Photo: Young Louie Anderson in “Life with Louie” TV Series. (1994-1998)

In another round of shocking events, the comedy world lost another great last Friday, with comic Louie Anderson.

As part of the target demographic for Saturday morning cartoons in the mid-nineties, my introduction to Louie’s humor was through ...

Critics, professional or not, identified a trend in many of the…lesser regarded manga and anime series.
It's the “everyman hero”.

This school of thought is that to make a lead character who is identifiable to everyone in the readership or audience. So the lead will be unremarkable, and ...

One common story formula involves a character receiving a magical gift…or magical ‘curse’…and being forced to deal with the chaos that the magic causes.

In Liar Liar, the slick, dishonest attorney is compelled to only speak the truth.
In Groundhog Day, the main character repeats the same day ...

With the spooky season upon us, it is time to give homage to the spookiest of all creatures. The… familiar?

According to TV Tropes:

“This is based on the medieval belief that Satan granted demon servants (in animal form) to witches as part of their pacts and that “cunning folk ...

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 ...

How many of you write serious/drama filled stories? Or even characters that truly suffer consequences?

I think it’s often that we, as creators and almost like parents, don’t want our kids/creations to suffer terrible consequences, but I think that’s one of the reasons that makes ...

Normally in stories there is the hero vs the villain or the protagonist vs the antagonist. As the audience, we generally expect to root for the hero or the protagonist and hope for the villain's or antagonist's comeuppance.

But there come those times when we find ourselves rooting ...

Sometimes the arch villain of the story is the one pulling all the strings in the background, and the protagonists don't know about them until the endgame.

And other times, the arch villain gets to clash with a protagonist (or an opposing character) that is also a mastermind pulling ...

Who doesn't love a good intrigue, some scheming in the shadows, some low chuckling behind a curtain?

The author.

It's the author that doesn't love it. Or rather, the sheer background work that needs to go into writing a good scheming plot, counter plot, and the whole ...