MacGuffin comin' through!


MacGuffins

I'm not sure if everyone knows this already, but a MacGuffin is a term that was made popular by Alfred Hitchcock, and is now widely used in writing and storytelling circles.

It is an item or event (or possibly even a character) that exists only ...

Reflection Characters

When I was doing a little reading on the “Mentor” character type, I learned about something called “Reflection Characters”. It was an eye opener; I'd never heard of this before, though I could instantly see how it made sense in storytelling, and dozens of examples came to ...

image sourceExtra Fabulous Comics

When first starting out in the webcomic field, it’s very easy to feel like you are screaming into the void. Getting eyes on your work can be an uphill battle but, thankfully, the webcomic community is a thriving one and through the power of ...

The word for ‘porn’ in Greek is unsurprisingly ‘porn’. But its vernacular synonym is a word that in reality means ‘tack-on’ or ‘added scrap’. It signifies the common (or at least until recently common) assumption that scenes with explicit sexual activity were there to pad the runtime for a movie ...

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This week we look at the famous quote by respected film director Martin Scorsese that “Marvel movies aren't Cinema” and also the quote by fellow director ...

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Listen on Stitcher ​​- https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/drunkduck-quackcast
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Storytelling styles change over time for various reasons: fashion, audience expectations, competition for audience attention due to increased choice and availability of media, technological limitations and abilities ...

Last week, I posted an article about what you would do in a year if all your financial obligations were looked after and you could dedicate your time to making comics. We also opened this question up to the #quackchat on Twitter. So here are some of the responses we ...

Lately more and more comics and animated features seem to consciously, and more importantly loudly, incorporate political messages in their stories. From feminism to social stratification and discrimination, to racism and xenophobia or even depression and psychological trauma.

This is by no means a new thing, to incorporate themes and ...

When creating a story you begin leading the reader down a path. You know where you’re going, or at least can pretend to know, but the reader does not. But, with some well laid out clues and foreshadowing, they can begin to piece the map together. Now here comes ...

Having discussed a general approach to writing characters with mental disorders (with a lot of thoughtful comments by you further enriching what I had to say!) it's only right that we wrap up this very quick analysis with an example of a story that properly portrays them.

I chose ...