Heading up to the release of War of the Spark: Ravnica, expectations from Magic: The Gathering (MTG) players ran high. Ravnica and its sequel, Forsaken, were touted as MTG’s version of Infinity War and Endgame, a culmination of the years-long Gatewatch saga and the epic … read more »
Hello. I have been reading your character death articles, and it has made me think about my own characters in my own story. I originally was gonna have one character death, but her death was unnecessarily brutal and did not serve a purpose (the true … read more »
So, I want to write villains and want them to really play the part. But I read on this site that villains can still send harmful messages or be hurtful to the audience if you’re not careful. How can I make my villains really evil … read more »
Hello Mythcreants I am back. I want to ask if portraying Vengeance as something that can be good is inherently bad. In many stories Vengeance is vilified as evil and more often than not it’s expected that they have to grant forgiveness to the bullies … read more »
What’s that feeling inside you? Do you want one thing but also want another thing? Then you might have internal conflict, an important tool in any storytellers kit. External conflicts provide plenty of excitement and motivation, but internal conflicts are how you really get into … read more »
Many people are familiar with the character shield and plot-armor tropes: those points in a story where it really feels like a character should die, but the writer won’t let them. It turns out that many stories have the opposite issue: a character dies for … read more »
One of the most common questions that comes up in writing is how to gracefully describe the point-of-view character. In limited perspective, the narration reflects what that character is thinking at some level. While it’s easy to work in description of other characters as soon … read more »
You’ve got your basic cast figured out, but the characters are missing something. A little pop, a little sizzle, a certain indefinable quality. Fortunately, it turns out that quality is perfectly definable, and that’s what we’re discussing today. We talk about strategies for making your … read more »
Deciding which character will be the focus of your story is tricky business, and plenty of authors have trouble with it. In the early stages, it’s not always clear which character has the most central position in the plot or who will be most compelling … read more »
A universal rule of storytelling is that the main character’s choices need to matter; that’s agency. However, a main character doesn’t always have to be working on their own goals; that’s proactivity. How do these aspects interact? Can you have a character with agency but … read more »
