Last time I talked about catharsis I focused on how important it is in a story, whether by its presence or absense. This time I want to talk about how to incorporate it in a story.

To give a brief recap, catharsis is the feeling of release of powerful emotions ...

Halloween is around the corner!

The swiftly-international-becoming Fright Season, where people dress up and surround themselves in scary imagery and settings. Everything is about the scare, the close brush with death or worse, the thrill of the blood running cold in our veins for seconds before laughing at each other ...

Last time I started talking about religion as a great umbrella term for a lot of facets of worldbuilding you can take into consideration when constructing the world of your story, be it webcomic, novel, series, or anything else.

This type of worldbuilding is especially prevalent in fantasy worlds, but ...

I was thinking about the power of books in fiction - like, secret journals, diaries, and such.

In the show Supernatural, the brothers found a lot of information, help, and intrigue in their father's journal of his monster hunting exploits. I will say that it got harder to believe later ...

It never really occurred to me how many of our heroes are orphans.

Superman was the last survivor of a planet that perished. He was adopted by loving Earth parents, but he's one of the iconic orphans in fiction.

His counterpart Batman, of course, lost his parents at an ...

It's almost Halloween!

…and it isn't part of my culture. It's only recently started to become a “novelty thing” in Greece, and we totally don't quite get it the way people who actually celebrate it likely do. So I don't want to talk about Halloween ...

Hah. Easier said than done, right?

Ask any artist about how much they like the stuff they make, and chances are you'll get a mixed bag of answers where most will be saying how they wish they'd done the stuff better. The anatomy isn't quite right, the ...

It's common knowledge that a solid origin story will make a character. It'll often also make the story being told. Origin stories can be and often are the foundation for characters and plotlines, since motivations, plot points, and even stakes are set in them.

But what makes a ...

A cat sits on a folding card table next to an ashtray and a mug of coffee. The cat was enjoying his morning cup of coffee. In this world, a morning confrontation with a cat is an entire conversation. The man in the hat goes deep into the forest looking ...

I don't wanna be remembered; I wanna be forgotten


MEMORY and MEMORY LOSS in FICTION

Playing with memory and memory loss is a handy device for fiction writers, from soap opera-type melodrama to exciting-but-thought-provoking stories like The Matrix, and in all kinds of stories betwixt and beyond.

Like any ...