-Art by Trico

Like any other backpack-toting American kid in the nineteen-nineties, the one thing I looked forward to each week (well, after TGIF) was Saturday morning cartoons. My absolute favorite show was X-Men The Animated Series which led to frequent trips to old, dusty comic shops to buy Series ...

I'm all in!
Poker reference.

We've all read comics that grab us and get us invested completely in what's going on. And we've read others that don't do it for us. Most are probably somewhere in between, with hits and misses. Such is life.

And ...

In the frozen forests of old Russia the mother of a small peasant family dies, leaving her husband and her two children, a boy and a girl. The father sends his daughter off to a big town for a finer more refined life than he can give her… it doesn ...

LISTEN!
Art by Ozoneocean

After last week's massive DD meetup (Next one is on the 18th, BE THERE!), we're back to the core group… me and my side characters, hahaha! Banes, Pitface, and Tantz Aerine join me to discuss the topic of promoting from within the ranks. I ...

*Colin and Betty from Pinky TA

When you write a big long story that goes over many chapters and arcs, things tend to evolve, grow and expand quite a bit outside of what you originally envisaged. What I'm talking about here are side characters- These are people that may ...

Reflection Characters

When I was doing a little reading on the “Mentor” character type, I learned about something called “Reflection Characters”. It was an eye opener; I'd never heard of this before, though I could instantly see how it made sense in storytelling, and dozens of examples came to ...

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Art by Ozoneocean

What makes the “meat” of a story? What makes you fall in love with it, keep coming back for more watches or reads or whatever? I contend it has nothing to do with conflict or culminations or climaxes, those are merely generic structural plottings that are ...

I like mentor characters.

This is not just me of course; the mentor and protagonist relationship is powerful. Some of the best moments in many stories are the first encounter with the mentor, the training and sense of discovery for the protagonist, and the eventual loss of the mentor character ...

In the depths of eternal darkness, a young man makes a sacrifice in exchange for his father but there is an even darker force in charge of his fate. His wish might have been granted, but it was accompanied by much dire consequences.

The story is set in a small ...

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Art by Ozoneocean

We return to the topic of historical accuracy versus the needs the the story. This was Bravo's idea and we wanted to have him along but alas it was not to be! Tantz Aerine, Pitface, Banes and I discuss the topic, reading from a few ...