Last week we looked at lovable/hateable villains. So, in that spirit why not flip this coin and talk about what makes a hero feel real. Now, a protagonist is not necessarily a hero. For instance, despite being the main focal point through which we, the audience experience the story ...

Making a hero feel real
Emma_Clare at 12:00AM, April 26, 2019Handling Controversial Historical Characters
Tantz_Aerine at 12:00AM, April 13, 2019
image by Ben Burgraff
When writing a historical fiction, it's very likely that you will need to include some actual historical personalities along with your historically-adept yet fictional cast.
Depicting a historical character is hard enough when there's a general consensus among historians and popular belief about who ...
On Reviving an Era
Tantz_Aerine at 12:00AM, April 6, 2019
I had a meeting the other day with a director, who asked me “how do you approach a historical era to keep true to it?” and “how do you keep from being biased?”
I fear that I eclipsed the poor guy with my soap box lectures, but that aside, I ...
QUACKCAST 416 - Making cuts
Ozoneocean at 12:00AM, March 5, 2019 LISTEN on our new player!
Listen on Stitcher - https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/drunkduck-quackcast
Or TuneinRadio - https://tunein.com/podcasts/Books–Literature/Drunkduck-Quackcast-p1150194/
The entire team is here this time, no one was cut… So we're chatting about CUTTING, as in cutting out scenes to make a story cleaner ...
Retracing Your Steps
Amelius at 11:32AM, March 3, 2019
Last time we discussed how many new readers may read your work backwards on the first visit, and today I'm going to expand on that a little more. There's more to say on this? Well of course, because reading your own comic backwards also is a useful creative ...
The Action - Non-Action Ratio
Tantz_Aerine at 12:00AM, Feb. 23, 2019
No matter what your webcomic is about, from slice-of-life to epic fantasy to dystopian sci fi, it will have a ratio of action scenes to non-action scenes. This ratio is very important as it affects the pacing of your story as well as how interesting and engaging it will be ...
Hate: Raising the Poison Tree
Tantz_Aerine at 12:00AM, Feb. 16, 2019
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 ...
Writing Mental Illness: A Good Example (Part 3)
Tantz_Aerine at 12:00AM, Feb. 9, 2019
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 ...
A Most Awesome DD Year!
Tantz_Aerine at 12:00AM, Dec. 22, 2018
As we are well into holiday season and only 9 days before 2019 (the final countdown!), I think it's good to have a look at all the awesome stuff that happened at the DD site, all absolutely done, funded, supported and cultivated by webcomic artists for webcomic artists AND ...
Winding down and looking back
Emma_Clare at 12:00AM, Dec. 21, 2018
It’s that time of the year where we are all winding down, kicking back and looking over the events of the past year. For me, this was an up and down year full of excitement, friends, hardships, bad landlords and many, many new things to eat. Despite not going ...