Classic Movie Structure: ‘Legally Blonde’
The Journey of Elle Woods, through the lens of Blake Snyder’s ‘Save the Cat’
‘Save the Cat’, by Blake Snyder breaks down movie structure in a very basic, yet effective way. I wanted to break down ‘Legally Blonde’ because it has a structure that is near perfection.
There are other amazing structures you can use, and I’ve had friends (who are award-winning/big name screenwriters) swear by the ‘Mini-Movie Method’ by Chris Soth and ‘The Nutshell Technique’ by Jill Chamberlain.
However, they’re all kind of the same thing: they take you along the dramatic tension, on a journey through a story with a beginning, middle, and end.
Here’s a general summary of the script’s TENT-POLE MOMENTS. You can go through the script or the movie (usually about 1 minute per page), and see how beautifully these moments fit into the structure, and how seamlessly they work together to create a compelling narrative story.
Opening image (p.1)
Something that POPS that sets the tone and shows us how things are now (so we can compare how they’ll…
