A narrative theme is, in essence, the meaning behind your story. It also serves to tell your audience what your story is about. Establishing it’s core early on enables you to keep it grounded and focused as you begin to unfold your characters and plots.

Despite a longer piece ...

Yesterday, Mks_Monsters asked me to talk about an experience of hers, which I have seen being shared with a range of creators belonging to certain social groups (female, LGBTQ, POC, etc) if their occasional tweets on the matter are to be believed: That support for them on the basis of ...

Did you know as an comic creator you are more than allowed to take a shortcut here and there? It’s true! You want to know something else? Everyone does it! So this week I want to share some shortcuts I have found immensely helpful when trying to speed up ...

Inspiration is quite the rush. The mind is set alight with seemingly limitless possibilities and, in that moment, you want to experience them all. For a creator, inspiration is the high that we pursue. But eventually our creative significant other packs up their stuff and quietly disappears into the night ...

Preserving continuity is difficult with any writing project of length - with the weeks, months or more it might take to write a single novel or screenplay, it can be easy to forget things. So the problem is compounded if writing an extended series comic, TV or web series, movies or ...

The backdrop of this comic is the Marne River in France, 1918. A group of WWI soldiers hear the sounds of bombs blasting outside and prepare to enter the front lines of a battle. In an interesting team, we have Finnegan, the red-haired and bearded gentleman, and the blonde haired ...

Today we'll talk sequel and series character arcs

Last Week we talked about character arcs. They're an important element of fiction writing…although a lot of the time, there is no arc! But a strong, unpredictable character arc can be a great help in driving a story from ...

Explode into the fantasy world of Demon Plague deep in the infernal regions of hell, where lava explodes out of the ground without warning and demons fight devils to the death. This is a dark world without mercy or respite but one brave soul, Iago, might yet be able to ...

I want to take a quick break for a second to talk about something creators go through but often don’t talk about. It is hard to see it coming and even harder still to lift yourself out of once you are there. This post is about addressing creative burnout ...

Last week we talked a little pov basics.

This time, how about we talk the fascinating device called the Unreliable Narrator. For anyone who doesn't know, this type of narration (usually first person in prose, but not necessarily) tells the story in question…but is not necessarily giving an ...