Alex Epstein

We repurposed the crisper as the "random sauce bottle we almost never use drawer" and keep the cauliflower in plain sight. It has worked wonders.

"Yes, and"

El Google no me explica por nada. ¿20,000 strips of peel?

"Canada is America if its parents had loved it" -- Jess Salomon

My "Why is Your Writer Sobbing in the Bathroom" workshop last night. One of the participants has his head thrown back laughing.

I had a lot of fun at my workshop on "Why is Your Writer Sobbing in the Bathroom?" last night, and it looks like the class did, too. Thank you, Cinesite and Creative Connection!

Want to read 118 essays about the craft of Game Writing? The Game Narrative Kaleidoscope is out now! www.inklestudios.com/kaleidoscope/ Edited by the redoubtable Jon Ingold (Inkle), and packed with game writers you've heard of.

Don't insist on clarity in the narrative. Cognitive friction is good.

Hamlet 2018 YouTube video by MerrilyWeReadAlong

It's on YouTube! www.youtube.com/watch?v=AR28...

Hamlet 2018 YouTube video by MerrilyWeReadAlong

If you've ever wondered "what would Shakespeare sound like if I had any idea what they were saying?" then please go watch the 2018 National Theatre production of Hamlet, starring Andrew Scott. It turns out both the play and the character Hamlet are smart and really funny and also heartbreaking.

I was about to say the 2018 Andrew Scott Hamlet. Free on YouTube.

"Nymph...!" says Hamlet, and he and Ophelia burst out laughing at him calling her a nymph.

The plays are bulletproof if the actors know what they're saying and why they're saying it.

Book cover for Crafty Game Writing: Secrets of Great Videogame Narrative by Alex Epstein.

New discount code for Crafty Game Writing! Use 26AEV1 for 20% off at www.routledge.com/Crafty-Game-...

Meme of Lucille Bluth in Arrested Development, altered to read "It's war with Iran, Michael. What could it cost, ten dollars?"

Workshop: What Game Devs Should Know About Narrative 5 March 5pm at Cinesite.

Five places left for my workshop on narrative for game devs! www.zeffy.com/fr-CA/ticket...

A counter-counter-argument might be that if Twain had spent ten years agonizing over A Medieval Romance, he might never have got to Huckleberry Finn. Moby-Dick was Melville's sixth novel. Some folks have one great book in them. Some folks do better writing a bunch and some of it will be amazing.

Charles Dickens was pretty good. Daniel Defoe. Mark Twain. Shakespeare wrote on deadline for a repertory company. I'm not sure I'd be any better of a writer if I wrote more slowly and painstakingly.

Watching the original House of Cards (1990). Man, 56 used to be *old*.

Reasoning will never make a Man correct an ill Opinion, which by Reasoning he never acquired. -- Jonathan Swift

Okay, what's the Canadian replacement for Celestial Seasonings' zinger teas?

Least classy Oscar speech ever, too.

But most of all David Alderton. We wouldn't have got the Bouzou Dog (may his memory be for a blessing) without The Right Dog For You, or Coco, our poodle.

and John McWhorter (Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue)

...and I haven't read ten of Farley Mowat's books, but Westviking, Never Cry Wolf and The Farfarers were amazing.

But some of my favorite authors haven't written ten books.

Charles Mann (1491 & 1493)
William Cronon (Changes in the Land)
James Scott (Against the Grain)
Ian Morris (Why the West Rules - For Now)
TH White (The Once and Future King)
Ernle Bradford (Ulysses Found)

OK, 10 authors I've read 10+ books from:

Spec Fiction:

Isaac Asimov
John Brunner
Larry Niven
Charles Stross
Ben Aaronovitch
Tim Powers
Leslie McFarlane (writing The Hardy Boys as Franklin Dixon) - musta read 50 of these
Raymond Chandler

Non-Fiction
Michael Lewis
John McPhee

"Stick close to your books
and never go to sea
and you may be the leader
of the Queen's Na-vy!"

seems particularly relevant to recent video game news.

Hey @adobe.com, how about a UI font size option in Premiere? For those of us without absolutely perfect eyesight? Menu text is really very, very small.

(Fun fact: there was a way to do it through the debug menu, but they removed it. Discouraging.)

Nonplussed. It's when you don't know how you feel. Right? Right? Like when you're bemused.

Oh and, in Demolition Man, Sandra Bullock was clearly set up for a reveal that she's Stallone's daughter. I can't help it, a story has a certain shape that it wants.

I feel positive that the original draft of What Lies Beneath revealed that the husband murdered his first wife, but then they got Harrison Ford.

I kinda wanna know if in the original script for Bound, Jennifer Tilly betrays Gina Gershon, as she had planned all along. But then someone thought that was too dark.

If your stories are about true things, they will always be timely. Unfortunately.