I was reading a critique of a series, a successful series, of novels. I think it's an urban fantasy/horror thing where the main character has a specific paranormal ability, limited, but useful in her detective work. She had a love interest, who was maybe on and off, but ...

Photo: “Twistjam: Morgyn and Lacey”. Original characters from Alone is a Hard Thing Toby by David A Webcomic and Hawk and Flo Adventures Part 1 Ice Cream Truck of Doom by HawkandFloAdventures. (February 2023)

A nice round of milestones from four creators to celebrate the accomplishments on The Duck:

The ...

I was supposed to write the last post on my ‘toxic’ character design series, but I've been deep cleaning the house all day and I'm exhausted. My brain refuses to think so that post will need to wait till next time. Instead, I'd like to talk about ...

Last year (har har har obligatory New Year's Joke done) I'd started talking about Found Family, one of my favorite tropes in pretty much any narrative work, from movies to novels to comics and webcomics. Found family is when a bunch of characters, usually unrelated and mismatched, end ...

As we approach the end of another year, I had a few ideas about topics related to endings.

If you've read my articles for awhile, you may remember discussions about wants and needs - the plot objective that is more ‘physical’ is the want, and the emotional or thematic pursuit ...

There's a weird hermit living at the edge of a street. Rumours fly about him and what he does all day, whether he's a criminal or a psychopath. People don't go near him or his property and any interaction is minimal. Until a young vagrant kid stumbles ...

It's been said by…someone that a character WANTS something. It's one of the ingredients that makes a compelling character. It's also something that makes a character relatable, even one who's very different from the reader/audience.

Most of us aren't centuries-old robots, but we ...

When working on comics, particularly long term, you may encounter a situation where your comic is in…development hell!

Development hell is a form of purgatory for a creative project. We often hear it used in relation to series or movies. The project is bounced from studio to studio, as ...

I know we've talked about exposition before, but a couple examples popped into my head recently…even though the examples are not recent.

When I was a youngster I loved the Hulk character. Today I remembered a specific issue of that comic, from way back, where the Hulk was ...

So I just watched the latest Trope Talk by Overly Sharkastic Productions on Youtube (high recommend if you aren't already subscribed). The focus was on Doomed Heroes, and there's not much I'd be able to add to that comprehensive essay. Go watch it.

What it did inspire ...