Time doesn't really exist in comics. Someone can blast through multiple pages in seconds, or linger on one panel for years. Well, that would be rare. But you see what I'm saying.

What if you want to make your readers slow down? To give your pages the pace ...

My city had a massive snowfall on Boxing Day this year – the day after Christmas, for you non-Canadians. Nothing too unusual for a Canadian winter, but even so the city always seems to grind to a halt when it happens. After having a neighbour help him get his car unstuck ...

To me this is one of the most fascinating elements of storytelling. The idea behind Chekhov’s Gun is to employ parsimony in the information comprising a plot and content: If something isn’t essential to the story, just don’t include it. Little by little, it became more “if ...

I claimed in last week’s newspost that I tend to work best in a nice quiet environment. Well, I’m currently testing whether or not that’s true. As you’re reading this, I’m in the middle of the woods in a lovely cabin with a fireplace and ...

Everyone has their own set of concerns, worries, fears about themselves and their environment, past, present and future. Creators are no different.

So it is only natural that at least some elements of those fears and concerns and worries we have are explored one way or another in the works ...

We had a big snowfall two weeks ago, and I was out driving the city in it (I have a part time delivery job).

My car and I held up pretty well in it, and that was satisfying. As the news warned people to stay off the roads, I was ...

In my newspost last week about the “No Hugging, No Learning” mantra, I mentioned that I was basing a throwaway character – a loveable misanthrope – on a real-life friend of mine. It’s something I’m tempted to do fairly frequently; I spend most of my time in an academic environment ...

The Underdog is a staple of fiction. Protagonists, by and large, are Underdogs.

It probably makes them more relatable; how are we supposed to root for someone who either has, or easily gets whatever they want? Where is a character supposed to go unless they start out low?

Even the ...

I think most of us who live in or near big cities have been to comic conventions. But despite having such a huge concentration of artists here, we seldom seem to talk about broader arts communities. I’ve always been a casual patron of local art galleries, but the curatorial ...

If you want to decent job of it, creating and using weapons in fiction can be quite tricky. There are a lot of pitfalls that newbies and even long time veterans of creating fiction fall into.

1. Number one is simply copying what others have done without understanding it yourself ...