Villains are tremendously important for a story. They set the framework and standard for a lot of things in an unsaid but definite manner: how far your villain is willing to go sets up audience expectations for how big and how dire the stakes will be in the story.

If ...

One of the most frequent ways to make characters stand out in fiction or myth is to give them a staggering, amazingly powerful ability. Something that mere talent doesn't give you. Something miraculous, larger than the largest life, unique and insurmountable:

Like a dude that can part an entire ...

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We're talking about the importance of a good cover in this cast. Another technical comicscast! I love making coves, they're one of my fave things ...

It's been said by…someone that a character WANTS something. It's one of the ingredients that makes a compelling character. It's also something that makes a character relatable, even one who's very different from the reader/audience.

Most of us aren't centuries-old robots, but we ...

So I just watched the latest Trope Talk by Overly Sharkastic Productions on Youtube (high recommend if you aren't already subscribed). The focus was on Doomed Heroes, and there's not much I'd be able to add to that comprehensive essay. Go watch it.

What it did inspire ...

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There's a lot of buzz about so called AI generated art at the moment using programs like Dall-E, Neural blender, Dream studio lite and so on ...

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Today we're talking about a technique in storytelling that we're calling the “revelation”. Inspired by Banes doing an article on the weird trope in movies ...

We like to say that sometimes (especially these times) reality is stranger (or more ridiculous or outrageous) than anything one can find in fiction. And while I do think that this holds true on so many occasions, I also think we're being unfair to how much of the human ...

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How do you describe your work to sell it to people? Writing blurbs is a real skill! You generally have to avoid doing these four things: Underselling ...

Historical Drama/period pieces present multiple issues for the writer/creator to deal with.

In talking about the drama in his movie “Cinderella Man”, Ron Howard said that the drama was built into the story itself. Meaning the actual true events. The moving radio broadcast where the Depression-Era boxer Jimmy ...