and the whale's not gone

the only challenges that require multiple people are at the beginning and end - at the beginning to allow the players to bounce around there for a bit before they realize they need to go down, and also at the end to ensure that a runaway player has to wait for another to catch up

count the rice itself, of course, can only be played with one player, so that players never actually have to count rice (if you had to wait for a second player at the end, then whoever got closest would win) (this is ofc not accounting for hannah pilkes)

the middle rooms are great too, because they are easy to intentionally fail, and hard to win. the spot the difference rooms are especially good, because you think you understand what it is (spot the difference between the two halves of the room), and this is seemingly confirmed when you successfully loose, but once you come back to try to win, you realize you did not actually fully understand the game. the placement of these is important, too - only players who were intentionally trying to lose got to those rooms. any higher in the sequence, and they might have had a player trying to win reach the rooms first, and then they'd realize the twist

and also the decision to split the rooms up? 2 and 3 in a separate space from 4-8, so players would assume there are only 3 until someone loses enough, subtly hiding the majority of the game from them

The only things that work without rest are machines; literally everything that lives requires rest.

I think of the first draft as an armature.

If I was making a beautiful bronze statue, I would need to make a clay model first. And, depending on the shape, before I even got out my clay I would need to get some good thick wire and create a basic shape for the clay to adhere to, so it doesn't all fall down. Once I have this essential 3D wire frame, I can start building and subtracting and refining.

But if I try to refine on just clay, it won't have enough of a core to hold it up. I'll sculpt a beautiful hand only to have the whole arm fall off and go smush.

The armature isn't the sculpture. It is the frame you build the sculpture around.

The first draft isn't the novel, it's a sort-of-novel-shaped thing that will hold up everything you build and beautify later.

Not getting into ending spoilers but Steven Spielberg plays a character who is pivotal to the climax of the film.

Ray Charles fires a warning shot from a pistol at a shoplifter.

They did location filming in a mall that had closed the previous year in 1978. The production fucked that mall up so bad that it remained abandoned until it was finally demolished in 2012.