Last week, we looked at ways to prevent the middle of your story from sagging. One of those suggestions was using a subplot or two to help flesh out both the world and characters of your story.
For those of you who are a bit confused as to what a ...

Purpose of subplots
Emma_Clare at 12:00AM, Dec. 14, 2018QUACKCAST 404 - Strong characters
Ozoneocean at 12:00AM, Dec. 11, 2018
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We mined Tantz's Saturday newspost for our discussion topic: Strong characters and how to write GOOD ones!
What is a strong character? Well ...
Strong Women, Strong Men
Tantz_Aerine at 12:00AM, Dec. 8, 2018
A ton of things have been written about “strong female characters”- how we need them in narratives, and what it means to have them in a creative work's cast. Tons of discussions and social media wars have been waged on what it is that makes a female character strong ...
When the middle of your story sucks
Emma_Clare at 12:00AM, Dec. 7, 2018
When creating a story, either for comics or novels, the easiest parts to write are usually the beginnings and ends because hell ,they’re the fun bits right? You burst out of the gate, ready and raring to go, your gaze on that sweet, sweet finale but there’s a ...
QUACKCAST 403 - Eat yer serial!
Ozoneocean at 12:00AM, Dec. 4, 2018 LISTEN on our new player!
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This Quackcast was inspired by a newspost by Tantz. There seems to be this prevailing idea at the moment that serialised storytelling is better than episodic style ...
One Bad Apple, part 2
Amelius at 12:09PM, Dec. 2, 2018
So if vampires are a hot mess and haters are at the gates what can YOU learn from vampires? Well, a lot, vampires are not the only over extended sub-genre out there. Let's explore another genre that is trying to avoid ending up in a similar space, superheroes, specifically ...
Serialized vs Episodic Storytelling
Tantz_Aerine at 12:00AM, Dec. 1, 2018
There is a general trend in mainstream media and sequential art to generally value serialized works (in shows, series, comics, etc) over episodic ones. They are considered to be more elegant, more dynamic and more interesting than episodic ones. While this might definitely hold true, is it so as a ...
Playing favourites
Emma_Clare at 12:00AM, Nov. 30, 2018
I have favourite characters. There, I said it.
Although I would love to think that I love them equally, and on some level there is truth to that, there are a few I continually come back to and just want to get into them more. Now, just because they are ...
QUACKCAST 402 - Audience expectations with characters
Ozoneocean at 12:00AM, Nov. 27, 2018The Double Edged Sword of Stereotyping
Tantz_Aerine at 12:00AM, Nov. 24, 2018
Stereotypes permeate our every day lives. Whether we like it or not, our brains are wired for making quick estimations and judgments based on patterns and pattern recognition.
This very pattern we're looking for to identify at a glance is what a stereotype is. And it's very useful ...