A couple of days ago Banes gave us a wonderful article on the issue of who to please- yourself or the audience, and how that can go very right or very wrong.

So that got me thinking that we should also talk about the dreaded silence. You update a page ...

A narrative theme is, in essence, the meaning behind your story. It also serves to tell your audience what your story is about. Establishing it’s core early on enables you to keep it grounded and focused as you begin to unfold your characters and plots.

Despite a longer piece ...

May the Forcefulness Be With You


I've been fascinated to watch the unfolding of the “battle” between Disney's Lucasfilm and the fandom playing out over the past few months.

If you haven't been looking at the fallout, there's too much for me to cover here; I ...

So last time we had talked about the Javert trope, a category of character that is very compelling and makes for excellent drama, immense suspense and often gets their own following in fandom. (Just check out Saito Hajime's hero's journey as a prime example.)

The Javert character is ...

Inspiration is quite the rush. The mind is set alight with seemingly limitless possibilities and, in that moment, you want to experience them all. For a creator, inspiration is the high that we pursue. But eventually our creative significant other packs up their stuff and quietly disappears into the night ...

Javert is such a stellar and powerful character in Les Miserables that he has his very own trope.

He's the skilled, dogged, unwavering locomotive of a chaser that in the name of the law, the church, the state, the cause pursues and persecutes the hero of a story, and ...

If you have checked out the Drunk Duck Award Forum thread that is being moderated by Niccea, then you would have seen the list of award categories posted. This is a useful list if you want to see if your comic qualifies for any of the categories before creating a ...

Recently, my writing partner and I have gone on a very short hiatus whilst we rework a few things to accommodate another project and it got me thinking about the almost inevitable and sometimes dreaded occurrence that is, “The Hiatus”.

It is very rare to find an artist or team ...

So for the last few posts I’ve been meaning to go back and finish off an idea that I had begun to explain, albeit poorly, but, as you can see, I have not. I know that there is more I could do with it; more I could delve into ...

Welcome to March!

I thought I'd try a connected theme of Thursday articles this month. I've had some half-baked ideas floating around on the subject of “Point of View”. They haven't coalesced completely but I think I can figure out four articles on this topic over the ...