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It seems like every single “badass” in TV, Movies, books and comics is “ex-special forces” or something like it these days. It's become a meaningless cliche. Writers use it as a shortcut to show ...

The old 70s sitcom, Happy Days, is a mine of tropes. It's where we get the phrase “Jump the Shark” as there was an episode where The Fonz water-skied over a shark for some reason. Happy Days was also a spin-off generator, giving us Laverne and Shirley, Mork and ...

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Artwork from Key of Dreams

When you're working on a project with other people, a comic collaboration for example, it's usually best to decide on different roles for everyone according to what they ...

As creators of stories, be they novels or graphic novels or comics, we all have heard the adage “write what you know”. It's been drummed into our minds to the point that its cold fingers have our impostor syndrome in a deathgrip every time we venture our to write ...

Photo: “A Page of the Tuesday Funnies Used to Wrap a Mason Jar at the Thrift Store”. The San Diego Union-Tribune. (February 2025)

Gleaning for vintage supplies at the local thrift store, I made out with an assortment of cream coloured typewriter papers weathered by age from card stock cotton ...

I was tempted to write about something easy and non-controversial this week, but then decided I would just keep being me. At least this post has something to do with comics, and current news. I'm genuinely interested in what people have to say on this topic, as it it ...

Photo: “Mies Couch”. Drawn by Plymayer. (January 2025)

I rewatched two-thirds of Richard Linklater’s Before Trilogy, skipping over the first film of the series to focus on the latter two. The trilogy consists of Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, and Before Midnight each film spaced roughly a decade apart. The ...

There's nothing more frustrating when a character dies from a situation that had no reason occuring except perhaps that the writers wanted to be edgy and make the story have more gravitas with a random death that's forced into the plot.

I've talked often over the years ...

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Main characters with main character syndrome? What is main character syndrome? Well the way we're dealing with it here it's normally a snide criticism you level and someone who seems to think the world revolves ...

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A standard thing in stories is to have multiple plot lines. In short stories or when you're just starting out as a writer you tend to have a single line, the A plot, but as soon ...