A History of Light Novels: The 1970s
The following is an unofficial English translation of a Japanese article about the history of light novels by a group called the Light Novel Research Institute. It...
Writing Manga: The Three Cycle Plot
Japanese comics, or manga, are written as episodic serials- which means they’re broken down into a series of semi-self contained chapters where each episode represents a piece...
January 12, 2019
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The S.P.I.N.E. of Good Comics
Previously, I’ve written about the characteristics that make up a good story, at least from the point of view of the audience, and how the writer has...
My Favorite Manga of 2017
This has been an interesting year for me, not the least of because I spent half of it working on my first major nonfiction book, Write! Shonen...
The Investigation Plot
Summary: The Investigation Plot is a basically a typical detective/mystery procedural story but with a Japanese twist to heighten the drama. A standard of Japanese TV and...
The Duel Plot
Summary: The Duel Plot is one of the most common types of Battle Manga plots, as the majority of stories in a Battle Manga are based around...
Ki-Sho-Ten-Ketsu- a Japanese way to structure your stories.
A while back, I blogged about a Japanese story structure called Ki-Sho-Ten-Ketsu (Kee-Show-Ten-Ketsoo), which is normally presented as an alternative story structure which doesn’t revolve around conflict....
Review- Manga in Theory and Practice: The Craft of Creating Manga
As a writer, writing teacher, and a lover of Japanese comics, I was excited when I stumbled upon Hirohiko Araki’s Manga in Theory and Practice: The Craft...
DNA Podcast 47 – The History of Manga Part 1
Page from Tagosaku and Mokube’s Big Toyko Adventure In this episode, Rob and Don journey back into the past of Japanese comic books to explore it from...
The Shonen Battle Manga Formula
(This article is the first rough part of what would later become my book Write! Shonen Manga. I’m leaving it up so that people can see how...