πŸ’Ž On the importance information gaps in stories (curiosity)

Stories depend on the artful manipulation of what Loewenstein calls information gaps. In McKee’s words, β€˜Curiosity is the intellectual need to answer questions and close open patterns. Story plays to this universal desire by doing the opposite, posing questions and opening situations.’ The storyteller plays a cat and mouse game with the viewer (or reader, or listener), opening and closing information gaps as the narrative unfolds, unspooling the viewer’s curiosity.

Excerpt from: Curious: The Desire to Know and Why Your Future Depends on It by Ian Leslie

πŸ’Ž On the disease of thinking that having a great idea is 90pc of work (as Steve Jobs notes)

You know, one of the things that really hurt Apple was after I left, John Sculley got a very serious disease. It’s the disease of thinking that a really great idea is 90 per cent of the work. And if you tell all these other people “Here’s this great idea”, then of course they can go off and make it happen. And the problem with that is that there’s just a tremendous amount of craftsmanship in between a great idea and a great product… Designing a product is keeping five thousand things in your brain and fitting them all together.

Excerpt from: Curious: The Desire to Know and Why Your Future Depends on It by Ian Leslie