There's nothing more satisfying than writing a twist villain. The person that everyone trusts or nobody suspects, who ends up being the mastermind for all the evil stuff that happened all along.

The person that everyone defers to for advice, that leans on for support, that is there to ...

Forgiveness is a wonderful thing. It's an emotion, it's a state of mind, it's a process.

It's a process that takes at least two parties to even begin to happen.

The problem is that in life and in fiction, this is often misconstrued as something that ...

You're watching the main character do their thing, and it's all smooth sailing, when another character comes in the room and sparks fly. You expect them to, and if written well, you look forward to each scene that has them both.

That other character is the foil.

The ...

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Time loops in stories are a lot of fun, they can be really complicated and interesting. Groundhog day is the most famous version of this trope. Banes ...

the cruel tutor himself, Pai Mei

One of my favorite character types is the gruff/grizzled old mentor. Tough as nails, mean or cranky on the outside but with great knowledge or support to offer when you know them, or when they know - and trust - you.

I've talked about ...

It’s not surprising that drama and romance are two popular genres when it comes to media. From TV to novels to comics, they draw the audience in with the simple question: “Who is going to end up with who?” Ships set sail, twists get turns and hearts get broken ...

There is a gripe that I have when it comes to romance. It might be the reason I don't really like reading romance as a genre, and while I am aware that not all works in the romance genre are like this, there are too many for me to ...

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 ...

When a character the story's cast and audience identify and are familiar with dies, the effect is, or should be, monumental.

Not only because that effectively ends that character's journey (and arc), but also because as an event it has immediate ramifications for all the surviving characters.

First ...