Emotional Charges and Diminishing Returns

Many writing methodologies suggest mapping out the emotional change of each scene. The scene either starts positive, and goes to either negative or “extra positive”, or starts negative and goes to positive or “extra negative” by the end of the scene.

So if a lovelorn ...

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In this Drunk Duck Quackcast we chat about the importance and the process of reviews! Good ones, bad ones, why they all matter, and also why they often don't! ;)
Reviews are an interesting animal, they're a parasitic form of entertainment. They rely wholly of other forms of ...

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Tantz Aerine did a great newspost the other day about how the clothing of comic characters can be used to communicate information and emotions just as much as any other element in your comic making arsenal. And that's what we discuss in this Quackcast! Clothing can communicate state ...

I think I spent my Saturday night the same way as plenty of other people did–in a movie theater watching a film based on a book by Stephen King (and No, I am not talking about The Dark Tower). It is still September since the last time I checked ...

Remember those large headphones that were perfect for a walkman? Or turning up the volume in a car stereo on a long drive. Listening to music can add a new dimension to an otherwise normal day.

There are some motion picture soundtracks that are so artfully put together that they ...

I’m feeling more philosophical today than anything, so I’m going to share.

Making comics is hard work. It is hard work that doesn’t give you too many shortcuts. It also often doesn’t give you an income, so you have to do it all on your own ...

I was a big fan of all the Indiana Jones movies back in the day. When the fourth one, Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull, finally came out, it was exciting times! Harrison Ford only seemed to get cooler with age, and what a treat it would be to see ...

The other day I read a very interesting post by our very own Vickie of Used Books where she was talking about Romance. And what caught my eye the most was her description of the driving force behind romance stories as “relationship-driven conflict”- a very succinct way to put it ...

Having decided that shock value is needed in your comic and you must scare, disgust or generally traumatize your audience in some way in order to get the emotional reaction to serve your theme and your subject matter, how do you decide when and where to draw the line? (note ...

Last Thursday I talked a little about writing a scene, in terms of the change that happens, what the character wants, and what obstacle is in the way of achieving that want.

But what about dialogue? Eh?

One way to help define what's going on in a scene is ...