Honor

Soft broken devil
writhing in mine
shattered confines,
stage seeping red
ink, signing away
our gushing humanity.
Soft broken
devil denies the door
as a window,
shuttered by–
splintered by–
soldered by tweaking
builders of the concrete
wall, you cherish
them. You brought
them with sound
assumptions, seared
flesh adorned with gold
leaf, Greek letters,
gilded chain corroded.

Boone Winter v1

Brown-black mulch
speckled with cigarette butts,
bed carved by roots
of a barren tree, roots worming
their way across an island
prison in the parking lot,
asphalt white with salt,
black with oil
spattering the ankles of students—
students hugging, pressing
against the wind, wind
that tears at the flesh, freezes
the blood mid-stream,
crowds of students, heads
down, covered,
ears covered,
beaten, bearing weight enough
for forty men—
it silvers the hair,
poisons the water,
pales lips to ash, barren
as the ash-gray trees.

Y (a poem)

They think us strange,
we who don’t venture
into sunlight.
Scientists, Creators, Genius
bred in studios and labs–
strong-minded products
of a well-constructed mess,
we set ourselves apart
from yesterday’s beliefs.
We do not mold.
We do not bend.
We resist,
labeled stubborn
by the older generation,
self-styled mentors, our judges.
We question authority,
push out to sea,
bricks in that wall of defense,
seeking a seed of self-awareness
inherent in each of us.
Some might have died,
ripped open at the seam,
now broken, scarred.
We do not cry.
Our generation stinks
of death—
a sapling withered,
corroded by chosen elements,
leaving a stench
of lust, gluttony, dishonor,
rancid blend of blood like ours
and everything we’re not.
Mistakes clot in the vein.
We do not mourn
but smell the rot.
We do not mourn:
We live.

Pixar’s 22 Rules of Storytelling as Image Macros

This is an excellent list of writing rules. Perfect for a writer of any kind.

twistedsifter's avatarTwistedSifter

 

Back in 2011, then Pixar storyboard artist Emma Coats (now freelancing) tweeted 22 rules of storytelling, according to Pixar. Coats learned the ‘guidelines’ from senior colleagues on how to create appealing stories, tweeting the nuggets of wisdom over a 6 week period.

Last week, artist and User Experience Director at Visceral Games (a subsidiary of Electronic Arts), Dino Ignacio, created a series of image macros of the 22 rules and posted them to Imgur and Reddit.

Below you will find the list of image macros along with a text summary of Pixar’s 22 rules of storytelling at the end of the post. Enjoy!

[Sources: Emma Coats, Dino Ignacio, The Pixar Touch]

 

1.

pixar's 22 rules of storytelling as image macros (2)

Written by Emma Coats | @lawnrocket
Image Macro by Dino Ignacio | @DinoIgnacio

 

2.

pixar's 22 rules of storytelling as image macros (3)

Written by Emma Coats | @lawnrocket
Image Macro by Dino Ignacio | @DinoIgnacio

 

3.

pixar's 22 rules of storytelling as image macros (4)

Written…

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Rule #1: Cats are assholes.

I came home early this evening to watch Supernatural and drink wine.

Supernatural, cat, and wine=the perfect evening

Pictured: My planned evening.

Yes, I drink wine out of my TARDIS mug. Anyway, when I got back, one of my cats was missing. Not the one in the above picture: My other roommate found her roaming and stuck her back in my bedroom while I was gone. No, this one was my oldest, my most difficult cat: Milla.

Red cushion

Pictured: Not Milla

Milla normally sleeps under the covers, under the bed, or on one of the red cushions I keep on my feet to keep my toes warm. Only instead of being in any of those perfectly good places, she was upstairs, in one of the two bedrooms that are always open.

My cats never roam the house. Correction: They roamed the house when my roommates were gone for winter break, but now that my roommates are back, it’s not good to let them roam.

Now, it doesn’t seem very polite to search your roommate’s bedroom. Neither does it seem polite to let your cat nest in your roommate’s bedroom. So I went to my first-floor roommate – they all know one another pretty well – and she volunteered to help me find Milla.

And we did. In the boxspring of the only other housemate who has a cat. A cat who doesn’t like other cats.

And my cat, my Milla…trying to get her to do anything is like pulling teeth.

Bloody sink and TARDIS mug

Pictured: My actual evening.

I knew I should have left her alone. She would come down eventually, the way she did before my roommates returned. But now my first-floor roommate was involved, and the two of us ended up in second-floor roommate’s room, sprawled on the floor, trying to wrench a cat from a boxspring.

Pictured: Cat Haven from Hell

I didn’t take pictures because it seemed unseemly to take photos of your roommate’s bedroom. On a side note: I have no connection with my roommates, we speak very rarely, and we have nothing in common, but tonight I rolled around on the floor with first-floor roommate while wearing nothing but a tank, a robe, and last night’s pajama bottoms. On a more positive side note: Milla finally returned, after I cursed her for hissing and (possibly) for breaking second-floor roommate’s wine glass, and each of my five roommates is so friendly and “chill” that she doesn’t mind the rest of us wallowing in their bedroom floor. She doesn’t even mind the broken wine glass. I’m not very social and it’s impossible for me to hold a conversation with these girls unless I’m drunk or talking about cats (the only thing I have in common with any one of them), so I call that a win.