Last week I talked about what kind of stuff to stick in the middle section of stories.

Here's a tangent I found myself on, about the actual halfway mark:

Well, the middle bit almost always contains the actual halfway point of the story. In many stories this is a ...

We have all talked of and considered character archetypes when designing and building characters.

There are many sets to pick from and it's not really a shocker that most of them, if not all, have their roots at psychology. (I'm looking at you, Carl Jung)

Far be it ...

The physical space that a character inhabits often seems far more passive than it really is. Space is more than a matter of creating a backdrop, though. Why is it that some characters feel as if they’re moving against a wall paper background while others inhabit a far more ...

The original quote from which the title is derived is attributed to Joseph Stalin. And while it can sound cynical and harsh, it is unfortunately true: the human mind boggles beyond a cut off point when it comes to grasping numbers tangibly, not theoretically. When the numbers become too high ...

There is a gripe that I have when it comes to romance. It might be the reason I don't really like reading romance as a genre, and while I am aware that not all works in the romance genre are like this, there are too many for me to ...

Usually when building a character, we go for their general personality in terms of traits, the routine/general behavior they would display, the routine/general things that would interest them and so on.

If you are writing a slice of life story, or a sitcom style series, or anything that ...

So we've talked often about how letting a character die in a story is something that should be used very frugally, because once death occurs, it should be permanent. In most settings, death shouldn't be something that is reversible. If not, it will lose its impact, and the ...

When a character the story's cast and audience identify and are familiar with dies, the effect is, or should be, monumental.

Not only because that effectively ends that character's journey (and arc), but also because as an event it has immediate ramifications for all the surviving characters.

First ...

I’ve been getting back into reading epic fantasy novels. Grand worlds, exotic locations and, of course, an ever increasing cast of characters. As I am one to never stop taking notes, even when I’m trying to chill, here are some things I noticed about introducing new characters that ...

I couldn't have been older than 11 when I read The Flaming Heart of Danko by Maxim Gorky. And boy, did it cut me with the finest of fine glass. Even now thinking about the short story hurts somewhere deep in my soul.

And yet, I love it so ...