Accents, patterns of speech and the like can be a useful tool in introducing characters. In a film or tv show, a character's accent can immediately reveal the character's nationality or social background. And of course, we've all been conditioned by Hollywood movies to identify the bad ...

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 ...

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 ...

A mysterious raven-haired woman is battling a demonic beast. The creature's grotesque, hooved body lunges before it gets stabbed in the torso by a large blade. The next few panels show Danaya waking up from her nightmare. Was it all a bad dream? It looked and felt so real ...

"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 ...

Professor Herbert is an enterprising young fellow. He's a clever inventor with some less than clever associates. G.E.O. and a genetically engineered organism, and a bit of a grumpy pants because he has something wrong with his brain that Professor Herbert is just dying to fix, if ...

Two-thousand fifteen started off with Kroatz wishing everyone in the Drunk Duck forums “growth, satisfaction, and purpose, even if it comes with an almost equal amount of suffering and loss.” I do not believe any statement made in this last year comes as close to this to sum up the ...

I love Christmas Eve. Possibly more than Christmas Day. Both are great fun, and reuniting with friends and relatives I rarely see is delightful of course.

But the quiet anticipation of Christmas Eve is where it's at. For me it's usually a day off work, wrapping (occasionally running ...