The first draft of anything is shit. — ERNEST HEMINGWAY - Robert McKee

...in truth there’s only one story. In essence we have told one another the same tale, one way or another, since the dawn of humanity, and that story could be usefully called the Quest. All stories take the form of a Quest.

When talented people write well, it is generally for this reason: They’re moved by a desire to touch the audience.

The substance of story is the gap that splits open between what a human being expects to happen when he takes an action and what really does happen; the rift between expectation and result, probability and necessity. To build a scene, we constantly break open these breaches in reality.