I watched a reunion interview from a few years ago. It was the cast of the old sitcom “Family Ties”. All very likable people and I remember quoting so many lines from this show when I was a kid.

Michael J. Fox mentioned the great presence that Justine Bateman brought ...

National Novel Writing Month is here once again. Throughout the month of November writers across multiple disciplines and genres challenge themselves to sit down and write a 50K word novel. As of this post, it is Day 5 of NaNoWriMo. Having participated in it myself and having completed it once ...

We have another Sunday so therefor another movie article/review for you.

Today I am reviewing Alone, it is a zombie movie which is… perfect because I’m terrified of zombies, if there were to be a zombie apocalypse.. well… rip.

The movie starts out simple, a young man peeks ...

A conceit or gimmick on the series ‘24’ was that it took place in real time. One hour on the show was one hour of activities, and the 24-episode season covered the events of a single day.

As entertainment, I loved that show, and appreciated the gimmick of it with ...

We like to consider ourselves open-minded, free of inflexible thinking and open to ideas. And we probably are- in certain areas. In others, we are not.

This is one of the few statements I still feel justified making in the absolute. Every person has biases. It's one of the ...

Hello ducklings! I’m back with another interview, and this time we’ve got our wonderful sea captain Miranda! So, Captain Miranda, please introduce yourself!!

Miranda: Hello ducklings! I'm Miranda! I'm a full time computer engineer and in my spare time I enjoy baking, doing puzzles, playing video ...

Reverse-Engineering Conflict in a Story
part one

Conflict is the basic material of a scene, and of a story. I've talked a lot over the years about structure and genre, and how all that stuff can work.

Another way to create a new story, and new characters, is to ...

In the early parts of the story, it helps the quality of the thing and the experience of the audience to layer in the details that will come into play later.

These are little character and world details that will come into play later - the sword that falls off the ...

I read some writing…advice? Or commentary? Or something like that years ago that pointed out how often amateur writers will create Protagonists who are writers. If I'm remembering correctly, this was expressed as a bad thing, probably because it's overdone. On the one hand, they say write ...

There's nothing more satisfying than writing a twist villain. The person that everyone trusts or nobody suspects, who ends up being the mastermind for all the evil stuff that happened all along.

The person that everyone defers to for advice, that leans on for support, that is there to ...