Conflict!

It's the essential building block of drama. You don't have a story without the basics of “someone wants something, and something's in the way of getting it.”

Screenwriting books - books I really love and have given me a lot - will often say that amping up the ...

I'm a big fan of story structure. It can be a big help to figuring out how to put a story together in a way that works. Not that structure needs to be followed in a slavish way, or that one structure applies to every story.
But it can ...

Photo: “Twistjam: Morgyn and Lacey”. Original characters from Alone is a Hard Thing Toby by David A Webcomic and Hawk and Flo Adventures Part 1 Ice Cream Truck of Doom by HawkandFloAdventures. (February 2023)

A nice round of milestones from four creators to celebrate the accomplishments on The Duck:

The ...

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Inspired by Banes we did a Quackcast on SUPER TEAMS! You know those groups like the Justice League, the Avengers, the Suicide Squad, or even Monkey, Pigsy ...

This is gonna be yet another rambling kind of post and a long one at that–so be warned. In the recent month I’ve been doing some soul searching that ties into this personal Christmas shopping spree of sorts that I’ve had recently. To be more specific, I ...

I had a solo game of Neuroshima Hex this Saturday morning where I discovered something peculiar. I was playing army Borgo against army Dancer and I was quite mesmerized by the aesthetic and playing mechanic of army Dancer. Usually an army in Neuroshima Hex consists of over a dozen playing ...

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If something affects or disturbs you so much that you want to respond to it through a story that you write, that can be a pretty powerful ...

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Source material is something that we can love and respect, but it's just as often disregarded, degenerated, and denigrated, especially these days where it seems like ...

Another pop cultural fantastic bestiary Sunday. Anybody remember the movie Avatar? Not the kung-fu fantasy one, the tribal sci-fi one. The James Cameron’s Avatar as it was marketed. I still remember it being the movie that REALLY set the standard for what CGI technology can do cinematically, making this ...

Thought I try to get back on doing Sunday articles with more meat to them. So! It’s fantastic bestiary time! And this time I’ve choosen a creature of pop culture rather then myth. The giant monster! Popularly known as the Kaiju! Who doesn’t like a good giant ...