Plenty has been said about giving characters flaws - we've talked about it around the site, on the Quackcast and out loud, to ourselves, on the bus and in the park.

Characters gotta have flaws!

But something I've thought about more lately, in the years well after starting my ...

When building tension, it's imperative to have high stakes within your story. It doesn't matter what kind of story it is. It could be a story about huge risks, like the end of the world or even the universe, or it could be a story about a girl ...

Who doesn't love a happy ending?

Eh, there are a good few people I've met that just turn their noses up at happy endings, because apparently according to their opinion, happy endings are for the weak.

But for all other normal people, a happy ending is a good ...

A few Newsposts from our contributors have mentioned plotting or planning vs the pantsing or ‘discovery’ approach to writing.

Plotting, which is obviously building some kind of plan or outline, is an approach many writers swear by, at least to some degree. It might be a vague plan, with a ...

I promise, this is not going to be another opportunity for me to take a shot at Game of Thrones.

In fact, this time I'm seeking to use the example to illustrate another way to approach suspense and intensify the engagement of your audience with the story and the ...

Throughout my various job positions as well as comic work, there were countless times where my team and myself would accomplish an important goal or milestone but take very little time to step back and look at what we had achieved. This is very easy to do, particularly if there ...

Once the honeymoon sheen of releasing your new project wears you can easily find yourself burnt out by the concept of having to muster the energy to continue working on it. Sometimes you might have written yourself into a corner or maybe you feel like you are not liking the ...

Just like the table scene, the dance scene can be an invaluable story telling tool: a way to showcase where your characters stand without having to force them to speak about it or have someone else infodump about it.

This stance can be on the characters that dance (i.e ...

I ran out of time and didn't finish the Newspost I wanted to; it'll have to wait until next week. It's a cool one!

Instead…this.


It can be a challenge to “be yourself”. It can be difficult to even define what that means. Most people probably ...

-Guest Post written by Prototype

I believe webcomics authors are often too eager to mimic our paper print cousin. We try to make our comics as close to a normal issue as possible with format and length when we in fact should embrace the stuff we can do better. We ...