If I were male, I would be real hesitant about including a rape plot in any story I write. It’s an extremely complex and delicate issue, and it should be treated as such. Without understanding it completely, trying to tackle it is probably going to anger a lot of people, because men have trouble understanding how horrible rape truly is. Since I am a guy, you can consider that my official policy on the issue. The problem is that men don’t understand rape like women do. I remember...

Sparked by a comment over at RandomC (thanks Pancakes), this is a question I’ve thought about for a long time. When writing fiction, is it better to create the world, the narrative, or the characters first? Some would say the world has to come first, to properly flesh it out rather than leave it as an afterthought. Many would say the narrative, because everything must serve that. Others would say the characters are most important, because it’s them who we’ll remember forever. If...

I finally saw Guardians of the Galaxy this past weekend. When we were going into the movie, my friend, who had already seen it, said it had supplanted A New Hope in his mind. I see where he’s coming from, but I don’t agree. The original Star Wars did something Guardians of the Galaxy did not, and that was something different. Granted, if I were much younger and saw Guardians of the Galaxy before A New Hope, I’d probably say it was a better movie. It was really fun!...

The first episode of Tokyo ESP started off in medias res, and with a bang. It was all light and noise, and little (almost nothing) in the way of character development. I understand why they did this, but I don’t think it was a good idea. Speaking as a storyteller, there’s a desire to front load as much of the fun stuff as possible. You want to grab the reader’s attention. That’s understandable. Without an audience, you don’t get to keep telling stories....

Our reaction to a story often comes down to our expectations going in. This shouldn’t be a surprise–the unexpectedly great dark horse is always more beloved than the hyped series that turns out to only be okay. Absolute quality is an elusive myth, and it’s often in the disparity between expectations and quality where classics are made. But it’s not always about whether the story is good or not. Sometimes the problem comes when we misunderstand what type of story we’re dealing with. I’m reminded of this...