Photo: “The Stinky Cheese Man and the Fox”. The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales. By Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith. (1992)

Any the book that was ever available at silent reading was always a book that the teacher read aloud to the class. The Stinky Cheese Man ...

Conflict!

It's the essential building block of drama. You don't have a story without the basics of “someone wants something, and something's in the way of getting it.”

Screenwriting books - books I really love and have given me a lot - will often say that amping up the ...

So for some reason my youtube is being besieged by rant videos over The Little Mermaid live action movie by Disney… AGAIN. You'd think the algorithm would know by now that I only watch ER skits and debunking videos, but here we are.

The controversy (again) is over the ...

Hello everyone, and welcome to Panel by Panel, a periodic exploration of comic panels around The Duck. This week as I weigh possible panel challenges for later updates, I wanted to return to our more usual analysis of panels. This week we're turning to the comic Heaven Hunters by ...

I was reading a critique of a series, a successful series, of novels. I think it's an urban fantasy/horror thing where the main character has a specific paranormal ability, limited, but useful in her detective work. She had a love interest, who was maybe on and off, but ...

Photo: “Twistjam: Morgyn and Lacey”. Original characters from Alone is a Hard Thing Toby by David A Webcomic and Hawk and Flo Adventures Part 1 Ice Cream Truck of Doom by HawkandFloAdventures. (February 2023)

A nice round of milestones from four creators to celebrate the accomplishments on The Duck:

The ...

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Arrogance is a fun subject. Related to cockiness, hubris, assertiveness, self confidence and pride.
It's a fantastic trait for a villain and it's really fun ...

So last time, in Part 1 of this discussion of …sunnier villains or antagonists, we had left off talking about how toxic positivity is all about the toxic person's comfort. And that this need to impose a certain behavior, dogma, and/or approach to reality in their environment leads ...

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My idea was to talk about social pariah characters, people who it's socially acceptable to laugh at, despise, or even hate. They can be the uncool ...

So it is Sunday again and the first month of the new year is nearing its close. I still haven’t finished my work on the short story I’m making for the new DD Anthology, but I am coming back from my updating hiatus next week anyway. During my ...