image by Ben Burgraff

When writing a historical fiction, it's very likely that you will need to include some actual historical personalities along with your historically-adept yet fictional cast.

Depicting a historical character is hard enough when there's a general consensus among historians and popular belief about who ...

I watched a great series of interview clips with a writer/producer/teacher named Dr. Ken Atchity on the Film Courage channel. He talks about screenwriting, and productive creativity in general. Great interviews from a guy who I find quite inspiring, and in a down-to-earth kind of way.

Here's ...

I had a meeting the other day with a director, who asked me “how do you approach a historical era to keep true to it?” and “how do you keep from being biased?”

I fear that I eclipsed the poor guy with my soap box lectures, but that aside, I ...

“Don't worry, Bart. It seems like every week something odd happens to the Simpsons. My advice is to ride it out, make an occasional smart-aleck quip, and by next week, we'll be back to where we started from, ready for another wacky adventure. ”

-Lisa Simpson


In most series ...

The breaking point of a story is where the protagonist has been beaten down so many times that they throw life to the ground and yell, “Enough of this shit!”. Keep in mind that the breaking point does not necessarily mean it’s the climax, more it is a pivotal ...

You


Creating something new is daunting. Where do you start? I know if I'm putting something together, at some point I get anxious about how it will be received by people who read it. Will it make any sense? Is it good enough? Is it just terrible? Irrelevant? Boring ...

An important, but often overlooked aspect of creating a webcomic is what rating it will have, ie whether your comic is adult, young adult, children or x-rated. This question, whilst not always thought about at the conceptual stage, is by no means any less important. It is a critical way ...

Stuck in the Middle - Midpoints

I've often found the Midpoint of a story difficult to find and difficult to write.
It's one of the big three pillars in story structure, and it's the
most subtle.

The Midpoint doesn't have the “dragged into a new world” of ...

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There are many kinds love. Love is a great thing to include in your story for all sorts of reasons: it's an easy way to develop ...

Sometimes you aim for a target and you miss– but you end up with a hit anyway in an unexpected place.

When starting a new project usually the target audience is clear, people like ourselves. After all, an author usually likes their own work and has a target reader similar ...