May 25, 2011
nonzero % online poker content
In between whatever counts as work these days, I’m putting in work away from the tables into my writing. The three main things I’m doing are reading scripts, this dialogue workshop and learning the Dramatica theory of story. Firstly -- some really good/ambitious coach should put out poker training’s version of this writing workshop. It’s broken into ~15-20 units, each unit made up of 3-4 exercises designed to improve your understanding of that component of the getting better at writing good dialogue paradigm. I think that would be a very successful e-book or video series -- something designed like the Harrington workbook, made up of lots of beginner-intermediate-advanced hands, discussing the strategy for how to play the individual hands (in this book’s case, writing lines of dialogue) and how they relate to the building blocks of the overarching poker theory (constructing scenes and stories).
Secondly, this Dramatica theory is the shit. It explains that every complete story is a model of the mind’s problem solving process, and that in order to write a complete story the author needs to fully explore the four ways a human mind might look at solving the problem. If you’re interested at all you can read more about it here. Story Fanatic does fantastic analysis of popular stories as they relate to Dramatica. I love this guy's blog. Some really interesting posts on movies like Avatar, Inception, Star Wars, Jaws, etc. He illustrates how Pixar stories like Finding Nemo and The Incredibles work, and why they're so meaningful and cherished by audiences.
Anyway, this is neither here nor there. But it's somewhere.
BLOG POST
Secondly, this Dramatica theory is the shit. It explains that every complete story is a model of the mind’s problem solving process, and that in order to write a complete story the author needs to fully explore the four ways a human mind might look at solving the problem. If you’re interested at all you can read more about it here. Story Fanatic does fantastic analysis of popular stories as they relate to Dramatica. I love this guy's blog. Some really interesting posts on movies like Avatar, Inception, Star Wars, Jaws, etc. He illustrates how Pixar stories like Finding Nemo and The Incredibles work, and why they're so meaningful and cherished by audiences.
Anyway, this is neither here nor there. But it's somewhere.
BLOG POST
9 Comments:
FenderJaguar posted on May 25, 2011 at 20:15 PM
sick post. def checking this out :)
QED42 posted on May 25, 2011 at 22:23 PM
Interesting site but I'm not sure I agree with all his reviews. For example I thought 9 was a really good little film but he rejects it out of hand as it doesn't follow his structure rules enough.
chaz_littlej posted on May 25, 2011 at 22:36 PM
Best film criticism ever - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxKtZmQgxrI
KRANTZ posted on May 25, 2011 at 23:16 PM
QED- he's talking about 9's structure as it relates to being a complete story, but he often gives examples of movies that are successful in a lot of different ways despite not being structurally perfect. He never says that a movie needs to be a complete story to be entertaining. I thought 9 was OK, fwiw. I liked the idea and the animation better than the execution...
Chaz- yes that is amazing.
soleztis posted on May 26, 2011 at 05:08 AM
Krantz, I think it's pretty fucxing cool that you are one of the great online poker players, founder of the coolest poker site around, and still have passion for so many other things. It is crazy and I envy you man. It is very hard to have that kind of drive. I can only hope to muster up half of that passion and drive soon
KRANTZ posted on May 26, 2011 at 15:21 PM
sol- aww shucks. the drive is something you have to slowly work at. set long term goals, break them into super tiny bite size chunks, try to be better today than you were yesterday. that's all it is -- eventually shit gets done, and you wake up and feel the motivation to keep climbing towards whatever it is you think will make you happy.
soleztis posted on May 26, 2011 at 20:15 PM
Good words
inavacuum posted on May 27, 2011 at 13:19 PM
Cool site, thanks for that. He rightly slates State of Play, but I wish he would have mentioned the TV series it was based on which is pretty much gold standard in terms of character development and story arc.
bferst posted on May 27, 2011 at 16:42 PM
since you showed me this site how many years ago i think i have read every page of it.
a similar site:
http://thestorydepartment.com/
also while this guy, 60 sec director, has alot of great articles that are short but full of great stuff. some of it is geared specifically towards directors but articles like this
http://60secdirector.blogspot.com/2009/06/why-jj-abrams-is-worth-every-cent-he.html
are great for writers.
Log in or sign up to leave a comment!