Masters of Doom and
Jordan Mechner's journals from the making of Prince of Persia:
https://jordanmechner.com/backstage/journals/Trying to get inspired to write and make stories.
Ohhh. The Brothers Karamazov. And also, read this interview with Kurt Vonnegut:
https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/3605/the-art-of-fiction-no-64-kurt-vonnegutOn writing:
> INTERVIEWER
> Could you put the theory into a few words?
> VONNEGUT
> It was stated by Paul Engle—the founder of the Writers Workshop at Iowa. He told me that, if the workshop ever got a building of its own, these words should be inscribed over the entrance: “Don’t take it all so seriously.”
> INTERVIEWER
> And how would that be helpful?
> VONNEGUT
> It would remind the students that they were learning to play practical jokes.
> INTERVIEWER
> Practical jokes?
> VONNEGUT
> If you make people laugh or cry about little black marks on sheets of white paper, what is that but a practical joke? All the great story lines are great practical jokes that people fall for over and over again.
> INTERVIEWER
> Can you give an example?
> VONNEGUT
> The Gothic novel. Dozens of the things are published every year, and they all sell. My friend Borden Deal recently wrote a Gothic novel for the fun of it, and I asked him what the plot was, and he said, “A young woman takes a job in an old house and gets the pants scared off her.”
> INTERVIEWER
> Some more examples?
> VONNEGUT
> The others aren’t that much fun to describe: somebody gets into trouble, and then gets out again; somebody loses something and gets it back; somebody is wronged and gets revenge; Cinderella; somebody hits the skids and just goes down, down, down; people fall in love with each other, and a lot of other people get in the way; a virtuous person is falsely accused of sin; a sinful person is believed to be virtuous; a person faces a challenge bravely, and succeeds or fails; a person lies, a person steals, a person kills, a person commits fornication.
> INTERVIEWER
> If you will pardon my saying so, these are very old-fashioned plots.
> VONNEGUT
> I guarantee you that no modern story scheme, even plotlessness, will give a reader genuine satisfaction, unless one of those old-fashioned plots is smuggled in somewhere. I don’t praise plots as accurate representations of life, but as ways to keep readers reading.
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