When I was growing up in the 80s, stories that were marketed as ‘children’s' were occasionally brutal.

Characters got maimed or killed, tortured or traumatized, met with horrid ends in worlds that were anything but rosy. And this was a pattern that wasn't limited to, say, English literature ...

When he created the Twilight Zone, Rod Serling was motivated by the desire to tell more meaningful stories. In his writing career up to then, his work had been heavily censored.

Serling realized that by setting his stories in fantastical situations, in alternate or futuristic versions of Earth, that he ...

So you have this badass character, who is usually a gentle soul, or affable, or kind and easygoing. They fight efficiently and are formidable as they are.

Until they meet someone who is their better.

He/she can meet all their attacks, break through their defenses, wears them down to ...

It's finally done! We've gone through the basics of each psychology school of thought when it comes to personality theories. Each theory brings its own aspects of what makes human beings be the way they are. It could be described like each theory describes one facet of a ...

Buckle up. This is going to be a dense one.

Social media dominates our lives. In the webcomic community, content is generally in the form of comics, however, we have podcasts, YouTube videos, Instagram accounts and of course Twitter. We immerse ourselves in the online world, broadcasting our efforts and ...

See what I did there? It’s an image of a Beholder… which normally has one giant eye right in the center of their face/body and the article is titled HORROR (the Beholder is scary looking) is in the EYE of the BEHOLDER? Yeah? No? Ok…

Seriously tho,

CONTENT ...

Some characters are the heroes.

Some characters are the villains.

And some characters are just punchable. But not actually bad, or even antagonists- though sometimes they can be towards specific characters rather than the general plot goals.

Every time this type of character opens their mouth to say something, our ...

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When our jobs are shown in fiction they usually get it wrong. We talk about HOW they get it wrong here… Pit tells us all how she ...

Usually when building a character, we go for their general personality in terms of traits, the routine/general behavior they would display, the routine/general things that would interest them and so on.

If you are writing a slice of life story, or a sitcom style series, or anything that ...

So we've talked often about how letting a character die in a story is something that should be used very frugally, because once death occurs, it should be permanent. In most settings, death shouldn't be something that is reversible. If not, it will lose its impact, and the ...