LISTEN on our new player!
Listen on Stitcher ​​- https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/drunkduck-quackcast
Or TuneinRadio - https://tunein.com/podcasts/Books–Literature/Drunkduck-Quackcast-p1150194/

Cooperation Vs Competition. For decades the mantra was competition is good: it produces progress and makes things better… Well that's actually false. Competition is what you ...

The Mysterious Stranger


This is about ‘the mysterious stranger’ in fiction. Well, one of the variations of that, at least. I'm not talking about the mysterious stranger who becomes the MC's lover in a romance novel, or the mysterious stranger who knocks on the door or gets into ...

Today, I can't write about anything but something slightly personal. Without Moonlight only has two chapters to finish. It's incredible (and it'll still take time even with my regular updates to get to the last page) and exciting, but it's also got me thinking about everything ...

Didn't Do Nothin'

During the making of the movie Cast Away, Tom Hanks and the screenwriter were developing the story, and
it was going well - other than the ending. In the end, the character was rescued.

Robert Zemeckis, the eventual director of the movie told them that the character ...

“Don't worry, Bart. It seems like every week something odd happens to the Simpsons. My advice is to ride it out, make an occasional smart-aleck quip, and by next week, we'll be back to where we started from, ready for another wacky adventure. ”

-Lisa Simpson


In most series ...

Prepare for a long ass post cause we're here to celebrate all the progress our community of artists have made in 10 years! A couple of weeks back I wrote about the 10 year art challenge, asking for peeps to show off their progress from 2009 and then 2019 ...

Writing a character with mental illness can be a very tricky thing. Writers usually go for the extremely rare, exotic and spectacular: multiple personality disorders, extreme manifestations of psychopathy or sociopathy, high functioning autism with that ever alluring ‘savant’ magic going for the character, bombastically spectacular schizophrenia… in many ways ...

As the year comes to a close we look to the future of the new year ahead, but we can also sometimes get fixated on the past… Regrets can creep in. “What if?”, “If I'd only…”, “I only JUST missed out…”, “It could have all been so different…”
Regret ...

Last week, we looked at ways to prevent the middle of your story from sagging. One of those suggestions was using a subplot or two to help flesh out both the world and characters of your story.

For those of you who are a bit confused as to what a ...

Inspiration strikes! A new idea forms, and you're really excited about it. You want to take your time, however– you want this to be great, and no great thing just springs fully formed from one's brow. For years you toil, tweak, refine, moving ever closer to the point ...