XD he said "and start suffering today!" in such a cheerful voice.

Is that Scapple you're using for your mindmapping? I use Freeform (from Apple) because it's free, though I've considered trying Scapple because it gets on well with Scrivener.

Dude, stop giving this stuff away. Us magicians need to keep their trade secrets, although, I do think a world with a lot of good writing is beneficial for all of us.

Animism. Paganism. Shintoism, etc...

that is a dope looking rat

Douglas Adams was great at this. Two quotes from his books live in my mind; "The spaceship hung in the air in the same way a brick doesn't" and "My mind is like the Queen Alexandria Butterfly, colorful, flutters out and about and is alas almost completely gone".

You have to be related to the Theroux’s

It's like thinking of it compared to the thinness of a piece of paper but it can hold an entire story on it

So that's what it's called! Lemony snicker, douglass adams, and terry prarchet were always doing this but i could only copy for a little while

I found your channel today. It was a good day. ❤️

4:25 headphone warning

It strikes me that in each of the first four stages here, the pressure increases on our hero. He starts out stuck in a rut. Then he's moved to heave himself out of it by the sudden prospect of something he needs, the flip side of which is some consequence he needs to avoid. He's already in jeopardy in stage 1, in danger of wasting the rest of his life just playing out a losing hand. Stage 2 tightens the screw by threatening to foreclose any possibility of turning his regrets to good account unless he acts immediately. Stages 3 and 4 just keep turning up the heat on the poor guy, until it seems hopeless, and an ordinary person might not see any point in continuing. But he's not ordinary. He's so special, we wrote a book about him. So he perseveres and breaks through, and in some unexpected way he gains what he was so sorely lacking in Stage 1. It's interesting to me that the smaller cycles of tension and resolution within the stages are encompassed in a greater overall cycle. I guess if you're writing a TV series, and you know you're renewed for another season, Stage 5 lasts about ten seconds before you drop the hero in the grease again and say "tune in next year!" Sneaky Pete, for example-- between seasons 1 and 2, that poor character didn't get to breathe easy for half a minute of screen time. Sorry to go on and on. This is all just engrossing to me!

“He’s got a dirty habit” looks at the camera

I was laughing so hard at the idea of using my cats for a brainstorming session. 😂 Sadly, I live in the urban US, and it's just too dangerous to let our kitties roam loose, especially when one lives near a major interstate highway in a big city. I love your videos!

This just seems like "use specificity and metaphor" put in many, many more words, with the short story taking up a literal 2/3 of the video. It's a good story, don't get me wrong, but the whole thing seems like a very simple concept stretched out into a long vehicle for it.

Thisness makes life liveable, and stories infinite

Is it courage, audacity, or ignorance that has a writer using AI art in their video?

Now worryingly close to age 60, I remember in my early twenties coming to a creative fork in the road. Throughout childhood, I'd wanted to be a fiction writer, performing songwriter, actor, or comic book artist. By the time I was through college, I'd put most of my fruitful efforts in the direction of fiction and songwriting. It was time to make a choice, and I chose songwriting for a bunch of ostensible reasons. Compared to works of fiction, songs have a short cycle from initial concept to audience response. Songs are concise, and with so few words to say, I couldn't get too bogged down in exposition and world-building. Songs can be performed with friends, and you can say you're in a band. Which lets you play in a bar and hedge your financial losses by selling t-shirts. Plus I had an innate grasp of song structure, while the structure of fiction eludes me to this day. So I wrote songs and performed them, and really most of my efforts went instead to paying jobs I thought I needed, and my most substantial body of creative work turned out to be a bunch of surreal cut-up videos. But the urge to write fiction won't leave me alone. So I guess I'd better get going. Thanks for your help and encouragement.

This channel is a hidden gem. 💎 👍

One awesome instance of thisness that really sticks in me is in a song called Satan in the Wait by Daughters: "That Bastard had a head like a matchstick, shaped like he was suckin concrete from a straw", an awesome and funny descriptor of an intensely unfortunate looking man that brings the image to mind almost immediately. Thats a lotta thisness right there.

I was really intrigued by the topic. But the use of AI is an insult to artists and undermines the message. You can't talk about thisness in writing if you remove it from art in same breath.

"Even her ticks are cute." 😂 Great line!

I have found many ways to achieve my sincere wish to become poor. Now you've shown me the most sure-fire formula ever! Thank you.

Stumbled across this by pure accident. Instantly subbed because I wanna try to get more into writing!

I guess "cliche writing advice that you've heard since primary school" doesn't pull people in the same way "700 year-old novel writing secret" does. Bravo I guess.

Thanks for sharing, I find it very useful advice to use mind mapping and a random walk in this map to generate story ideas!

Unfortunately I cannot abide AI images. They're loathsome.

I love Stanford. He's intelligent, beautiful, and a cat. Thanks, Malcolm

I love the story. Are you going to write it?

Thank you!

So it's basically a simile, but better?

Now I need to buy a GPS tracking device for my cat. Thank you, Malcolm.

How bout "a dog bites a bull's testicles; the oxen, rushing by..." you said you that one hadn't been done yet, but seems to me that one just got did.

Silky nonsense

I had an idea once

Thank you! I love your videos :)

The importance of specificity cannot be understated, and I do love the idea of calling it "thisness", it feels like a thing that describes itself in that way. Thisness will always help you as you're developing your story. However, in my experience a lack of Thisness only truly plagues writers who have big BIG ideas, who are slamming them down onto paper without care for how to root them into the reality of their storyworld. But for many writers I do also encounter the opposite problem, where ALL they have is Thisness and their story is in fact very confused about what it even is. I tend to find these are also the hardest stories to critique, because it's a hard pill to swallow that one's story is directionless, vs the bones are good but everything's too vague. The hard fact is, you can make a good story specific, but you can't specify your way into a good story.

Malcolm Pryce, do you believe in God?

And you will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart. - Jeremiah 29:13 “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish, but have eternal life. -John 3:16 Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out. -Acts 3:19 If you are in North America, please go check out any of the churches available to you: OPC, PCA, Rpcna, Urcna, or a Canrc church (These are conservative and actual Presbyterian/Reformed churches) If you can’t find one of the conservative presby churches then, maybe an Lcms Lutheran church. If you’re Scottish, I recommend the Free Church of Scotland and the APC. (Different from the Church of Scotland) If you’re English I recommend the Evangelical Presbyterian Church in England & Wales and the Free Church of England (Different from the Church of England) Also online you can look up church finders for each of the groups, it will show you locations. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near. - Hebrews 10:24-25

By contrast, I've been told my writing reads like a physics text book. 😂

An oxen that "hasn't been done yet" isn't an ox, it's a bull, it's not a different species of animal. A bull doesn't become an ox until it is castrated.

Very much enjoying and absorbing this series. Heartfelt thanks.... and by the way... 'Trinity' by Leon Uris: Starts with one ghost and ends with another.

Is this like verisimilitude?

Was this story truthfully written 700 years ago🧐? So many plot twists 🙂

I enjoyed reading the comments as much as I enjoyed the video. All the thoughtful writing here marks you all out as thoughtful writers, whether presently published or still to come.

You need to stop using AI imagery. It detracts.

What a clown Don Scotus is...

Thy cup of _thisness_ runneth over with _toomuchness._

how do you spell that sound at 4:22 ?

I still remember reading Riki Tiki Tavi as a kid and the description of the cobra as it slid into the house with no more noise than a wasp walking on a windowpane still chills me.