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 ...

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Main characters with main character syndrome? What is main character syndrome? Well the way we're dealing with it here it's normally a snide criticism you level and someone who seems to think the world revolves ...

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A standard thing in stories is to have multiple plot lines. In short stories or when you're just starting out as a writer you tend to have a single line, the A plot, but as soon ...

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It's not the new year yet but this is the final Quackcast of 2024 and it's coming out on New Year's Eve!
In this Quackcast we do a bit of a year in review ...

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Happy Christmas eve! In this penultimate Quackcast of the year we decided to have a free day and just chat about any subject that interested us at the time. Next week will be our final cast of ...

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This Quackcast was inspired by world renowned idiot Robert F Kennedy Jnr. We decided to talk about writing dumb characters. I keep calling him John F Kennedy Jnr because I am also an idiot. Some context: he ...

Photo: “1600”. Used Books created by Usedbooks. (December 2024)

Usedbooks writes:

“Hi,

I have a milestone announcement for the newspost. Used Books has reached 1600 pages.

(From the author’s notes)

‘1600’

Is 1600 a milestone? Tbh, every page feels like a mile at this point. Heh. Anyway, I used ...

In our Quackcast about Non-Linear storytelling this week, I had a tangent of a thought about the value of difficult or challenging fiction as opposed to stories that are easier to understand.

An unusual structure to a story can be challenging to understand, but if it's done well, the ...

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Non-linear stories are a different way of telling a tale. There are many famous examples (Pulp fiction, Mulholland Drive etc), where the sequence of events isn't in strict chronological order. This style has gained a false ...

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Is it important to Identify with characters? This question occurred to me as I was watching a rather banal sitcom, Rules of Engagement. I love two of the stars, David Spade and Patrick Warburton, but it's ...