Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince (2015)

When I was very young, my mom had placed a series of book collections on the headboard of my bed before I learned how to read or developed any interest in books. Among the titles, nestled between C.S. Lewis' Narnia series ...

The Underdog is a staple of fiction. Protagonists, by and large, are Underdogs.

It probably makes them more relatable; how are we supposed to root for someone who either has, or easily gets whatever they want? Where is a character supposed to go unless they start out low?

Even the ...

A well written protagonist will generally have some flaws, starting out as an underdog of some kind, with lessons to learn and improvements to make over the course of the story.

Granted, some heroes are, well, just heroes, who are pretty much who they need to be from the beginning ...

800 years ago, there was a battle against evil looking forces and they were thought to be vanquished during the middle ages by a wizard. The artifacts from the castle have since turned into a museum display for tourists looking for a few chilling secrets in the modern day. Now ...

I had an idea for an upcoming story in my comic. It came from real life, in a way. I've noticed that I'm really, really good at rock, scissors, paper. Like, I almost never lose. So a tale in the near future will feature one of my characters ...

I'm not sure where I first heard of Li'l Abner. Maybe some bits and pieces in a Comic Review Magazine or something.

The Shmoo was a character on the old Flintstones cartoons I used to watch, and Lena Hyena had shown up on the movie Who Framed Roger ...

I read that a great ending should be “surprising but inevitable”. That's a tall order! To have the whole story leading to that inevitable conclusion, but not be predictable. Wow!

However, I've seen (and read…ah, let's be honest; mostly it's “seen”) several great endings that ...

LISTEN!

OMFG you sexist PIG! Heh… today we talk about trying to recognise sexism in your OWN work, what to do about it, and WHY. It turns out it can be very hard to do, and if you DO acknowledged it the instinct is to rationalise it away, justify it ...

Endings are hard. We all know that. We have to tie up all the loose ends, answer all the questions, and pay off all the characters. We have to give a resolution that hopefully leaves our readers satisfied.

I know of a couple ways to deconstruct a story, and to ...

If you want to decent job of it, creating and using weapons in fiction can be quite tricky. There are a lot of pitfalls that newbies and even long time veterans of creating fiction fall into.

1. Number one is simply copying what others have done without understanding it yourself ...