It is Thursday evening as I walk up to the ticket window and ask for two IMAX 3D tickets for the much anticipated movie feature. The man at the ticket booth prints me up two paper tickets and hands me some bulky, oversized gray 3D glasses frames. I the stadium ...

It is taking some time to gather my thoughts on the follow up to last week’s article, so for this post, I thought we could talk about something to helps keep me going and inspired, namely music.

Before Quentin Tarrentino begins a movie he often turns to music as ...

It's easy to get lost in uncertainty, anxiety and self doubt when creating something. I often find myself spinning my wheels when working on a story, character, or what have you.

An interesting technique that I use all the time is the TEN BAD IDEAS list.

It goes like ...

There are endless points of view out there, and everyone on the Internet can have a voice.

We talked on a Quackcast some time ago about agendas and anvilicious messaging in some movies, and other fiction.

I've become interested lately in the marketing and messaging involved in movies and ...

Earlier today Ozoneocean made a pretty interesting post at Facebook, regarding how demons are depicted in modern culture as opposed to how they were earlier, and especially what they symbolized in western culture: they are now generally depicted as sexy, good, glittering, or misunderstood. If they are doing negative things ...

I want to take a quick break for a second to talk about something creators go through but often don’t talk about. It is hard to see it coming and even harder still to lift yourself out of once you are there. This post is about addressing creative burnout ...

Say My Name

There are titles that fit perfectly with their subject, titles that could fit multiple subjects/contexts, and titles that don't work at all.
Recently I've seen several titles referenced that made me say “I HAVE to see that/read that!”.

A title can be handy ...

Anyone who ever dabbled in creative writing or any sort of narrative work, had the phrase “show, don't tell” hammered into them. The sheer anxiety of being caught ‘telling’ rather than ‘showing’ made us all think in terms I assume only exhibitionists do.

The truth though is, that sometimes ...

For this week, I wanted to begin a new series of articles inspired by the most recent podcast “JUST DO IT!”. Part way through our discussion, the topic of creating stories came up and I, quite clumsily, tried to explain the theory of narrative circles and arcs as told by ...

Last week we talked a little pov basics.

This time, how about we talk the fascinating device called the Unreliable Narrator. For anyone who doesn't know, this type of narration (usually first person in prose, but not necessarily) tells the story in question…but is not necessarily giving an ...