Character Motivation

One thing I appreciate in well written stories is the hidden motivations of characters. Well written characters, just like real people, have contradictions to them. Desires and needs that are sometimes in conflict with each other.

Story structure tells us that a character has to WANT something. The ...

Usually when we think about fairies, the mind goes to tiny beautiful girls with butterfly wings and a ton of sparkles. At their most threatening, we got the token fiesty Tinkerbell.



Or do we?

For me, the world of the fae and fairies is a fascinatingly surreal, dangerous, occult world ...

Welcome to…
The DD Fashion Spotlight!
Number 9.


Today Bombshell is blasting onto the scene! In her normal life she's Aria Conti, an explosives expert working for the United Nations, advising them on mine disposal. But she's also a superhero who tackles corruption and villainy under the guise ...

Awright, first things f*ckin' last…

I just saw a clip of Robert Englund, iconic in his role as Willie on the old TV show “V”…oh, and also as the
horror legend Freddy Krueger, talking about the Nightmare on Elm Street remake, and why it didn't work out ...

Yesterday I logged onto Twitter and saw this tweet trending.





And ohohoho I knew there was spicy drama afoot.

This origin story of this tweet was an column by Rob Salkowitz titled Who's a creative professional in the comics world? The answer is getting more complicated. He makes a ...

I was fishing for smelts the other day and scooped up an old bottle, with a rolled-up paper inside. It contained the following:

In older literature I think it was common to have a story told by a narrator who was never a part of the action. Someone who may ...

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 ...

Welcome to my Underground Layers

-Banes, your pop culture references are as on point as ever!



I've talked about story structure here many times, normally in similar ways.
A different approach to character and story, one I haven't used much personally, is what we could call the “onion ...

The moment of change in a character is not always crystal clear in a story. Very often the secret to good storytelling I think, is to understand all the structural elements in a story, and a character arc, and then to HIDE those elements so they feel realistic while they ...

I saw a smaller youtuber talking about movies and she mentioned her belief that “Hollywood movies” - like, normal movies I guess she meant - are destructive to our psyche. ‘Our’ referring to we the viewing audience and society at large. She didn't elaborate in the video I saw; I'm ...