With Valentine's day just behind us and a lot of talk of love, I thought I'd take a look on the exact opposite of love and affection- how do we write and display hatred in characters? How do characters hate, and what's the difference from rage?

In ...

Romance

I don't know much about the Romance Genre. I've never read a romance novel. Not that I recall, anyway.

Of course, I've seen a fair number of romance-focussed movies, and have consumed HUNDREDS of stories with a love subplot. Love is still the most common subplot ...

Having discussed a general approach to writing characters with mental disorders (with a lot of thoughtful comments by you further enriching what I had to say!) it's only right that we wrap up this very quick analysis with an example of a story that properly portrays them.

I chose ...

Dialogue is a vital part of a comic, book or movie.

Well - usually it is. There are surely some comics out there who have none. There's prose, such as many children's stories or fables that are all or mostly action and description - and since the rise of sound ...

Beatrice has been experiencing the same disturbing dream for the last 8 years. Sometimes she can barely wake from them. She always sees a woman with yellow eyes. THIS time the woman spoke to her… “Let me out”. What does it mean? Is it more than just a dream? Is ...

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 ...

So it turns out I'm quite ill this week and I don't feel I have enough focus to finish up my “Writing Mental Illness” set of articles. I promise to do that next week.

For today I'd like to talk about planning, writing and drawing a webcomic ...

Over the holidays I watched a couple of programs that made me think of “non-traditional heroes”

We've talked about antiheroes multiple times around theduckwebcomics.com of course.

One of the programs was a series called ‘Happy!’ and the other was the movie “Inside Llewyn Davis” by the Coen Brothers ...

Have you ever noticed that among the dead webcomics, a preponderance of them have “Hiatus” on their tombstone? That tombstone being, of course, the final page posted years and years ago with a promise they will be “right back” after a “short break”. There are of course a number of ...

Giving Mythic Scale to your Stories



Dexter and the Trinity Killer - this may not look like an epic confrontation…but it sure as heck was!


The classic Star Wars trilogy was a phenomenon and a triumph on multiple levels. One of the things it's famous for is it's ...