In a world with creatures that resemble cute pocket monsters, there is a small, pink Mew-type animal that loves to give advice at a booth (as suggested by the title “Ask Andante”). Andante lives in a world with very similar creatures that also spend time responding and answering random questions ...

I've talked a lot about motivations in my articles. And how could I not? My scientific field aside, what makes us behave in certain manners or way is a question that has occupied entire schools of thought in psychology, philosophy, political science, even AI and (bio)chemistry.

There are ...

There used to be an unbreakable connection between myself and my desktop computer during my college days. My computer was an extension of me, a mech of sorts and as I started getting better at creating and using programs like Photoshop, SketchUp, AutoCAD, and Revit, I needed to constantly upgrade ...

Constructing a story is a work of high creativity and love. Enthusiasm and personal interest in it are required if the story is to have quality and engagement, be unique and full of personality. While writing we look forward to certain scenes or sequences that we expect to have special ...

(I'm writing this after a very long and hard day of mental and physical work so if it sounds ranty or convoluted…. eh, you've been warned :P )

Humans are competitive by nature. Somehow we have to rank everything- all things, from the most concrete to the most abstract ...

Sexuality is very fluid and for the most part, there has been a societal shift towards a more “sex-positive” society. I digress because, as always, there is always a part of society that prefers to remain conservative. As a human female, basing my observations of other humans, it has dawned ...

What made a character be who he/she is? What is it that drives them, and why?

That's the allure of any origin story: we get to see how characters we look up to or love or love to hate came to be who they are.

Most, if not ...

Writing what you know is one of those old canards that show up in writing advice, though it's not up there with things like “show, don't tell” and “this is supposed to be a literary essay - do not doodle in the margins”.

Or is that last one just ...

Usually in adventures, thrillers and other stories, when the main characters are romantically involved, the B plot (or even the A plot) is the ‘will they/won’t they' question: will they get together in the end, usually with a happy end scene of marriage, or some such thing. Romance ...

classic tale of cause and effect!

Our very own Pickle-Face made a forum topic on the Duck, asking people to create a basic ‘cause and effect’ statement on their comic.

The structure goes something like this: Say what happens, and then what the effect is in the story. This is ...