Somewhere between “all the time” and “hardly ever” lies an ideal update schedule.

I’ve read several times that frequent content updates is one of the best ways to increase traffic to whatever it is you’re creating online, but of course both your audience and yourself need to be ...

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 ...

Accents, patterns of speech and the like can be a useful tool in introducing characters. In a film or tv show, a character's accent can immediately reveal the character's nationality or social background. And of course, we've all been conditioned by Hollywood movies to identify the bad ...

LISTEN!

Doing stories that start with the climax, then flash back, tell what happened to get there: the old narrative style of switching the first few chapters around to make a more interesting story.
Sometimes it works GREAT because it throws you right into the middle of things and you ...

"May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art – write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And ...

Professor Herbert is an enterprising young fellow. He's a clever inventor with some less than clever associates. G.E.O. and a genetically engineered organism, and a bit of a grumpy pants because he has something wrong with his brain that Professor Herbert is just dying to fix, if ...

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 ...

UPDATE: Friday 11:59pm PST
I was able to speak to Amazon customer service directly and the issue should be fixed now!

UPDATE: Friday 11pm PST
All payments have been processed but our account is still suspended. I've contacted Amazon AWS support about it and I'm waiting to ...

alejkhan's Secret Santa gift for ashtree house

Thank you so much to everyone who has posted their Secret Santa gift art! I have been absolutely blown away this year by the quality of art that everyone submitted. You all obviously spent a lot of time on your gifts!

The ...

Last time, solo heroes, teams of two, and trios were the order of the day. Today let's talk quartets, quintets, sextets, septuplets, octets, and…uh…neuf-tets…?
More possibilities for self-contained drama/comedy/conflict exist with groups of four or five. There are several ways to begin building such a ...