Unless they are an old-timey Disney villain or similarly classic cartoon villain, nobody wants to be evil or bad starting off. Nobody's ambition is to be the villain in their own story. (note I say ‘villain’ and not ‘antagonist’)

Everyone is out to be the hero.

So why aren ...

Might as well get it out of the way: if you're a mentor in a story, chances are you're going on a boatride over the river Styx at some point.

When a mentor dies it's often the signal that the main character, the one being mentored, is ...

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This Quackcast is about the impermanence of online services and the lie that services are provided for fee and providers have no responsibility to the creators and ...

There is a reason why in fanfiction archives there's a whole category of stories called “hurt/comfort”, where one of the main characters of a specific IP is injured, and others (usually an unlikely person or whoever the author is shipping with the injured one) have to take care ...

I've talked a lot about motivations in my articles. And how could I not? My scientific field aside, what makes us behave in certain manners or way is a question that has occupied entire schools of thought in psychology, philosophy, political science, even AI and (bio)chemistry.

There are ...

Whether we have free will or not is a philosophical, existential and psychological conundrum that will forever tease and challenge us. While I can't speak for philosophers, I can for psychologists:

Behaviorists will tell you it doesn't exist (look up Skinner); Cognitive behaviorists will tell you it's ...

We're all aware of the classic tennet for writers and creators of all stories- write what you know in order for the story to be good.

We've explored before what it means to write what you know, and where this rule should be adhered to: at the core ...

What made a character be who he/she is? What is it that drives them, and why?

That's the allure of any origin story: we get to see how characters we look up to or love or love to hate came to be who they are.

Most, if not ...

We grin and support John Wick as he ploughs through dozens of people per minute in his revenge quest over his murdered dog and ruined car, but we gasp with shock when the Wicked Witch of the East pursues a single person to take revenge for killing her sister with ...

Sitting back on a Friday evening, remote control in hand, I decided to watch one of the latest Pixar Animated short films. To me a short film is the perfect length of time (six to nine minutes) to tell a story with an exposition, rising action, climax, and resolution. They ...