Last week, I expanded further on world building basics and what better way to end the trilogy than with a “what not to do!”. So here are some tips on what to avoid when building and writing your comic world.

Avoid the infodump
You’ve spent an age crafting the ...

Given that it was Valentine's Day yesterday, and that is associated with a lot of special moments between couples, I thought we could talk about the Day After! What do you do on the Day After? Do you run to buy a pill or do you roll over and ...

Rules are meant to be bent, or broken.

Of course they are- if it's a one time thing. If it happens all the time, the stakes collapse, the story comes apart, and the experience is ruined. I'm talking about stories, of course…

As we've talked about time ...

Emma is sick today so I'm subbing in! My topic is about art: 5 areas to work on that will help you become a better comic artist.

Practice:
The first and most important is practice. The more you do the better you get. Draw every day and try new ...

Reflection Characters

When I was doing a little reading on the “Mentor” character type, I learned about something called “Reflection Characters”. It was an eye opener; I'd never heard of this before, though I could instantly see how it made sense in storytelling, and dozens of examples came to ...

Generally nowadays, perhaps because of the nature of today's media and ways of consuming stories, a fast-paced, rapid-fire approach is favored for telling stories. It's with good reason. With so many options available to a finite audience, there is a high competition for grabbing the audience's attention ...

When you’re creating something like a webcomic it’s very easy to diminish your own work. You work on it every day and, if you’re anything like me, you only ever see the mistakes. During my regular stalking of the comic forums I came across a thread asking ...

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How about having it so anyone in your story can die?
Let me explain: It's fake. NOT just anyone can die OK? Your main character will ...

In a story when any character is plausibly eligible to die, the stakes are high. We worry for everyone, even main characters than in other stories wouldn't be on the chopping board at all. It's a great premise to have for your story setup, because it makes the ...

When do you bail on a series, movie or story?

We had a pretty fine conversation on the Quackcast last week that wandered into the category of “endings” and when they're set up well vs badly and such. I had a similar convo today with someone about various series ...