LISTEN!

OMFG you sexist PIG! Heh… today we talk about trying to recognise sexism in your OWN work, what to do about it, and WHY. It turns out it can be very hard to do, and if you DO acknowledged it the instinct is to rationalise it away, justify it ...

Last week marked the loss of two actors who brought my favorite fantasy villains from childhood films to life.

I was only a baby when Jim Henson's musical fantasy film, Labyrinth, was released in theaters. The fact that there were once home videos of me singing along to “(Dance ...

Endings are hard. We all know that. We have to tie up all the loose ends, answer all the questions, and pay off all the characters. We have to give a resolution that hopefully leaves our readers satisfied.

I know of a couple ways to deconstruct a story, and to ...

A man wakes up into a world of chaos. Heaven and hell have collided on earth, demons walk the land and angels fill the sky. Humans are caught in the middle of this titanic battle as demons try and kill them and the angels fight to protect them. The only ...

LISTEN!

Doing stories that start with the climax, then flash back, tell what happened to get there: the old narrative style of switching the first few chapters around to make a more interesting story.
Sometimes it works GREAT because it throws you right into the middle of things and you ...

I wanted to draw everyone's attention this week to Call Me Tom's new community project! It's a pretty simple, but really fun idea - we're creating our own deck of cards using our comic characters.

A little less than half of the slots are still open, including ...

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 ...

LISTEN!

Happy new year! In this first Quackcast for 2016 we have Banes, Pitface and Tantz Aerine along to talk to us about Banes' newspost topic of Wish Fulfilment in writing. It can be a good thing in that it makes the writer more interested and passionate about what they ...

"May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art – write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And ...

Happy 2016, everyone!

I'm not big into New Year's resolutions generally, but I do have a few this year. I read 24 books in 2015 (not including partial books read for school) and would like to do the same in 2016. I'd like to improve my reading ...