Usually in adventures, thrillers and other stories, when the main characters are romantically involved, the B plot (or even the A plot) is the ‘will they/won’t they' question: will they get together in the end, usually with a happy end scene of marriage, or some such thing. Romance ...

I've already written a bunch of articles on writing mental illness, so I figured I should write about writing therapists as well!

Oh, the woes for therapist representation in narrative works! All the stereotypes are there: from the shrink that is actually a little (or a lot) loopy and ...

Having completed the (very quick) foray into the workings of motivations, ideologies and behaviors, the time has come for a look-see of all your amazing comments, from all three articles!

I haven't done this before so I'm not entirely sure how to present them. I'll wing it ...

Screencap taken from video referenced below.

There’s been some controversy going around about tracing vs referencing and it gave me pause for thought. And, of course, after some time, I thought it would be an interesting topic to talk about for this week.

In comics, particularly when it comes ...

Lately there has been this pattern that I've noticed in both social media and mainstream comics/cartoons outlets that is very saddening: the use of denigration and belittlement as a promotional tactic, or as an argument.

More and more I seem to notice that new series, reboots, retellings or ...

Once the honeymoon sheen of releasing your new project wears you can easily find yourself burnt out by the concept of having to muster the energy to continue working on it. Sometimes you might have written yourself into a corner or maybe you feel like you are not liking the ...

There's nothing more intense than subverting the audience's expectations: The righteous character that always says the truth says a lie. The character that values all life ends up murdering someone. The bad sort, the punk that's always terrible ends up saving the day or doing something decent ...

We live in a world that can be exceedingly beautiful or appallingly harsh, and everything in between. And as art reflects one's experiences, emotions and questions about this world, it's unavoidable that both the themes of amazing beauty and the themes of absolute terror, disgust and horror will ...

So you have your kick ass story ready, you’ve researched your world well and feel comfortable in it, and you have an awesome set of personalities to equip your characters that will propagate your story (or complement it if the plot is story driven).

The only thing left to ...

LISTEN!

We've talked about formulas before, but mostly in the context of escaping formulas and reinventing them.
NOW however we're talking about using existing formulas to create a story, or creating new formulas and sticking to them to come up with your stories.
Formulas can be a good ...