An advantage of comics as a medium is to be able to use still images to tell the story, and create an impression or feeling in the reader that runs deeper than words can do. Or at least, the images can strengthen the experience and make something people hopefully get ...

The late night phone call, “Hey Man! Do you want to come to a party?” asks a mysterious caller on the other line. The man sitting alone in front of his computer monitor, who has grown accustomed to anti-social late nights, half-heartedly agrees to join in on the dancing and ...

Usually when building a character, we go for their general personality in terms of traits, the routine/general behavior they would display, the routine/general things that would interest them and so on.

If you are writing a slice of life story, or a sitcom style series, or anything that ...

Masked, Unknown Characters

Fiction, certainly in the movie/TV/comics visual mediums, are full of characters whose identities are hidden by masks.

On The Mandalorian, the title character follows a strict creed that says he is not supposed to let another living being see his face, so he always wears ...

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Happy 2021 everybody!!!!! For this fun first of year Quackcast We do a commentary and reaction to the Ralph Bakshi and Frank Frazetta classic sword and sorcery ...

So we've talked often about how letting a character die in a story is something that should be used very frugally, because once death occurs, it should be permanent. In most settings, death shouldn't be something that is reversible. If not, it will lose its impact, and the ...

Spoilers for recent Star Wars, eg the Mandalorian.
It went unspoken in my year of Newsposts, but 2020 is the 40th Anniversary the release of The Empire Strikes Back.

that's not true! That's impossible!
No, man! Search your feelings! you know it's true! Forty damn years!


Though ...

Retconning has a bad reputation.

Usually because it's done in big IPs and franchises when writers change and decide to drastically alter the development of a plotline, and do it by changing established canon about the characters or the history of the setting. Usually it's sloppily done, dealt ...

I couldn't have been older than 11 when I read The Flaming Heart of Danko by Maxim Gorky. And boy, did it cut me with the finest of fine glass. Even now thinking about the short story hurts somewhere deep in my soul.

And yet, I love it so ...

When constructing your world, be it in fantasy or within a realistic/historical/existing place, the names you pick are very important.

They are important for suspension of disbelief and immersion: how consistent the names are, how congruent with what reality the audience reasonably comes to expect within the framework ...