I’m a fan of the Save the Cat books by the late Blake Snyder.

I especially love the ten “genres” he came up with.

I think these genres are a crucial tool for developing movie stories and I often introduce them to the conversation when a writer presents me with an idea or an outline.

If you study the genres and decide to write movies that squarely fit within one of them, and manage to pull that off, I think you’ll be way ahead of the pack.

Most scripts I read and their underlying concepts don’t quite do that. It could be because writers are often looking to be more original than Blake’s “Give me the same thing… only different.”

But there’s a remarkable flexibility to these ten story types, which he broke down into five subgenres each in his second book Save the Cat Goes to the Movies. Which I highly recommend.

On this site you’ll find a chart with movie examples for each subgenre which I borrowed from that book and its website, and expanded on with some additional movie titles. This chart, to me — with the underlying concepts it’s built from — is a goldmine of helpful information about story.

So when do I think Save the Cat is not right?

I bet you thought I was going to say not to hew so closely to its famous “Beat Sheet,” which is the thing most people think of when they think of Save the Cat.

There’s been a backlash against this tool over the years by some who say scripts that used it can be spotted a mile away, due to their formulaic approach to structure.

I understand this reaction but don’t blame Save the Cat. I chalk it up to how hard it is to write a script that will really wow the professionals. Where they won’t notice whether you have a “catalyst on p. 12” or a “whiff of death at your All-is-Lost moment” because they’re so emotionally engaged by your story.

When a script isn’t working — and most of the time, most don’t, for pro readers — they read “from a distance” (a judgmental and annoyed distance) where they might notice the attempted use of these structural elements and want to blame Snyder’s paradigm for leading to ineffective writing.

To me the Beat Sheet only builds on what others have written about 3-act screenplay structure over the years, and it does so helpfully. That doesn’t mean using it guarantees a good script.

And it’s not Save the Cat’s most useful innovation, to my mind.

That, instead, would be the genres. I love it when a writer tries to work within one of them, and studies the example movies on the chart I mentioned, in order to better understand how that story type works.

That’s when they spot how Blake Snyder himself categorized certain movies within the system he created.

And I dare to have some quibbles with a few of those choices!

For instance, The Godfather. He calls it an “Institutionalized,” with the subgenre of “Family Institution.” (Click here to read my summary of that genre – I have blogged about all ten of them.)

It’s hard to disagree, to the extent that it’s about whether Michael Corleone will or won’t become part of the family mafia business, and his relationship to it as an individual.

But to me, that’s not the central conflict — the “will he, or won’t he, and at what cost?” issue. It’s not really about how it leads to certain problems for him, where he has to reckon with a seeming irreconcilability between who he is and who it needs him to be within that group.

Which is what Blake convinced me is the hallmark of “Institutionalized.”

Instead, I think the central conflict, the PROBLEM driving the story forward, is about saving his father and the Corleone family by defeating rival mobsters.

Which to me plays more like a “Golden Fleece.” Where we mainly root for that success, and aren’t so much thinking this mob family is a bad thing for our boy Michael to have to be part of.

In The Godfather Part II there was an attempt to rectify this somewhat by showing more of the personal costs to Michael and the family, and how much he lost or gave up. But to me the first movie is more about the adventure of “reaching the prize” of defeating the other families, where we root for the success of Michael and the Corleones. Rather than an exploration of the toxicity of the “Institution.”

Why does this matter?

Does it matter?

And can’t it be both genres at once?

Yes, it can. And I think it kind of is. But to me it matters because I want writers really understanding these genres at a level that most don’t, and working with them successfully.

Okay, how about another example. A Few Good Men. Blake also categorizes this under “Institutionalized,” subgenre “Military Institution.”

I get why. It does explore the individual going up against the Institution that he is a part of. The military, in this case, as represented by Jack Nicholson’s character and the “code red.”

But like Michael Corleone, I don’t see Tom Cruise really grappling with his own membership in that institution and its cost to him, and having to figure out if it’s right for him and is there a way to either escape it or possibly surrender his individuality to it.

At least Michael does have that “surrender” at the end of the first Godfather. There’s a sense of sacrifice that’s a hallmark of this genre. But does Tom Cruise really sacrifice?

To me, this is another story where we simply root for his victory against the bad guys, not struggle with him due to his personal involvement with their questionable morality that he’s trapped within.

So I think it also feels like a Golden Fleece. Or maybe a Whydunit – since a lot of it is an investigative plot.

But it does question the morality of the “military institution,” so I can see why it seemed like an obvious fit to Blake. As did another Tom Cruise movie, Taps. I’m not sure I agree about that one, either. 

But who am I to question how the man defined his own creation and decided what fit with what?

I say it’s a tribute to his tool and its value that people still work with them and have strong opinions. (Or at least I do.)

Mine comes from my focus on “what is the main character doing and going through” more than “what does the movie examine, as a whole.”

An approach I highly recommend, as an audience’s engagement with your story is mostly about their connection, emotionally, with that main character and getting behind them in whatever their central problem and goal is.

One last example. It’s a Wonderful Life. Clearly what happens with the angel Clarence makes this a magical “Out of the Bottle” film, subgenre “Surreal Bottle,” where Blake placed it. 

Doesn’t it?

As with the other examples, I can see the merit of that argument. And acknowledge that this is not an exact science. Some movies can also fit more than one genre. Like Erin Brockovich. (Comment below what genres you think it fits.)

But the point isn’t finding one exact right answer. It’s understanding the genres and working with them successfully.

 And making sure what you write fits ALL the criteria of at least one “home” genre. And doesn’t “fall between the cracks” with some aspects of more than one genre, as so many scripts do. This is not about mix and match, some from here and some from there. And it’s not about creating “hybrid” genres or mixed genres like “Horror comedy.” 

I don’t think that’s an effective way to work with these particular “genres.” It can rob them of their power and utility.

My take on Clarence the angel is that his part of the story is the third act climax. In a sense the genre changes at that point to something magical. Not easy to pull off, and not something I would normally recommend. But they finesse this by having him around from the beginning so we get used to the idea of him, long before he intervenes in George Bailey’s life.

The central problem of a movie starts in the first act and builds and complicates in the second act. The third act is supposed to be the climactic “final battle” that resolves it. And Clarence’s presentation of an alternate Bedford Falls had George never been born does that.

But what is the movie prior to that? What genre?

To me, this one IS an “Institutionalized.” And the institution is the town itself, which George always wanted to escape, to have a bigger life elsewhere. But it keeps dragging him back in.

In the end, he “sacrifices” that dream and makes his peace with staying there and being happy, leading to a more upbeat ending than many “Institutionalized” movies have. Thanks to Clarence’s help.

But prior to that, this was the central conflict. George vs. the town.

Or… you could say it’s more of a “Superhero” movie, I suppose, with George the one person with the ability to defeat Potter, the nemesis, and George’s curse being that he has to stay in this town to do it.

Maybe it fulfills all the elements of both.

I just wouldn’t call it “Out of the Bottle,” because I see those movies as being about some magical thing happening in the first act that creates challenges for the whole rest of the movie, for the main character.

Feel free to disagree in the comments below. I’ll just be happy if more people are learning about and wrestling with these genres. Because of how useful to writers I think they are.