Writing Timeclocks


Timeclocks are one of those elements of fiction that usually shows up in the middle or just before the final act, to give things a little boost in the adrenaline department, and make the drama more urgent. Not only are your characters facing big problems, but suddenly their ...

If you want to design a memorable character it doesn’t just stop at their looks. How they speak, write and use body language is integral to who they are as a person as well as how other character’s may react to them. When you read a comic or ...

Here on DD, your thumbnail is your first impression and as such you should take care with your thumbnail, as it is your first chance to make an impression with a reader. Full disclosure, I don't really like our thumbnails here on DD. These stamp style thumbnails are too ...

Raytoons has created a board game that you can own. He writes:

In this turn-based strategy card game from Raytoons Comics, each player must form their own team of characters (from the Quackup comic book series) and must defeat other players through mini-game missions and battles! Game missions and conflicts ...

The breaking point of a story is where the protagonist has been beaten down so many times that they throw life to the ground and yell, “Enough of this shit!”. Keep in mind that the breaking point does not necessarily mean it’s the climax, more it is a pivotal ...

You


Creating something new is daunting. Where do you start? I know if I'm putting something together, at some point I get anxious about how it will be received by people who read it. Will it make any sense? Is it good enough? Is it just terrible? Irrelevant? Boring ...

What is a character? A miserable little pile of traits! Except no, there is more to a character than a collection of likes and dislikes. There are varying opinions on the importance of character versus plot, with some authors viewing all characters as a mere tool to drive plot forward ...

Writing a character with mental illness can be a very tricky thing. Writers usually go for the extremely rare, exotic and spectacular: multiple personality disorders, extreme manifestations of psychopathy or sociopathy, high functioning autism with that ever alluring ‘savant’ magic going for the character, bombastically spectacular schizophrenia… in many ways ...

In a nutshell, exposition is a big ole mound of information that the author wants the reader to know before they move on in the plot. It often gets a bad rap but that is usually due to it being used incorrectly. There is definitely a place for exposition so ...

But and Therefore

I'm a fan of user-friendly, practical advice on things, especially writing. It's why I dig the Banes Method (it's not my method; it's just named after me).

Anyway, I came upon some dandy advice from Trey Parker and Matt Stone of South Park ...