RIP Blake Synder

Just read on Go Into the Story that screenwriter and Save the Cat author Blake Snyder died this morning.

One suspects he'll be remembered more for his Save the Cat books than his two produced films, Stop or My Mom Will Shoot and Blank Check. I've found his Save the Cat to be one of the new standards in screenwriting books. I've read a lot of screenwriting books over the years, but Save the Cat is the only one I pull from and cite on a fairly regular basis. It's one of the few books to make me reexamine my own writing process, and even when the book rehashed stuff I already knew, he found a way to make it entertaining.

If you are interested, you can check out his blog here.

I never met the man. My closest connection to him came a while back when I had the opportunity to cover one of his specs. But given that I've made use of his beat sheet templates and his tropes like "Pope in the Pool" at times in my own writing, I felt it appropriate to mark his passing here.