After the End …and the Duck is on Patreon!



All stories must come to an end somewhere - whether it's a “just another day” ending, an “everybody dies” denouement, or the always wonderful “it was all a dream”. Or maybe it's just the end of this adventure, with another ...

Throughout literature and modern media, many faults and drives for leads, damsels and villians have often been motivated by a tragic backstory so much so, that to employ one for your story may appear trite or cliche. There is, however, a way to use a tragic backstory effectively and can ...

Creating a Cast - in 1-2-3

One of the challenges…and maybe one of the greatest pleasures…of creating a series is populating it with a cast of heroes. I know I spend many weeks or months tinkering with characters and deciding who they're going to be. …And how many ...

Imagine there was a secret organization of time travelers that could weave in and out of different years in order to fight crime and bring people to justice. Well there is no need to imagine because the Stop Watchers are a task force equipped with the latest technology. They can ...

This comic is set during the early days of androids being introduced to society. The comic draws parallels from the Greek story of Prometheus as it is the same name of the head android engineer, and Zeus is a multi-billionaire big shot who is also a major shareholder of the ...

Tropes aren’t bad. In fact, they are a useful and, at times, necessary shorthand that creators, particularly in the webcomic field, can wield to enhance their work. J Hillis Miller posited a trope as, “… the use of figurative language, via word, phrase or an image, for artistic effect.”

Every ...

So last time we had talked about the Javert trope, a category of character that is very compelling and makes for excellent drama, immense suspense and often gets their own following in fandom. (Just check out Saito Hajime's hero's journey as a prime example.)

The Javert character is ...

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 ...

A story can be strengthened by coordinating the first and final images in some way.

It's not a hard and fast rule; it's not a rule at all. But it can be worth trying out in your writing!

The movie Halloween (there it is! I had to start ...

strixvanallen writes:

Hi! I just wanted to report a personal milestone. After more or less 400 pages, Bram & Vlad was finished (I don't think that ‘completed’ is the best term, since it was made of episodic comic strips). I just want to thank this great community for all the ...