I read that a great ending should be “surprising but inevitable”. That's a tall order! To have the whole story leading to that inevitable conclusion, but not be predictable. Wow!

However, I've seen (and read…ah, let's be honest; mostly it's “seen”) several great endings that ...

If you want to decent job of it, creating and using weapons in fiction can be quite tricky. There are a lot of pitfalls that newbies and even long time veterans of creating fiction fall into.

1. Number one is simply copying what others have done without understanding it yourself ...

LISTEN!

Happy new year! In this first Quackcast for 2016 we have Banes, Pitface and Tantz Aerine along to talk to us about Banes' newspost topic of Wish Fulfilment in writing. It can be a good thing in that it makes the writer more interested and passionate about what they ...

Happy 2016, everyone!

I'm not big into New Year's resolutions generally, but I do have a few this year. I read 24 books in 2015 (not including partial books read for school) and would like to do the same in 2016. I'd like to improve my reading ...

I love Christmas Eve. Possibly more than Christmas Day. Both are great fun, and reuniting with friends and relatives I rarely see is delightful of course.

But the quiet anticipation of Christmas Eve is where it's at. For me it's usually a day off work, wrapping (occasionally running ...

Cast of an obscure 1970's science fiction flick. Current whereabouts unknown

One of the challenges…and maybe one of the greatest pleasures…of creating a series is populating it with a cast of heroes. I know I spend many weeks or months tinkering with characters and deciding who they ...

Meet Greta, a good humoured, earthy, pipe smoking woman with a great big box backpack and stylish leather travelling clothes. Greta is an apothecary, she travels the lands curing ills and writing down creatively horrible ailments in her apothecary book. On the way she meets a rather stuck-up knight on ...

image by Banes, influenced by lots of things

When I came up with the characters and stories that became my webcomic here on The Duck, I knew it didn't come from a vacuum. But for the most part, it was only after writing and posting stories for several years ...

Apparently the difference between “terror” and “horror” was first expressed by writer Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823), who said that Terror is the dread and apprehension about something happening, while Horror is the actual encountering the frightening thing.
Maybe this is what they mean when they talk about “suspense” vs. “horror”. Have ...

Autumn has officially arrived. It feels like a different season even though I do not live in an area of the world where the tree leaves are turning vibrant shades of yellow and orange. The scents of cinnamon, nutmeg, pumpkin spice, and all the warm cozy feelings are back. Yes ...