*Colin and Betty from Pinky TA

When you write a big long story that goes over many chapters and arcs, things tend to evolve, grow and expand quite a bit outside of what you originally envisaged. What I'm talking about here are side characters- These are people that may ...

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Art by Ozoneocean

State your business!
Venerable Drunkducker Ayesinback suggested we have an open electronic meetup of DD people, so that's exactly what we did! We all met up in a long Skype session that lasted 10 hours- various DDers dropped in and out over that time and ...

-conceptual bridge design by kawaiidaigakusei

"Tell me why all the best laid plans fall apart in your hands. And my good intentions never end, the way I meant.“ -James Blunt ”Best Laid Plans“

My desktop computer has a lot of saved files that have accumulated over the years. Every once ...

Reflection Characters

When I was doing a little reading on the “Mentor” character type, I learned about something called “Reflection Characters”. It was an eye opener; I'd never heard of this before, though I could instantly see how it made sense in storytelling, and dozens of examples came to ...

Bruno Harm is getting on, he's old and a bit paunchy, but he's still one hell of a PI! His unorthodox methods will solve most cases faster than any po-faced CSI crime team, with a good deal more humour and fun. He sees himself as an old time ...

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Art by Ozoneocean

What makes the “meat” of a story? What makes you fall in love with it, keep coming back for more watches or reads or whatever? I contend it has nothing to do with conflict or culminations or climaxes, those are merely generic structural plottings that are ...

I like mentor characters.

This is not just me of course; the mentor and protagonist relationship is powerful. Some of the best moments in many stories are the first encounter with the mentor, the training and sense of discovery for the protagonist, and the eventual loss of the mentor character ...

In the depths of eternal darkness, a young man makes a sacrifice in exchange for his father but there is an even darker force in charge of his fate. His wish might have been granted, but it was accompanied by much dire consequences.

The story is set in a small ...

Jean Arp, "Untitled (College with Squares Arranged according to the Laws of Chance)". 1917

"In Europe and America, grey is the color most associated with boredom, solitude and emptiness. It is associated with rainy days and winter.“ -Wikipedia ”Grey: Boredom“

”Grey is my favorite color“ -Counting Crows ”Mr. Jones“

I ...

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Art by Ozoneocean

Never let historical accuracy get in the way of a good story… at least that's what Bravo proposes. We stole his thought provoking forum post subject for the topic of this Quackcast. This is how Bravo goes on to explain it:
“So how do feel ...