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...
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...
Writing Sports Dramas and other Japanese-Style Activity Dramas
If you’ve ever read more than a few manga, or watched a half-dozen anime, then this storyline will sound familiar- a reluctant youth becomes part of a...
How to Write a Good Story- Human Needs
All stories are ultimately about humans needs- specifically, a human (or human-like being) trying to meet those basic fundamental needs in some way. No matter what the...
How to Write a Good Story – Throughlines
The human brain is a pattern-seeking and pattern-making machine. In other words, we naturally look for patterns in the world around us, and will even make patterns...
The Fall of BLEACH and the fate of the Big Three Millennial Manga
YouTube user Super Eyepatch Wolf posted a fascinating video last year about how the manga/anime BLEACH went from being one of the big three to cancellation. It’s...
June 27, 2017
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How to Write a Good Story – The Essence of Story
On social media across the Internet, there is a single constant refrain- “How do I write a good story?” It comes from new writers eager to make...
June 23, 2017
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What Writers can learn from Animators and Comic Artists
Recently I did a post looking at the ideas of a writing guru called Eric Edson where among other things he made the statement that characters...
Eric Edson’s Screenwriting Tips
One of my favorite YouTube channels is one called Film Courage, which is a channel basically dedicated to interviewing screenwriters and screenwriting teachers. There are some fantastic...
The S.P.I.N.E. of Every Good Story
We know that stories exist because humans use them to learn from each other- they’re a...