Time travel is a narrative trap. It's quicksand.

It's very alluring to use, being able to put a person from one historical era into another and watch as shenanigans ensue, but very quickly, a writer (and often the audience too) discovers that it quickly unravels, and the story ...

There is a general idea that cliches, when they surface in the narrative of a story, be it movie, tv or webcomics or anything else, is a sign of bad writing.

There is of course a good basis for this presumption, because usually a cliche is a plot device, or ...

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 ...

When Superman returned to the big screen ten years ago or so in “Superman Returns”, the movie was intended to be a direct sequel to the two original movies with Christopher Reeve. I was surprised at how mopey and depressing the movie felt.

Which is to say, the movie felt ...

There's nothing more intense than subverting the audience's expectations: The righteous character that always says the truth says a lie. The character that values all life ends up murdering someone. The bad sort, the punk that's always terrible ends up saving the day or doing something decent ...

There was recently a Provincial Election in the part of Canada where I live, and there's a Federal Election coming up in about a year.

With the brouhaha going on in the world these days about politics and the divisions between many people that are resulting from it, I ...

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This week's Quackcast was inspired by a newspost that Banes made about propaganda. We used that as a jumping off point to talk about political messages and social agendas in creative works- when it's deliberate and when it's not. Tantz Aerine made a great point that ...

I came across a little blurb the other day about Mary Sues, and fanfiction, and how the writer of a fanfiction is basically writing a fantasy, inserting themselves as the character at the center of attention, immaculate, glittering and perfect. Basically everything you want to smack into a different galaxy ...

In my newspost last week about the “No Hugging, No Learning” mantra, I mentioned that I was basing a throwaway character – a loveable misanthrope – on a real-life friend of mine. It’s something I’m tempted to do fairly frequently; I spend most of my time in an academic environment ...

I recently posted the above image (click through to see the whole thing) as an extra in my comic. I drew it for myself after I realized something: I kept forgetting the details.

The positioning and style of furniture are trickiest for me. There were a few scenarios where I ...