The Prologue of Invasive Species opens up in a setting very similar to a role-playing game complete with character avatars and text boxes. It is as if the narrator is immersed in this digital land as he goes in and out of consciousness with reality. The main character goes by ...

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The process of adaptation is quite interesting. Stories go through all sorts of changes when they're transferred from one medium to another. A lot of the ...

Sitting back on a Friday evening, remote control in hand, I decided to watch one of the latest Pixar Animated short films. To me a short film is the perfect length of time (six to nine minutes) to tell a story with an exposition, rising action, climax, and resolution. They ...

The plot is the spine of your story, the scaffolding upon which everything will be placed in order to create a full experience for the audience to immerse themselves in- be it a movie or a comic or a novel.

Just like the spine, however, there is a limit to ...

Last week, I went into the basics of building your fictional worlds. We’re continuing on with our second instalment where we’ll dive a bit deeper into the nitty gritty of world building. Without further ado…

What’s your world’s system of government?
Politics plays a large role ...

We begin with Trigger Warning, a story about Nathan Wood, prisoner of the mysterious Institution. This mild mannered man seems prone to horrific acts of violence… But why, and who is keeping him imprisoned?
Then we dive straight into our second tale, They were Wolves. In a small armed village ...

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What happens to characters after the big action scene or climactic moment? This could be anywhere in the story but it's usually close to the end ...

What happens when an ex-child soldier wants to start a new life? A new comic book from Peace Direct called “The Challenges of War: Finding Freedom” tells Lembaka's story in the Democratic Republic of Congo. He joined an armed group at age 10, and after years of brutal violence ...

Given that it was Valentine's Day yesterday, and that is associated with a lot of special moments between couples, I thought we could talk about the Day After! What do you do on the Day After? Do you run to buy a pill or do you roll over and ...

A key aspect to creating a story, be it a modern day slice-of-life, an epic space opera or a high fantasy saga, is the world in which the characters inhabit. Now there are lots of aspects to consider when building your story and, this week, we’ll be going into ...