One of the main drivers of story is the principle of CONTRAST.

A character in a traditional story arc begins one way and ends up in a very different state of being - the underdog to the victorious hero, or the innocent, unaware victim to the final survivor, or the selfish ...

Last Week we looked at the “Break Into 2”, the transition between the beginning of a story: The “Before” picture of the Protagonist and their world, and the “Upside Down World” of Act 2.

So, a little later in your average story will come the “Break Into 3”. This leaves ...

always someone breakinnn' into twooooo…

AN important part of a story is the good old “Break into Act 2”.

It's not the easiest story structure moment to recognize, but it's one of the early ones I thought about and tried to notice in movies I watched.

Many people ...

a couple of three-panel archie newspaper strips.

When I was a kid in Canada, we had “Saturday Funnies” in the newspaper. These were full pages (if memory serves, it was maybe 2-4 pages) of full color cartoons. You had your Beetle Bailey, your Family Circus, your Andy Capp, your Marmaduke ...

Greetings! I hope you've all had an enjoyable holiday season so far, no matter what you're celebrating and regardless of actual ‘holidays’ are part of it for you.

The end of the year is still about a week away, but this will be my last regular Newspost of ...

Why do we fall down, Master Bruce?

So we can get up again.

That was a line from Batman Begins, back in the day, that the movie made sure to put out there multiple times. It was an important theme they wanted to hit in that story. It's an ...

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 ...

I'm Out of Order? You're Out of Order! - Nonlinear storytelling

I finally watched Strange Darling the other night. I think I saw part of a review at some point and dipped out before it could be spoiled.

And boy howdy, THAT'S the way to see Strange Darling ...

On Conan O'Brien's Podcast the other day, the gang answered a question from a fan about whether they'd created the show with the classic radio lineup of “Dick, Dork and Dear”.

I'd never heard of it, and neither had Conan and company. But apparently, morning radio ...

I've been VERY slowly working on new comics ideas…way too many of them…for several years now. One of the decisions for me is what kind of STYLE the comic should be.

To be clear, I'm not a phenomenal artist, to say the least. So i don ...