One of the main drivers of story is the principle of CONTRAST.

A character in a traditional story arc begins one way and ends up in a very different state of being - the underdog to the victorious hero, or the innocent, unaware victim to the final survivor, or the selfish ...

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We're talking about how technology and design changes so much over the years and how that can change things with plot in story and it can also help pinpoint the date of something sometimes better than ...

Photo: “Mies Couch”. Drawn by Plymayer. (January 2025)

I rewatched two-thirds of Richard Linklater’s Before Trilogy, skipping over the first film of the series to focus on the latter two. The trilogy consists of Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, and Before Midnight each film spaced roughly a decade apart. The ...

There's nothing more frustrating when a character dies from a situation that had no reason occuring except perhaps that the writers wanted to be edgy and make the story have more gravitas with a random death that's forced into the plot.

I've talked often over the years ...

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Main characters with main character syndrome? What is main character syndrome? Well the way we're dealing with it here it's normally a snide criticism you level and someone who seems to think the world revolves ...

always someone breakinnn' into twooooo…

AN important part of a story is the good old “Break into Act 2”.

It's not the easiest story structure moment to recognize, but it's one of the early ones I thought about and tried to notice in movies I watched.

Many people ...

It’s that time of year again. It’s become a bit of an annual tradition. I started setting goals for myself a few years ago. And whilst I have not hit all of them, I have achieved more than I feel I would have had I not set any ...

It’s time for another Character Deep Dive, this within the amazing political war thriller The Second Crimean War by the awesome and proliferate The Doodler!

The Second Crimean War is an alternate history webcomic, of a different 1995 where, after the collapse of the USSR, the emerging, independent Ukraine ...

Photo: “InkyMoondrop’s Gift Art for Spooky Kitsune”. Secret Santa 2024 Gift Art Exchange. (December 2024)

A big special thanks to all participants in this year’s Secret Santa. HawkandFloAdventures, Zero Hour, Genejoke, Spooky Kitsune, InkyMoondrop, Tantz_Aerine, and Dpat57 were the seven Secret Santas this year. Thank you to everyone ...

There's a difference between a Christmas Special and a Christmas Movie. While the Movie is written around Christmas (or Hannukah or any other Yule-season holiday), the Christmas Special forces the show to be written around Christmas whether it likes it or not.

The hilarity ensues when it falls in ...