When my writing partner and I were penning the beginnings of issue 0 of The Constellation Chronicle we designed two characters Marcel and Wainwright. We wanted to introduce the looming threat that was barreling towards the main cast and the most convenient way to do that was through these two ...

In the middle of nowhere a strange little bald boy appears in the forest. He can't speak a word and there's something very strange about him… but the workers on a little farm take him in and do what they can to make him comfortable and welcome. There ...

Years ago while living abroad, I heard an expat mom explain to her kids that it was good to try new foods just like in Green Eggs and Ham by Dr Seuss!

For anyone unfamiliar with the red covered book filled with rhymes, Green Eggs and Ham is a story ...

I Was Wrong - The Character Arc

Last time I was here I talked about “The Old Warrior”. It's one of my favorite character types and story elements.

This time I'm going to go into another trope/theme that almost always works for me: The realization of a character ...

When Stranger Things ended their first season I didn’t feel that there was a need to continue. The character’s had had their arcs come full circle, most loose ends were neatly tied and, despite the ending being left slightly ambiguous, for the most part, it was wrapped up ...

Coincidental premonition-filled dreams surrounding a magical key, strange writings that look like ruins, and the disappearance of several people in a town clouded in mystery. The Caraways are a family of siblings who encounter weird happenings and seek to solve problems around Eldritch New England. They uncover a trail of ...

The Mysterious Stranger


This is about ‘the mysterious stranger’ in fiction. Well, one of the variations of that, at least. I'm not talking about the mysterious stranger who becomes the MC's lover in a romance novel, or the mysterious stranger who knocks on the door or gets into ...

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Today we chat about a furore on Twitter focussing on a artist who made a tutorial about the differences between the line work of beginners and advanced ...

what? we're over?


The show Supernatural is ending its run at season 15, which starts up sometime this year.

It's a really impressive length of time for a live action TV show - but when I heard about the finale, I had the same sort of vague surprise - the ...

Nothing is going right for poor Doctor Jekyll… Whatever can go wrong for the good doctor DOES. He gets drenched in mud, loses a high status job, and then loses his fiancée to another man. But he's a nice guy, he holds none of that against anyone, all he ...