Writing good romance is hard- it has so many pitfalls to avoid, so many tropes to grapple with and principles to keep in mind, that experience is necessary.

Writing actual platonic friendships between a male and female character is even harder.

The basic reason why it is harder is because ...

CHARACTER SHAPES

I remember hearing about this notion some time ago, on the dvd special features for an animated movie or show. I don't remember which one.

Characters derived from basic shapes can give a very strong impression of their basic personality type. This can help the audience feel ...

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This Quackcast expands on my newspost from Friday about forgotten abilities causing plot holes, but now bunny Banes and Lady Tantz wade in to lend their genius ...

No matter what your webcomic is about, from slice-of-life to epic fantasy to dystopian sci fi, it will have a ratio of action scenes to non-action scenes. This ratio is very important as it affects the pacing of your story as well as how interesting and engaging it will be ...

This is an eternal problem for readers. Writers don't really tend to care about it too much, but readers HATE it!
What am I talking about? Basically, it's when a character gains a power, acquires an item, learns some info or a spell, meets a magical person or ...

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Hollywood has a tendency to simplify or completely alter stories to make them more mainstream and appealing to their idea of a popular audience.
In this Quackcast ...

As of Sunday afternoon, at least forty newspapers across the United States have dropped the long running comic, Non Sequitur, from its comic pages. The reason behind the loss in popularity is that the comic “betrayed (its reader base’s) trust with profanity.” The comic in question ran sometime last ...

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It's just Ozoneocean and bouncy Banes today. This time we're chatting about breaking and subverting structures, formulas and conventions in webcomics. Commercial creative projects need ...

Having discussed a general approach to writing characters with mental disorders (with a lot of thoughtful comments by you further enriching what I had to say!) it's only right that we wrap up this very quick analysis with an example of a story that properly portrays them.

I chose ...

What is a character? A miserable little pile of traits! Except no, there is more to a character than a collection of likes and dislikes. There are varying opinions on the importance of character versus plot, with some authors viewing all characters as a mere tool to drive plot forward ...