"Advocating for story architecture is like teaching your kids about the world—tell them to do as you say, not as you do, you tell them about the golden rule and the law of attraction and the mystical consequences of karma, and you do your best to explain that good things happen to good people who live by these creeds.
And when it doesn't . . . well, that's life, and it's not always fair. Doesn't mean it's not a valid principal."
- Larry Brooks. Story Engineering: Mastering the 6 Core Competencies of Successful Writing. Writers Digest Books, 2011. pg 216.
"Just waking up in the morning gotta thank God
I don't know but today seems kinda odd
No barking from the dog, no smog
And momma cooked a breakfast with no hog
I got my grub on, but didn't pig out
Finally got a call from a girl wanna dig out
Hooked it up for later as I hit the door
Thinking will i live, another twenty-four
I gotta go cause I got me a drop top
And if I hit the switch, I can make the ass drop
Had to stop at a red light
Looking in my mirror not a jacker in sight
And everything is alright
I got a beep from Kim and she can f*ck all night
Called up the homies and I'm askin y'all
Which park, are y'all playin basketball?
Get me on the court and I'm trouble
Last week f*ck around and got a triple double
Freaking niggaz every way like M.J.
I can't believe, today was a good day
Drove to the pad and hit the showers
Didn't even get no static from the cowards
Cause just yesterday them fools tried to blast me
Saw the police and they rolled right past me
No flexin, didn't even look in a niggaz direction
as I ran the intersection
Went to Short Dog's house, they was watchin Yo! MTV Raps
What's the haps on the craps
Shake em up, shake em up, shake em up, shake em
Roll em in a circle of niggaz and watch me break em
With the seven, seven-eleven, seven-eleven
Seven even backed on little Joe
I picked up the cash flow
Then we played bones, and I'm yellin domino
Plus nobody I know got killed in South Central L.A.
Today was a good day
Left my niggaz house paid
Picked up a girl been tryin to f*ck since the twelfth grade
It's ironic, I had the blunt she had the chronic
The Lakers beat the Supersonics
I felt on the big fat fanny
Pulled out the jammy, and killed the punanny
And my dick runs deep, so deep, so deep
put her ass to sleep
Woke her up around one
she didn't hesitate, to call Ice Cube the top gun
Drove her to the pad and I'm coasting
Took another sip of the potion hit the three-wheel motion
I was glad everything had worked out
Dropped her ass off, and then chirped out
Today was like one of those fly dreams
Didn't even see a berry flashing those high beams
No helicopter looking for a murder
Two in the morning got the Fatburger
Even saw the lights of the Goodyear Blimp
And it read Ice Cube's a pimp
Drunk as hell but no throwing up
Half way home and my pager still blowing up
Today I didn't even have to use my A.K.
I got to say it was a good day."
- Ice Cube "It Was A Good Day" from the album "The Predator"
"There are four distinct phases of the playing experience: brooding, attachment, immersion, and satisfaction.
Play begins in brooding, in the brooding moment. It can be a moment of absolute horror. The uninitiated experience the terror of a formless moment . . . The brooding moment is not only the child who tugs at your sleeve saying, “I don’t know what to do,” but also the writer staring at a blank sheet of paper . . .
The second movement is attachment. Out of brooding comes attachment, a spark of intensity. Attachment requires the ability to recognize what has intensity, to feel the resonance. In the midst of brooding, although it remains unseen and unconscious, and important process unfolds. Pattern and form circulate until the structural resonance finds alignment. Then the writer finds the sentence . . .
And then comes immersion, the moment of being lost in play. This is the transitional state, a different state of consciousness . . . Immersion is the sense of fantasy activity becoming “real.” Then the writer feels the story writing itself and hours are lost . . .
Finally, there is satisfaction—a sense of resolution and release. There is an essential relationship between play and pleasure. Enactment releases the tension. The satisfaction in play, I think, is a result of the sense of completion, not necessarily of achievement."
- D. Stephenson Bond, Living Myth: Personal Meaning as a Way of Life. Shambala, 1993 pg 113-114
"A truly good book is something as natural, and as unexpectedly and unaccountably fair and perfect, as a wild flower discovered on the prairies of the west, or in the jungles of the east."
"Classical design is not a Western view of life. For thousands of years, from the Levant to Java to Japan, the storytellers of Asia have framed their works within the Archplot. . . . The Archplot is neither ancient nor modern, Western nor Eastern; it is human."
- Robert McKee Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principals of Screenwriting. ReganBooks: New York, 1997. pg 62
“There's a spirituality to math that a lot of people don't understand. It isn't just numbers and equations. There's a world out there that we're all surrounded by at every given moment that we can't understand. There are true intricacies and details to every moment and very piece of matter. Everything!”
- David Krumholtz from Numb3rs Season 1 DVD commentary.
"Advocating for story architecture is like teaching your kids about the world—tell them to do as you say, not as you do, you tell them about the golden rule and the law of attraction and the mystical consequences of karma, and you do your best to explain that good things happen to good people who live by these creeds.
