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 ...

Endings are hard. We all know that. We have to tie up all the loose ends, answer all the questions, and pay off all the characters. We have to give a resolution that hopefully leaves our readers satisfied.

I know of a couple ways to deconstruct a story, and to ...

I wanted to draw everyone's attention this week to Call Me Tom's new community project! It's a pretty simple, but really fun idea - we're creating our own deck of cards using our comic characters.

A little less than half of the slots are still open, including ...

If you want to decent job of it, creating and using weapons in fiction can be quite tricky. There are a lot of pitfalls that newbies and even long time veterans of creating fiction fall into.

1. Number one is simply copying what others have done without understanding it yourself ...

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 ...

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 ...

The Grazing Mongrel is a non-sequitur strip comic featuring social commentary based on the absurdity of modern life. It may be a little hit and miss for some: I laughed out loud at a few of the strips, others didn't quite hit the mark and some need you to ...

Cast of an obscure 1970's science fiction flick. Current whereabouts unknown

One of the challenges…and maybe one of the greatest pleasures…of creating a series is populating it with a cast of heroes. I know I spend many weeks or months tinkering with characters and deciding who they ...

this picture is only somewhat related to tone…but it has a costumed baby!

In my early days doing the Quackcast with Ozoneocean, we spent some time talking about story genres. I remember how we ignored whether something was a comedy, drama, or horror, because those aren't stories, but ...

The Giving Tree, Story and Illustration by Shel Silverstein

I remember reading along with certain children's books that became very near and dear to me as a young kid. Over the years, I revisit the story and it begins to take on a whole new meaning as my perspective ...