A little barroom confidence.

(NOTE: I would advise that this post not be read by any who are offended by Polish jokes.)
A Pole is feeling dynamic and sporty one night in a tavern after a couple of drinks.  Seeing a pool table, he decides to challenge a fellow bar patron to a game of pool.  "The loser has to buy the winner a free drink," says the Pole.  The other patron agrees, wondering how good this Pole is at shooting pool.
So they play, and even though it's a close game, the patron manages to beat the Pole at pool.  But even so, the Pole is still pretty confident.  "You know what?" he says, keeping the smile on his face.  "Let's make it double or nothing."
The patron agrees, and so they play pool again.  And yet even though it's also kind of a close game, the other patron wins again, managing to beat the Pole a second time.  But the Pole is still smiling, still looking pretty sure of himself.
"Did I say double or nothing?" he says.  "I meant best two out of three."

On an admired Spongebob episode.

There's one episode of "Spongebob Squarepants" on Nickelodeon I remember as particularly amusing, specifically the first cartoon of the two (though I liked the second as well).  I'll relate the first cartoon of the episode here, entitled "Sailor Mouth."
Spongebob is taking out the trash at the Krusty Krab's closing time as usual, when he sees seedy graffiti (he doesn't recognize it as such) on the Dumpster; he reads it as "Krabs is a (dolphin vocal sound-effect)."  Patrick, the starfish, points the strange word out as one of those "sentence enhancers" to spice up one's vocabulary.  They try using it profusely.  You imagine the air out back there being fouled up with their language, even if it's just one word.
Then, unfortunately, next day at the Krusty Krab, Spongebob tries it out on the intercom.  "I hope you folks are (dolphin vocal sound-effect) well having a very (dolphin vocal effect) nice day.  Today's special is a really (dolphin vocal effect) tasty Krabby Patty with (dolphin vocal effect) sauce." This, of course, prompts all the customers, really offended, to cut and leave.
When Mr. Krabs gets to the bottom of this, Spongebob and Patrick tell him it's supposed to make speech fancy.  "There ain't nothing fancy about that word!" he tells them.  "It's Number Eleven on a list of thirteen words you're never supposed to say in polite company." Squidward interrupts: "Um, Mr. Krabs, aren't there only supposed to be seven such words?" He says, quietly: "Not if you're a sailor.  Ar, ar, ar, ar, ar."
So Spongebob and Patrick, feeling ashamed, make a promise they'll never use Word Number Eleven again.  Next day, they're playing Eels and Escalators, and Spongebob keeps trying to get ahead in the game, but Patrick is routing him.  On the last, unfortunate throw of the dice, Spongebob explodes: "Aw, (dolphin vocal sound-effect)!!!" Patrick is horribly aghast: "You said Number Eleven." He runs to go tell Mr. Krabs, with Spongebob in pursuit, insisting he apologizes, but Patrick says out loud to him that he's "telling Mr. Krabs you said (dolphin vocal effect)!" "Aha!  Now you said it!" So they're in a race to see who tells Mr. Krabs who said it first.
It's a draw; they both get there and say in unison: "He said (dolphin vocal effect)!!"
Needless to say, Mr. Krabs is outraged.  He decides to punish them by putting them to work, painting the Krusty Krab.  "If you're going to talk like sailors, you're going to work like sailors."  But as he's carrying out the paints, he stubs his foot on a rock, and in pain, he not only says "(dolphin vocal effect)" up into a blue streak, but indulges on the spot into all other words: "(lighthouse bell sound)," "(seagull call)," "(foghorn sound)," and so forth.  Spongebob counts them: "That's all thirteen.  Mr. Krabs, we're going to tell your mother!"
With Mr. Krabs pleading against it, they run and tell Mama Krabs about her son saying all the foul words, relating each one to her—practically verbatim.  "Oh, me poor old heart," she says, swooning.  "You should all be ashamed." And so she makes all three of them work, painting her house with a fresh coat of pink paint.
But then as she goes to reward their efforts later with lemonade, she stubs her own foot, cries in pain, and says, "Oh, me (ah-oo-ga horn sound) foot!" They're horrified, but she says: "What?  It's just Old Man Jenkins and his jalopy." Indeed it is; his car has an ah-oo-ga horn.  They all laugh it off.

Sharing a rough draft evaluation technique.

I've just finished the first draft of a novel, and decided on a particular evaluation method towards editing and polishing it up that I would like to relate.
The old scholastic method of "outlining," I've found, takes a bit long when you want a story to be gotten out relatively soon, so I'm doing a sort of compressed way of outlining the story on the rough draft of my new adventure story (about which you'll hear in a little while).  I reread each chapter, and then mark down, in a list, chapter by chapter over several days, primarily the "Main Point" each chapter focuses on, then, below the "Main Point," each of three "Secondary Points" of each chapter, besides.
As soon as this is done with the whole draft, I'm then going to use post-it notes to link points between chapters to hopefully tighten up the plot, make it sounder, more entertaining, a better story overall.  And, of course, I'm going to heavily edit the story itself accordingly.
It's simple, and yet I believe it could work.  I wonder if other writers have edited according to anything similar to the "Main Point"/"Secondary Points" method of outlining.