Blake Snyder knows just how you feel. He’s been there before and he’ll be there again. And he loves it. That’s why Snyder has chosen to follow up on the success of his first two bestselling books, Save the Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need and, Save the Cat! Goes to the Movies: The Screenwriter’s Guide to Every Story Ever Told with the forthcoming: Save the Cat! Strikes Back: More Trouble For Screenwriters to Get Into… and Out Of, due to hit the bookstores by this summer.

Like his first two books, it will continue to cement Snyder’s place among the top screenwriting teachers on the planet. “I’m just finishing up the third book. I get e-mails from writers all over the world saying, ‘I’ve hit a wall—in my screenplay—in my career…’ What you have to learn to make writing part of your life is the ability to embrace trouble and learn from it. One of the most important moments in character development is that ‘all is lost’ moment when it feels like there’s no way out of this and a truth is revealed about what you have been doing wrong.”

Written in the same fun, breezy style that characterised his first two books, what makes this latest book remarkable is the way Snyder weaves in his personal, inspiring philosophies of the life of writing and the writing life, and how inseparable they are. Just as our characters are formed by the crucible of story, our careers must be forged in fires as well.

According to Snyder, the frustration and self-doubt that plagues us all is the very fuel that will keep us moving forward in our creative lives and careers. “We have little informative dramas we live through every day—we’re forever hitting the wall in life, and we survive by finding a way to rebound from crisis, to our personal triumphant finales just as our characters do, which is why these stories resonate so well. Just as characters must embrace the trouble they are facing in a story, we must do the same with our lives and careers in order to continue to grow and move forward. And we do that by embracing the trouble.”

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