Recommended: 'Save The Cat Goes to The Movies'.

Lately I've been reading some of the screenwriting books that I've managed to gather over the years. I have tried to find out which books in my library are the ones that I would recommend the most for others to read.

In total, I think I have like fifteen to twenty books that are primarily about screenwriting and how movies are supposed to be written. Over the years I have managed to buy almost all the 'important' books that are out there.

Yet, at least in my opinion the best screenwriting book out there is very likely Blake Snyder's 'Save The Cat Goes to The Movies'. This book is very good when it comes to understanding how storytelling structure works.

One of the reasons that Snyder's 'Save The Cat' is so good is that it intentionally keeps things as simple as possible. Unlike most screenwriting books out there, it doesn't make writing look like it's rocket science.

Instead, 'Save The Cat' manages to pay attention to structural plot points that are clear but not too strict or too restrictive. It concentrates on plot points and story beats that can be found from almost every quality screenplay.

These story beats are:

1. Opening Image
2. Theme Stated
3. Set-up
4. Catalyst
5. Debate
6. Break into Two
7. B story
8. Fun and Games
9. Midpoint
10. Bad Guys Close In
11. All is Lost
12. Dark Night of the Soul
13. Break into Three
14. Finale
15. Final Image

Using these plot points, the book breaks down the structure of 50 different movies from 10 different genres. It explains the structure behind movies like Alien, Die Hard, Forrest Gump, Spider-man 2 and Napoleon Dynamite among other films.

In my opinion, these film examples are entertaining, super easy to read and don't require that much time or effort. You get tons of insight just by picking one example from the book and studying the film's story structure.

At least in my case, it has made thinking about movies easier without making it too dull or too academic. It gives you the keys to appreciate good movies and also makes it easier to notice problems with films that don't work.

I mean, I can only speak for myself, but had I not read the book, I for example wouldn't have noticed many of the problems and flaws with Pixar's 'Inside Out'' that had to do with its almost non-existing inciting incident.

That same way, reading this book also gave me the opportunity to appreciate the many good things about 'The Big Short'. Without 'Save The Cat', I wouldn't be as aware of the movie's many strengths in its award winning screenplay.

In any case, when it comes to this book as a whole, I believe that Blake Snyder's 'Save The Cat Goes to The Movies' is a must purchase for pretty much anyone who's interested in screenwriting or storytelling in general. 

As far as I'm concerned, you need to have this screenwriting guide in your library, because not only is the book well written, insightful and full of substance - but it's also a book that keeps you entertained throughout its content.

You don't really need to practice joke writing.

It was a couple of days ago when Ken Levine, an award winning writer wrote on his blog and asked his readers to write punchlines. He wanted his readers to complete his sentence (in link) and make it as funny as possible.

As it turned out, a lot of his loyal readers were more than willing to help and gave a lot of different suggestions. I think there were more than a hundred and fifty entries that were sent by his blog's regular followers.

Yet, the problem with this comedy improv exercise was that it just wasn't good at all. Not only were all the 150+ suggestions pretty lame, it's hard to believe that anyone learned about comedy writing from the exercise.

When it comes to this 'comedy improv' exercise not being useful, it's mostly because its premise was so bad. I honestly can't see what exactly is inspiring or motivating about writing 'funny' material based on your girlfriend seeing other men.

At least in my opinion, comedy writing is supposed to be about things that could make us feel good about our lives. It should be about lifting our spirits and giving us hope that tomorrow things are going to be okay.

In my opinion, comedy is not supposed to be about being mean or trying to come up with stuff that might hurt us. Comedy writing almost never is supposed to be about things that could make us feel worse about our lives.

Besides, what's really the point with coming up with these kinds of 'jokes' anyway? At least in my view, comedy in most cases really isn't that much about writing clever punchlines or writing 'funny' stuff like that.

Instead, good comedy writing should be about the story and storytelling. It should be about paying attention to the big picture, being able to see the forest for the trees and not getting too bogged down in the minutiae.

Aleast in my opinion, practicing writing 'jokes' like these in most cases is just a waste of time. I have no idea why someone with writing talent would try to come up with those punchlines or take part in comedy improv workshops like these.

As far as I'm concerned, most of the time we shouldn't worry too much about getting our jokes right. In most cases, we should worry about the story, because that's where almost all the bigger problems are going to be.

The need to show how good you are as a writer.

A couple of days ago I decided that since I didn't have anything better to do, I could perhaps check what kind of writing competitions there were out there. I thought that it wouldn't hurt to see whether some new competitions had popped up lately.

The reason I was somewhat curious about competitions was because I had a script that I had thought about submitting. In my opinion, one of my Modern Family scripts was just too good not to be evaluated by professional reviewers.

So as I kept searching for contests, it didn't take more than a couple of minutes, before I noticed that 'Final Draft' had a new competition. Their writing contest also had a category for my Modern Family script too.

To make things even more interesting for me, this was a competition that was still open for submissions. If I was willing to pay a late entry fee, I would be able to take part as long as I would submit before July 15th this year.

So knowing that there was still time to enter, I couldn't really resist the temptation and decided to give the competition a shot. I thought that pretty much anything could happen and that I wouldn't really have that much to lose anyway.

After all, the worst thing that could happen is that I wouldn't get back the money that I would spend to enter the competition. That wouldn't really be the end of the world and wouldn't get me too depressed either.

In any case, when it comes to the script that I submitted, I do have to confess that the spec isn't actually 'new'. That is because this Modern Family script was written almost three years ago when I still had the motivation to write for television.

The reason that I wanted to send it now is that last time I rushed it to a competition and I wasn't prepared. Even though the script did place in the contest, I hadn't made sure that there wouldn't be any problems with it.

This time however, I'm fairly confident that the script is potentially good enough to win the competition. In my opinion, this script shows me at my very best as a writer and shows what I'm capable of when I bring my A-game.

In any case, I'm going to keep you updated when it comes to the competition. There should be some news about the spec's progress in a couple of months, since 'Final Draft's' first qualifying round is going to be in September.

All in all, I'm definitely feeling optimistic about my chances in the competition. Perhaps this could finally be the moment when I'll have my lucky break, even though I've learned to expect the worst when it comes to contests like these.

Compassion as a source of entertainment.

In my opinion, a lot of writers seem to think that in order to be entertaining as a writer, you need to try to appear as cool as possible. They think that you need to be edgy and that showing awareness and empathy towards others isn't really that needed.

Personally speaking, I have never understood this approach at all. In my opinion by far the most important thing about being a good writer is that you show compassion to your characters so that your audience might care.

In any case, in order to hopefully give an example on how to write stuff that is both full of compassion and entertainment, let's take a look at an episode of one of my favorite television shows that was created by my favorite writer, David E. Kelley. 

In this case, we're talking about 'The Practice', a legal drama that managed to win multiple Emmy awards - including the best drama series - during its eight year run. This show was not only known for its entertainment values but also for its compassion.

Very likely my favorite 'entertainment through compassion' moment of all time happened during the show's final season, when the series gave us a new lead character, a sleazy, yet a good hearted lawyer, named Alan Shore. 

As his first case as a defense lawyer on the show - played wonderfully by the great James Spader - Alan Shore had to take a poor client who was suspected for committing a sexual assault on a female business executive.

At face value, this storyline didn't seem like one where 'entertainment' or 'compassion' would be the first thing in your mind. It's hard to imagine that you would feel for a person who had committed a crime against a woman.

Yet, it didn't take that long in the episode before you started to get second thoughts about the case and started to feel for the suspect in question. Things definitely weren't like one might have expected at first here.

That is that, the poor suspect's crime in this case hadn't been that bad. His illegal act was that he had publicly kissed the female executive on the office floor of the company as an act of  revenge and to get even with her.

That is because shortly before the sexual assault, the female in question had berated the suspect outside the office building for being a dirty, smelly worker. She had no compassion whatsoever for this man, who also happened to be a homeless person.

To make the situation even more humiliating for the man, his ten year old daughter had just happened to be close by when the berating happened. This man had been extremely humiliated and for no 'real' reason at all.

So when the story progressed, even though you wouldn't had thought at first, you couldn't help but to root for the blue collar guy. You couldn't help but to feel empathy for this homeless worker who was now in trouble.

After all, when you think about it, the worst that happened to this upper class female was that her 'embarrassment' would last only a couple of days or a week. Her co-workers wouldn't think about the incident that much and would forget it soon.

On the other hand, the humiliation that our homeless blue collar worker went through in front of his ten 10 year old daughter might even last a lifetime. It might well be that his daughter would never be able to forget what had happened.

This emotional aspect of the case was pretty much what Alan Shore's character emphasized when he gave his passionate closing argument to the court. The jury had to feel that sentencing the man for that crime would have simply been wrong.

Fortunately, at the end of the episode, the jury did manage to find our unlikely protagonist not guilty of the crime that he was accused of. He was let go and you were finally able to breath in relief that there was still some justice left in this world.

In any case, after the episode ended, all I could think was that the whole storyline in this episode (S8x01) about the underdog was simply fantastic. It showed what you can do as a writer when you have the talent and the courage to show kindness and be real.

It's just too bad that there aren't enough talented writers like David Kelley out there who can pull off stuff like this. Most of the so called 'professionals' couldn't write compassionate stuff like this even in their wildest dreams.

In my opinion that's a shame, because we as human beings clearly deserve to experience compassionate moments like these. These are the moments that make at least myself think that we aren't perhaps that bad.

In that sense, I just wish that we would have more good television shows like 'The Practice' on tv that took our struggles seriously and paid attention to issues that people in the audience found to be important and real.

That same way, I just wish that we had more writers like David Kelley, who understood what it means to be a human being and who understood that you don't always have to be hip or cool in order to be entertaining.

'Shaun The Sheep' is a wonderful movie.

Last week I got curious and I decided to check which movies had managed to get nominated at last year's academy awards. I wanted to find out whether there were any movies that were worth watching and possibly worth my time.

As I kept checking the nominations, I soon noticed the section where best animated movies for the year 2015 were listed. I thought that I should probably give a chance for one of the films that I hadn't managed to see yet.

It didn't take that long before I decided to watch a movie called 'Shaun The Sheep'. This movie about a farmer and his farm animals seemed promising, especially considering how universally positive reviews it had received.

In any case, I managed to see the movie a couple of days ago and it turned out that I liked the film a lot. Even though I did have some doubts about it initially, I was surprised how good the movie as a whole was.

Likely the best thing about 'Shaun The Sheep' is that its story is so well crafted. The plot about the sheep and the farm's dog following their amnesia suffering farmer to the city is really solid and manages to engage the viewer.

The biggest reason that the story works so well is because the film has tons of good ideas that are executed well. These ideas - like the sheep wearing disguises - keep the story moving forward and provide many humorous moments throughout the film.

One of the most intriguing and also challenging things about the movie is that it doesn't contain any spoken dialogue. Except for the occassional gibberish that you hear in the film, all the communication that happens is nonverbal.

Even though one might think that the lack of dialogue would hurt the movie, here it actually works in favor of the film. That is because every single moment in the movie is earned with ideas that make sense.

In 'Shaun The Sheep', the writers manage to rise up to the challenge and manage to come up with all kinds of ideas that keep the audience entertained. Ideas like 'counting sheep' are wonderful and serve as great plot devices.

The story and the movie work so well that you barely even pay attention to this being a claymation film. The stop motion technique works so well in the film because the creators concentrate on things that are essential and needed.

All in all, when it comes to this animated film as a whole, I was really surprised how well 'Shaun The Sheep' was made and how entertaining it was. I didn't expect the movie to be as good and as uplifting as it turned out to be.

In my opinion, there's a lot of observational humor in the film that should appeal to just about everyone out there. I genuinely appreciated the film's solid observations about how our society works and how we as human beings behave.

In the end, I would recommend 'Shaun The Sheep' for anyone who is interested in seeing a movie that has a good story and likable characters. It's a must see animated film for anyone who wants to be entertained and wants to feel better about their lives.

Learning from a bad movie (Unstoppable).

A couple of days ago I managed to turn on my television to check whether there was anything interesting on. I hadn't watched that much television lately, so I thought that almost anything would be more or less okay for me.

Pretty much the first thing that I noticed when I was channel surfing, was a film called 'Unstoppable'. This movie, starring Denzel Washington, was new to me, so I thought that perhaps I should stay on the channel that I was on. 

Unfortunately, it didn't take that long before I started to get bad vibes from the movie. Even though I had missed maybe the first five or ten minutes of the film, this movie about stopping a runaway train didn't feel right at all. 

That is because almost right away I noticed that the main characters didn't seem likable at all. I didn't like how Washington's character kept screaming at Chris Pine's character about how he was a horrible worker and that he should lose his job. 

It was really weird and I couldn't understand why the characters were so unlikable. After all, it's not exactly a secret that it's super important that the audience roots for its character and wants them to succeed in the film.

In any case, this 'unlikable' thing didn't really make sense, until it became obvious that the only reason that Chris Pine's train operator had made boo-boos was so that there would be an instant obstacle for these two protagonists in the movie.

This was a massive red flag for me and I was almost certain that it was because the film didn't have an organic premise. I felt that the 'train must be stopped' thing wouldn't make sense and that all the plot turns would be both implausible and undramatic.

Sure enough, it didn't take long before we got series of events where people _outside_ this main duo were attempting to stop the train. These were sequences that made no sense dramatically, so I started to feel even worse about the film.

After all, what were the chances that 1) the train would stop this early in the movie and that 2) it would be achieved by others than our two main protagonists? There's just no way that's how things we're going to happen in the film.

Naturally, all the following sequences that followed were incredibly boring, completely predictable and totally lacked any kind of dramatic tension. It felt that the movie went absolutely nowhere and I felt like falling asleep.

After these obvious failures, I pretty much zoned out and didn't pay that much attention to the movie anymore. There was no reason to actively watch the film anymore since the script for it had gone completely off the rails. 

Not surprisingly, during the last 45 minutes things didn't really get any better. The script didn't provide any plausible or non-stereotypical moments that we hadn't already seen a million times before in other movies.

So after the movie ended, all I could think was, why was this movie produced in the first place and why did it have so many good actors on it? What where these people thinking when they decided to spend 100 million dollars on this clunker? 

Even worse, what were the critics thinking when they decided that this was a good film? As unbelievable as it sounds, 'Unstoppable' has a mindboggling 86% fresh rating on rottentomatoes.com and has gotten a lot of praise.

In the end, what I'm saying is that this movie didn't really have anything going for it. There wasn't really anything interesting happening in the film and there was no villain in the movie to keep our minds busy either.

In that sense, we can only be grateful that there actually exists good films based on 'unstoppable vehicles', like 'Speed' and 'Runaway Train'. These films were made when people still gave a damn about telling a good story. 

Unlike 'Unstoppable', movies like these managed to get most things right and managed to keep the audience entertained. These movies had ambition, respected our intelligence and most of all, made sure that the premise of the film actually worked.

I can't wait to see a David Kelley show on tv again.

It's not exactly a secret that during the late nineties and the early 2000s I was a big fan of writer producer David E. Kelley. His television shows like 'Ally Mcbeal' and 'The Practice' were likely the biggest reason that I wanted to become a writer too.

In my opinion, his shows were so good because as a writer he dared to be a real person. His writing was so full of honesty, integrity and kindess that I couldn't help but to fall in love with him as a writer and as a human being.

I also liked him, because even though he clearly was an opinionated writer, he wasn't a judgemental person per se. He wasn't about judging people or thinking that he always knew exactly how things were supposed to be.

In any case, even though he was super successful especially during those years,  over the last ten years Kelley hasn't had that many good shows on the air. After Boston Legal he hasn't really delivered stuff that was that good and I had almost given up on him.

So knowing this all, I was more than pleasantly surprised when I noticed that not only does he have two high profile projects going on, both of them are going to air in the near future and have gotten some good reviews already.

When it comes to his first project, it's an original Amazon series called 'Trial', that is supposed to air next fall. This is a lawyer show that seems to have more than a solid cast, since actors like Billy Bob Thornton and William Hurt are on it.

Based on some anonymous reviews that I've found, it seems that this series might become some sort of a hit. At least those who have seen it already are saying that the series is very well made and that the pilot for it is excellent.

The second and likely a much more anticipated project by Kelley is a series for HBO that is called 'Big Little Lies'. This is an adaptation based on a New York Times bestseller by a female author Liane Moriarty.

When it comes to the story of the series, it's about three women and their families who try to get along and work out their problems. It's supposed to be a heart-warming and humorous take on how dysfunctional american society has become.

This is an anticipated series not only because the book that it's based on has gotten really good reviews, but it's also a series that is filled with A-list female actors like Nicole Kidman, Reese Witherspoon and Shailene Woodley.

Personally speaking, I'm looking forward to this series because David Kelley is famous for being a skilled 'feminist' writer. Unlike almost every other writer out there, he has always excelled at writing female characters.

I'm also looking forward to this series, because over the years Kelley has been so good at showing compassion and kindness. Perhaps this show could be a bit like his best series, 'Picket Fences', that aired during the early nineties. 

So all in all, even though I haven't expected that much from him lately, at least for now it seems that things look pretty good for Kelley. It seems that 'Trial' and 'Big Little Lies' are both projects that have a lot of potential and promise.

We can only hope that he's going to bring out his best qualities as a writer this time. That would be a really good thing, because there aren't that many quality shows out there that manage to keep us entertained.