Villains are tremendously important for a story. They set the framework and standard for a lot of things in an unsaid but definite manner: how far your villain is willing to go sets up audience expectations for how big and how dire the stakes will be in the story.

If ...

Hello everyone, and welcome to Panel by Panel, a periodic exploration of comic panels around The Duck. We'll be getting back to panel analysis in the coming weeks, but for my return to writing after a brief health break, I want to do that challenge I discussed some time ...

In rewatching some 1990's movies, I saw quite a few of these Protagonists show up - they're these disaffected types, usually quite intelligent or at least verbose, who are wrapped up in their emotions and sort of spinning their wheels in life as they analyze their problems and face ...

One of the most frequent ways to make characters stand out in fiction or myth is to give them a staggering, amazingly powerful ability. Something that mere talent doesn't give you. Something miraculous, larger than the largest life, unique and insurmountable:

Like a dude that can part an entire ...

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What rights are people actually entitled to? That question is a lot bigger than you think!
The Quackcast today is sequel to last week's about entitled ...

So for us Orthodox Christians it's Good Friday today and it'll be Resurrection Day (Good Saturday) by the time you're reading this. In the neighborhood where I live, a new (boisterous and with many members) family has moved in, who brought a live rooster a few days ...

my webcomic, Typical Strange, uses many fake films in its video store setting

A few years ago I spotted a book in the second hand store - one I'd read as a kid. I bought it and reread it. It was definitely more suited to the younger me - it was ...

Entitlement. Privilege. Obnoxiousness.

We all deal with these things every day, whether we want to or not. It comes in all shapes and sizes. From the kid that throws a tantrum if they can't take some other random kid's toy to the adult that is pissed they stole ...

Since I first read it, the book “Save The Cat!” has been incredibly useful to me as far as thinking about stories, outlining them, and finishing them. It's a fun way to approach structure, and applies to a LOT of mainstream stories.

It's become an essential textbook in ...

Recently I have been revisiting a sitcom that I used to love but, funnily enough, never finished. The last season of the show dropped during a hectic period of my life and by the time I had, well time, to watch it, I had lost the plot. But thanks to ...