It may just be my impression, but usually when a story is set in a dystopian setting, the dystopia is played straight. However, when the characters encounter or start off in a utopian setting, they almost always will end up realizing that the utopia is actually a mirage, and in ...

As creators of stories, be they novels or graphic novels or comics, we all have heard the adage “write what you know”. It's been drummed into our minds to the point that its cold fingers have our impostor syndrome in a deathgrip every time we venture our to write ...

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When love turns to hate… It's a common trope in fiction: partners split up and their once loving relationship turns to one of bitter acrimony! We see hate turning to love frequently too, that ...

Absolute Boyfriend: Volume 1

So, you’ve got this amazing story idea bouncing around in your head—yay, go you! But now comes the big question: how do you actually start the thing? You want that first page to blow your readers away, right? Let’s talk about one of ...

If you are setting a story in the past it can often be hard to get everything from the little things to the big picture right, especially if it's a period you haven't lived through yourself. Even then, your memory can play tricks on you.

It doesn't ...

I generally avoid using current events in my articles about webcomics, but this time I can't help it. Signalgate has been living rent free in my mind ever since the editor in chief of the Atlantic broke the story.

There are many reasons for that, most of them not ...

No matter what the characters in your story might be doing–fighting crime, resisting alien invasion, surviving in a harsh radioactive wasteland, or just working in an office–sometimes it's fun to remove them from their ‘regular’ activities and place them somewhere different and out of their social comfort ...

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Parody and satire are a certain kind of humour. They're VERY easy to do because you just base them off real, already existing things, then you twist it a bit to add humour and ...

In designing a good villain character there's a wide range of paths one can follow. From the grandiose villains that want to take over the world and live in volcano islands, waiting for the hero to fall into their elaborate death trap to humanized villains with complex backstories that ...

So you might have a character that's generally very calm or stoic. They may appear weak, or just not intimidating. They may be the right gender, class, age, or any other parameter for their peers to assume they are easy pickings and thus a great target for harassment. Initially ...