The Pleasures of Structure starts from the premise that the ability to develop a well understood and articulated story structure is the most important skill a screenwriter can develop. For example, good structure requires a great premise and rigorous character development. Without clear character motivations and goals--which are themselves indicative of key structural beats--your story is going exactly nowhere. Using the simple and flexible 'W' model of screenplay structure developed in the prequel Write What You Don't Know, Hoxter sets this out as its starting point. This model is tested against a range of examples which are chosen to explore the flexibility not only of that model but of movie storytelling more generally. Writers and students often worry that they are asked to work 'to formula'. This book will test that formula to breaking point. For example, the first case study will offer the example of a well written, professional, mainstream movie against which our later and more adventurous examples can be compared. So the lessons we learn examining the animated family adventure movie How To Train Your Dragon lead us directly to ask questions of our second case study, the acclaimed Swedish vampire movie Låt den Rätte Komma In (Let The Right One In). Both movies have protagonists with the same basic problem, the same goal, and they use the same basic structure to tell their stories. Of course they are very different films and they work on their audiences in very different ways. Our linked case studies will expose how simple choices, like reversing the order of elements of the protagonist's transformational arc and shifting ownership of key story beats, has an enormous impact on how we respond to a structural model that is otherwise functionally identical.

"Helps develop a much deeper understanding of story structure, using case studies with short practical lessons which all emerge organically from the example at hand"--

This collection of essays situates the digital gaming phenomenon alongside broader debates in cultural and media studies. Contributors to this volume maintain that computer games are not simply toys, but rather circulate as commodities, new media technologies, and items of visual culture that are embedded in complex social practices. Apart from placing games within longer arcs of cultural history and broader critical debates, the contributors to this volume all adopt a pedagogical and theoretical approach to studying games and gameplay, drawing on the interdisciplinary resources of the humanities and social sciences, particularly new media studies. In eight essays, the authors develop rich and nuanced understandings of the aesthetic appeals and pleasurable engagements of digital gameplay. Topics include the role of “cheats” and “easter eggs” in influencing cheating as an aesthetic phenomenon of gameplay; the relationship between videogames, gambling, and addiction; players’ aesthetic and kinaesthetic interactions with computing technology; and the epistemology and phenomenology of popular strategy-based wargames and their relationship with real-world military applications. Notes and a bibliography accompany each essay, and the work includes several screenshots, images, and photographs.

A distinguished critic rescues literature from the ivory tower and reestablishes reading as a personal source of complex pleasure and insight.

Human lives are full of pleasures and pains. And humans are creatures that are able to think: to learn, understand, remember and recall, plan and anticipate. Ancient philosophers were interested in both of these facts and, what is more, were interested in how these two facts are related to one another. There appear to be, after all, pleasures and pains associated with learning and inquiring, recollecting and anticipating. We enjoy finding something out. We are pained to discover that a belief we hold is false. We can think back and enjoy or be upset by recalling past events. And we can plan for and enjoy imagining pleasures yet to come. This book is about what Plato, Aristotle, the Epicureans and the Cyrenaics had to say about these relationships between pleasure and reason.

Pleasures of Horror is a stimulating and insightful exploration of horror fictions—literary, cinematic and televisual—and the emotions they engender in their audiences. The text is divided into three sections. The first examines how horror is valued and devalued in different cultural fields; the second investigates the cultural politics of the contemporary horror film; while the final part considers horror fandom in relation to its embodied practices (film festivals), its "reading formations" (commercial fan magazines and fanzines) and the role of special effects. Pleasures of Horror combines a wide range of media and textual examples with highly detailed and closely focused exposition of theory. It is a fascinating and engaging look at responses to a hugely popular genre and an invaluable resource for students of media, cultural and film studies and fans of horror.