As the Orthodox Easter approaches, I set out to make the traditional sweet bread. It's a tricky affair, because the recipes are often unreliable, or something might happen which you realise too late, and the dough won't rise, or won't pull apart as it should. I ended ...

There are generally two kinds of webcomic artists. Those that update irregularly and those that operate like clockwork. Maintaining an update schedule has many benefits both for you and your readers. Here are some of the positive reasons for putting in place a realistic update schedule.

Readers like reliability
Having ...

With more time spent at home, I have been able to dive into some of my favorite past-times that I used to do when I was middle school aged. One of them being playing video games. Growing up, Squaresoft and the Final Fantasy video game series completely shaped my identity ...

Nearly a billion people, perhaps more, are being confined in their homes as you read these lines, due to the Covid-19 quarantine to stem the pandemic. A good percentage are going stir-crazy right now, or are juggling with the limitations and necessary work-arounds of having to stay in a single ...

Imagine a city where a group of seven high-powered “superheroes” (think the Avengers or Justice League) are corrupt and it is up to a lone-wolf vigilante and an audio/visual salesman to be the ones with a lawful moral compass.

At first, the plot twist is refreshing, it answers the ...

“Asymmetric threats” is a military term. It is defined as “an unequal balance or when thinking about threats, an unfair advantage to the perpetrator. Phillips, A (2012) provided an excellent overview of what an asymmetric threat is. He described attacks of this nature to be undetectable, and once occurred, impossible ...

One could say that it is a very trendy thing in writing, be it for movies or for graphic novels, to subvert expectations. Often, unfairly, a plot that subverts expectations is equated with ‘good, quality writing’. Tons of essays and articles have been written to refute this association, including here ...

Everyone loves a genius! The character that has the answers, or makes the deductions, or solves the puzzles for the team. The guy (or gal) that will have a gift for noticing what nobody else does, sees the connections that elude everyone else. Even in stories that aren't of ...

A breaking point for a character is when they hit their lowest point in the story. It’s purpose is to upset the reader, either making them angry and/or devastated the main character or they’ll be angry/devastated at the main character. Every story, in every genre has ...

So, last week we talked about theme, and how it is generally expressed through the Protagonist in a given story, as they struggle through whatever type of conflict is appropriate to that tale. We had a few common examples of themes:

-Love conquers all

-The strongest or most determined will ...