short films, TV pilots, etc.

Thank you for your interest in this course. We hope you're excited to get started!