Conflict is the spice of storytelling! Whether it’s a comic, movie, or show, those moments of raw emotion often stick with us the longest. You know the ones—when characters clash, emotions boil over, and things get real. A fiery argument can leave your readers on the edge of ...

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 ...

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 ...

There's a difference between a Christmas Special and a Christmas Movie. While the Movie is written around Christmas (or Hannukah or any other Yule-season holiday), the Christmas Special forces the show to be written around Christmas whether it likes it or not.

The hilarity ensues when it falls in ...

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 ...

The telling of stories, in a big way, is about working emotions. A major reason stories have the power they do is that the great ones wring emotions out of us, and take us through some kind of emotional journey.

In a movie or TV show, things are different than ...

Now that's a little TOO scary!

Horror is perfect for metaphor and allegory. In fact, a horror story is often allegorical by default, what with its bizarre landscapes and freaky beasties.

Here are some categories of horror and some thoughts on what they symbolize:

Reality Bites


psycho killer! Qu ...

Dance With the Devil
the attraction and repulsion of horror


There a few things - movies, books, stories and TV shows - that scared me enough as a kid that I still remember them. Some are just moments from a book, show or whatever that wasn't that scary beyond that one ...

When we hear about a broken heart, usually our collective minds to go romantic disappointments and devastation. Unrequited love, betrayed love, or even love separated by death or any other type of force majeure.

And that's absolutely one type of heartbreak that is and will remain legit. It's ...

I was thinking about different filmmakers and how varied their processes can be. Stanley Kubrick was famous for doing multiple takes - sometimes dozens of takes and sometimes much more (!)

Meanwhile, Clint Eastwood will do one or two takes and that's it.

On the show Seinfeld, there were two takes ...