Shaking the Pillars part 1 - Losing the Lead

The Walking Dead is apparently killing off its main character this season - this is the guy who's been the main guy since episode 1 about 8 years ago. This is not a spoiler - it's all over the Internet, the promos ...

Mark is the mechanic for a rocket-ship searching for a habitable planet. His crew is in luck because after a hard lesson on gravity they have reached a new planet where they do not need to wear helmets. There are a few uncertain things lurking on this planet that Mark ...

Over the last twenty-four hours, the latest story about UK street artist, Banksy, has shown up on my social media newsfeed, in passing conversations, and in text messages. My friends immersed in the art world are talking about as well as my best friend since childhood and my own sister ...

This autobiographical blog comic is as sharp as a knife and cuts like a rusty razor. The art is beautifully honed, crisp and clean, as are the observations: Sweet art and salty writing. Glass Rafters is often dark, a little ironic, a touch satirical, and brutally honest in a very ...

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Nostalgia! - Where does it fit in the creative process? People are the product of their influences. For a lot of us the strongest influences happen when we're growing up and learning about the world and all the things IN it for the first time. As you get older ...

In Swan Lake, the black swan Odile is transformed by her warlock father into the white swan, Odette, and posing as Odette she tricks the prince into breaking his oath to the white swan- because clearly making life-binding oaths to a woman you know so little you can mistake her ...

Once the honeymoon sheen of releasing your new project wears you can easily find yourself burnt out by the concept of having to muster the energy to continue working on it. Sometimes you might have written yourself into a corner or maybe you feel like you are not liking the ...

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In THIS Quackcast we chat about shots! The kind you get from a camera… Long short, bird's eye view, worm's eye view, high angle, low angle, wide angle, fish eye, close up, ultra close up… You can use them to set the pace of the narrative, increase ...

Trauma is such a delicious thing in writing- it gives characters their backstories, their motivation, their special slant in a narrative wrok, from novels to webcomics.

However, it's usually considered in the context of how it has made a character ‘damaged goods’. Why they are grim, why they're ...

Throughout literature and modern media, many faults and drives for leads, damsels and villians have often been motivated by a tragic backstory so much so, that to employ one for your story may appear trite or cliche. There is, however, a way to use a tragic backstory effectively and can ...