Michael, this is such a logical, inspired, and valuable extension of your thinking and experience in music and architecture. It is a gift to writers. Thank you for sharing it with the world.
Wow. THANK YOU. I read "A Pattern Language" in my liberal arts college, in a class where we were discussing the ecological and political implications of structure and design. I can not wait to read how you break this down. I also want to revisit Christopher Alexander, since I remember how much that book opened my mind.
This sounds like a really cool concept. I am a big fan of grand theories and architectures. I actually enjoy reading (good) textbooks because they can provide this: rather than just facts, a new pair of glasses through which to view the world. More colors, because we can name them.
For example, "Rules of Play" is on of the most popular textbooks on video game design. It provides a comprehensive structure for how to analyze video games in three dimensions: Rules, Play, and Culture. But there are 33 total chapters, which break these dimensions down further, and then tie them back together.
I'm gonna check out some of your examples and explanations of the terms to get a grasp on how this whole architecture works
Michael, this is such a logical, inspired, and valuable extension of your thinking and experience in music and architecture. It is a gift to writers. Thank you for sharing it with the world.
Plus, wow. Just wow. 🙏 ⭐️🤯
…only 56,815,128,661,595,284,938,812,255,859,275 more essays to go and I will be complete…
The diagrams help me to understand. I like their handmade quality too. I think there's real juice in the combination of word and image.
Wow. THANK YOU. I read "A Pattern Language" in my liberal arts college, in a class where we were discussing the ecological and political implications of structure and design. I can not wait to read how you break this down. I also want to revisit Christopher Alexander, since I remember how much that book opened my mind.
you had me at "you don't need Rick Rubin"
Very interesting! If you'd like to see a parallel example of teaching using a pattern language, I refer to a paper in this post, which also introduces Christopher Alexander's concept. The example is teaching video game design. https://open.substack.com/pub/goprefigure/p/how-to-think-like-a-video-game-designer
Thank you for existing.
Have you seen or heard about, Jonathan Pageau, by any chance,
Michael?
This sounds like a really cool concept. I am a big fan of grand theories and architectures. I actually enjoy reading (good) textbooks because they can provide this: rather than just facts, a new pair of glasses through which to view the world. More colors, because we can name them.
For example, "Rules of Play" is on of the most popular textbooks on video game design. It provides a comprehensive structure for how to analyze video games in three dimensions: Rules, Play, and Culture. But there are 33 total chapters, which break these dimensions down further, and then tie them back together.
I'm gonna check out some of your examples and explanations of the terms to get a grasp on how this whole architecture works
do you have a printer-friendly version of this graph? I want to hang it on my wall where I work