Phil Gladwin and Blake Snyder aren’t just two of the endless ‘gurus’ who are willing to take your money for advice on writing your way to fame and fortune.
Both are highly experienced screenwriters – Snyder in Hollywood, Phil Gladwin in the UK – and both claim to have distilled their years in the coal industry into a viable screenwriting scheme.
Snyder’s Save the Cat is today’s hot read, judging by the impressive sales numbers on Amazon; Phil Gladwin’s Goldmine Scriptwriting is only available for download from his site, so sales figures aren’t clear, but because it’s web-based, there’s a busy forum and blog there with some readers. very devoted who clearly got a lot out of the book (which was actually the recommendation I needed to be inclined to buy).
Save The Cat is frothy, witty, highly entertaining, full of anecdotes about the business, and absolutely packed with top-notch artwork from many different movies. And all of that is both his glory and his downfall. At first the book seems incredibly helpful. There’s some very sharp analysis of various genre story beats, and the kind of authoritative style that only comes with hardcore experience. The problem came when I went to implement what I had discovered in the book… and… I found that I couldn’t remember much of it. That’s because, when you sit down and really work through what it tells you about the writing process, it’s surprisingly light on detail. Snyder is a warm and engaging writer, and he has great things to say about the way the industry works, but he loves to wow you with a snappy concept and gag. Just when you start to think, ‘oh, that’s interesting, how does it really work?’ he’ll be outside, talking about something else just as funny, and you’ll be right behind him, saying, ‘yeah, but, er, how does that really help me write my script?’
Phil Gladwin’s book Screenwriting Goldmine is short. 65 pages for $127? You got to be kidding. And yet, and yet… Even without the free newsletter and the considerable extra books you get with it (on the format of a TV series and a very readable introduction to Joseph Campbell’s school of story structure ), Script Goldmine is nothing. more, and nothing less, than page after page of blinding content. It’s not funny like the Cat, but in terms of what you need to do when you write a script, it’s all here. Not all of the information presented is absolutely new to me, but I am a screenwriting book addict, so my level of education is already quite high. But the way all the information is put together is simple and highly effective. I can’t imagine a beginner would have any problem with that. There are also many of Gladwin’s personal techniques that I haven’t seen elsewhere throughout the book to tie everything together in what promises to be a seamless roadmap. And that brevity? it’s a virtue. There are absolutely no distractions, just technique writing after solid technique writing.
So which one would you recommend? Well, I’m almost at the end of my first script, which has taken me nine painful months to put together so far, and after reading Screenwriting Goldmine I’m taking it apart and restructuring it in the Phil Gladwin way. Make of it what you will.