The idea of “sin” is a prevalent one in horror stories. In terrifying tales, the monstrous against the human also explores good vs. evil.

There is often a “sin” perpetrated by horror Protagonists. The classic Psycho begins with Marion Crane stealing money from her job. Her intentions are understandable, maybe ...

I'm wounded but you can't see it!


A lot of stories involve a wounded and/or flawed character. It's a staple of strong storytelling; a character has some kind of pain or wound to overcome, and that's the inner journey they take along with whatever outward ...

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Last time we covered tropes we hated! This time we're talking about clichés we actually like. It's quite a bit trickier because clichés are clichés ...

I remember when cell phones began to get popular and pervasive. As a fan of horror movies, I said to myself “well, that's the end of a lot of horror stories!”

With cell phones, it doesn't matter if you're stuck at camp or in a creepy house ...

I've had the conversation multiple times - maybe based on something I read in the past - that the
business of taking care of your money, your credit, taxes and expenses is something that was never touched on when I went to school.

Well, these have been proclamations rather than conversations ...

Yesterday I logged onto Twitter and saw this tweet trending.





And ohohoho I knew there was spicy drama afoot.

This origin story of this tweet was an column by Rob Salkowitz titled Who's a creative professional in the comics world? The answer is getting more complicated. He makes a ...

Star Trek: A Piece of the Action

So this could be considered Part Three of my loose-knit series on science fiction: The Distorted Society.

This is a sci-fi convention where there is an Earth…or another planet, at least somewhat Earth-like, that has some aspect of society that is a ...

Backstories. We all have ‘em. After all, we wouldn’t be here today if we didn’t. Without our memories, we are like a blank slate waiting to be drawn on. Trust me, I’ve had amnesia. It’s not fun to have to rebuild your life brick by brick ...

“I can hear you. Who are you? What are you doing under the balcony?” Andrew leans over and directs his attention toward the mysterious stranger he had just heard rustling and urinating in the bushes outside his home moments earlier. “Hello..”, the stranger replies back, “I, uh…I was just ...

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 ...