Episode 234 - Climactic Climaxes!
Aug 31, 2015
What's best? One big climax, multiple small ones, early, or delayed? How much should you work UP to a climax? What about anticlmactic events, how important are they? Climaxes are really important in stories. Often you work up to them over the course of a whole series, but each episode or chapter can have them, maybe even every single page. I find writing “up” to climaxes a bit stressful because you have a lot of preasure and expectation there. And when it's over and you've actually achieved it, it can be a bit depressing: where do you go to from there? You can feel a little lost, at least I do. TALKING ABOUT WRITING HERE. My preference is for multiple climaxes. Do you always need climaxes in stories? I don't think you do personally… there are times when things work fine without one, but it does help better with endings. Sometimes climaxes can be TOO big. Way too much of a story can be invested in a climax, it subsumes everything, everything has to tie in with that specific story flow and that can be REALLY had to pull off. If it's not done right it can be massively disappointing. Anticlimactic. Pitface Joins Banes and Ozone to chat about climaxes in stories and read out the contributions from our climactic contributors. Gunwallace gave us a gorgeous theme for Just Another Day!
Topics and Show Notes
Topics and shownotes
Featured comic:
Re set - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Re_Set/
Contributors forum thread:
Climactic Climaxes! - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/forum/topic/177284/
Contributors:
Bravo1102 - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/bravo1102/
Special thanks to:
Gooey Gunwallace, sexy music man - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
The theme song by Gunwallace this week was for:
Just Another Day - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/JustAnotherDay/ by AshenSkye rated T.
Episode 232 - Creating a Rounded World
Aug 17, 2015
Hello, hello, hello! This is the second part of our hugely long expose on the tricky art of WORLD BUILDING! And it really IS extra loooooooooooog… that's because we take so much time crafting the Quackcast world for you. To recap: world-building is a big part of ALL fiction from SciFi and fantasy to your common or garden police shows or even comic strips. You create locations that have relationships with each other, characters that have jobs, families, friends, histories etc, all that is just as much world building as a fantasy world with a specific style of magic and monsters or a SciFi world with aliens and a 1000 year war. Typically, if you do your homework and set up your world nicely then it makes it easier to write stories within it, but you also have to remember not to show all that research to people in the form of big long explanations. Banes and Bravo1102 join Ozoneocean to talk about it! Listen to Gunwallace's lovely theme for Regarding Dandelions!
Episode 231 - The importance of world building
Aug 9, 2015
You always do a bit of world building in fiction, in some types of stories like alternative histories, fantasy and Sci-Fi you have to do a bit more, in things set in the real world you don't have to do nearly as much - maybe only limited to a few rooms, character occupations and relationships etc, rather than planets and political systems, but the point is you're always doing it. There are good ways to do world building and bad ways i.e. work out as many details as you need to but have that all behind the scenes, not introduced as a wall of text or long explanations on how things work. World building should inform you story and make it work seamlessly, not prop it up like a rickety scaffold. The topic of the importance of World Building was previously touched on a few years ago by Skoolmunkee and Kroatz for Quackcast 39, but things happened at that recording was lost to history, so now we approach it again with all new contributions, strident opinions, and points of view on the subject. Gunwallace did a cool theme for Red Velvet Requiem!
Episode 228 - Conflicting conflicts conflict
Jul 19, 2015
This time we're talking about conflict in webcomic writing, and any writing in general really. Conflict is one of the main drivers of a story, so you pretty much have to have it in there somewhere! But how do you approach it? Do you set it up really carefully or just put a bunch of volatile characters together and see what happens? I think for a lot of us we don't think too much about the science of our conflicts, rather we approach it artistically and develop things by feel and instinct because conflict is such an intrinsic trait. But understanding how you use it can be very useful when you're writing satisfying resolutions and climaxes. A good understanding of the types of conflict in your story is also pretty essential when you're writing a good comedy (it's a great source of humour!), and also when you're explaining or selling your work to the public: It's all very well to chat about your clever setting and your funky characters, but conflict is the reason they're IN a story to begin with and that's really what will get people wanting to read out it. I hope you enjoy Gunwallace's great porn style music type theme for Tales of Two Tiny Titty bars!
Episode 210 - DD Fashion Show!
Mar 16, 2015
Have you heard the word about the DD Fashion Show Free For All that's currently going on? No? Well now's your chance, so listen up good! Banes and Ozoneocean interview VinoMas aka Travis Michael Moore about the great community project he's running. Here's the low down: You go to the Fashion Forum in the links here (http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/forum/13117/), desing an outfit for one of the figures there and post it in the catwalk thread for all to see and admire! You can put the outfit on your own figure and offer your own figure up for use as a model too if you like. Join in the fun, it's super easy. As long as you're a member of the forum and know how to host pics on photobucket.com or some other image sharing service you're all set! NOW GO TO IT!!
Episode 198 - Fallopian Crusader to the rescue!
Dec 22, 2014
Merry XXX-mas! For Quackcast 198 Banes and I interview our second ever adult comic creator, the venerable Fallopiancrusader, on the anniversary of his comic being hosted on DD no less! His comic, "Rimjob" is as hard-core as they come. It's a spoof of the story in the videogame Skyrim: Khthonis, an orc woman is set for execution along with some other prisoners, the way she escapes though is quite a lot different to the events of the game! Fallopiancrusader is an amazingly talented and experienced artist, as you can see from the amazing realism and artistry of his artwork on Rimjob, in fact it's very difficult to find more artistic porn. A graphic designer by trade and skilled at many styles, one of Fallopiancrusader's reasons for creating Rimjob was simply to experiment with a new style! I think you'll agree that he succeeded admirably. If you haven't read Rimjob yet it'll be a rare treat for you. Rimjob is a NSFW adults only 18+ comic so if you're not singed up with the site and you're not 18+ you won't be able to view it. If that's the case though I've included links to two images Fallopiancrusader made for the DD awards so you can see his artistry at depicting his character Khthonis. Also: enjoy the brilliant Bladerunner style theme Gunwallace made for Holon!
Episode 193 - Representing inner turmoil in comics
Nov 17, 2014
The idea for this Quackcast came from a newspost by HippieVan. She had just read a comic version of Frankenstein and was disappointed at the simplistic way that the character's inner turmoil was rendered. She wondered about the different ways that "inner turmoil" is portrayed in comics. The lovely and highly intellectual duo of Tantz Aerine and Pitface join Banes and I to discuss farts... and after that we tackle the subject of portraying inner turmoil in comics. Each person brought some rather interesting examples to the table, and we all talked about the many different ways such internal emotional and intellectual changes can be visually depicted on the page for the reader without being stupidly obvious about it.
Episode 164 - Operation Moon 2
Apr 29, 2014
A very SPECIAL episode! For this Quackcast Pit Face, Abt Nihil, Tantz Aerine, Banes, and Ozoneocean perform the sequel to last years Live radio play, with; Operation Moon 2! It also carries on nicely from the continuity of the last three SciFi Quackcasts. After the adventures in the alien hunted diner, the two Hill-billies, Daisy Dooks and her pervy old uncle Hayseed are in the custody of two sinister aliens, Palavi Kuklamu and Fritzi Von Horstheim. Their path is about to cross with the devilishly handsome space rogue Ozoneocean and brave Captain Banes! It's great fun to record a live play like this with all your actors doing their thing at the same time, nice and quick too. Editing is more of a challenge this way though. It's also specially challenging to write the whole thing in one night!
