Audiences must like your hero before they'll follow your plot

Snyder's title comes from his core principle: early in a script, the protagonist should do something small and decent, his literal example is a hero pausing to save a cat, that has nothing to do with the plot but everything to do with making an audience root for them. He argues no amount of clever plotting or interesting flaws will make an audience invest in a hero they don't like on a basic human level, and that likability doesn't mean flawless; a hero can be selfish or cowardly as long as one early gesture signals decency worth following for two hours. Snyder treats this as a practical fix for the common studio note that a script is well-constructed but the audience "doesn't care," arguing such notes usually trace back to a missing or too-late likability beat rather than a plot problem. The principle also applies to non-hero characters needing audience trust. Takeaway: a single small act of decency early on buys a hero the audience's trust for the rest of the story.