Pets are intimate companions that get us through the day. Cats, dogs, rabbits, rats, snakes, fish, you name it- they help us in their own way. And yet not many characters in fiction or comics tend to have them. I for one don't include animals at all in my ...

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 ...

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Let's go forward in time to the past so we can get back to the future and kill our grandfather and be our own ancestor while ...

As a compulsive - and rather obsessive – writer I often find myself tinkering around with language. And I’ve always found the creativity and imagination that can go into the language within a fictional world to be similar to that of an illustrator. When done well it can bring color and ...

A million things have already been said and talked about regarding an artist's inspiration. A million more will be. From debates on what constitutes inspiration vs. poaching or plagiarism to what makes an artist inspired by other artists' work.

But what I want to talk about is not exactly ...

On a recent episode of Better Call Saul there was a plot element that caused some discussion/criticism.

Mild spoilers for Better Call Saul ahead.

There's a character on this show, Lalo, who was set up to be almost - almost - more than human. This is not a superhero show ...

I’m taking a pause from the Fantastic Bestiary this week as I haven’t been my best healthwise lately. Also lately I’ve been distracted by something that has left me with this question poppin’ into my mind, And so this sunday I'm posting this question that perhaps ...

No, this article isn't about the mythological beings. I wouldn't want to steal any single one from Andreas Helixfinger's awesome Sunday article series.

What I want to talk about is the metaphorical unicorn: a character that is too good to be true, too unlikely to be found ...

Holy Unholy Alliance, Batman!

Last week we talked about what I called the “villain combo platter” with different types of villains that could make for multifaceted kinds of conflicts for the hero to face.

At the time, PaulEberhart mentioned the alliance between villains that happened at one point during Deep ...

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The full team is assembled yet again! Tantz came up with the idea of having a look at hidden fantasy worlds in fiction that have strong ties ...