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 ...

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 ...

There was a recent article in the Guardian about how playing Dungeons and Dragons had helped siblings bond and cope with the death of their father. It got me thinking about the role that role-playing has played (now there's a phrase) in my own life.

For me role-playing began ...

Photo: “#1 Getting Off On The Wrong Foot!”. Grenadine and THE LUNCHERS created by Arspitzer. (February 2025)

Arspitzer writes:

“Hi,



I'd like to announce that my new webcomic Grenadine and THE LUNCHERS that the first strip is now on The Duck!



Here's a link to it:

https://www ...

There's nothing more frustrating when a character dies from a situation that had no reason occuring except perhaps that the writers wanted to be edgy and make the story have more gravitas with a random death that's forced into the plot.

I've talked often over the years ...

It’s time for another Character Deep Dive, this within the amazing political war thriller The Second Crimean War by the awesome and proliferate The Doodler!

The Second Crimean War is an alternate history webcomic, of a different 1995 where, after the collapse of the USSR, the emerging, independent Ukraine ...

It's been a very tough week (as per usual these past few weeks) and I've been sitting here staring at the blank screen of my computer trying to think of a topic to write about for the newspost.

And I got nothing. I keep drawing blanks. I have ...

How do you make a clever character stupid?

You give them an infatuation. A fixation. Something that completely overrides their critical thinking and better judgment. Something that drives them nuts like a switch is thrown.

And when that happens, they're dumber than a bag of rocks. (And they're ...

Sometimes it may feel that the justice system protects the perpetrator a lot more than it does the victim:

There are many things an accused can use to mitigate their position, there are many reasons to shorted a sentence, they can get out on good behavior, they can generally serve ...