Nutmeg, Mormons, good stories

[Daniel van Eijmeren]

ALL:

Many thanks to the people who replied to my nutmeg-question. I didn't 
expect to get so many reactions. 

The most surprising reaction was from Matthias, who told about the 
"freaking" effect of coffee spiked with nutmeg. If this is *really* 
true, I'm glad that nutmeg doesn't look like sugar, so you can't 
confuse them with each other! ;-) 

WES:

A comment of Don about nutmeg brought up a subject about Mormons. You 
told us that you are a Mormon. To be frankly, I don't know about 
Mormons but I remember hearing something about it years ago. (I don't 
know if it's true, but I was told that Mormons collect information and 
archives or something.) Can you tell me more?

MIKE:

> What do you think makes a good story? The adventure? The art? The
> dialogue? Humour? Realism? Simpleness? I know all these have some to
> say with the out-came, but is there something you value more than
> the others?

Thanks for this question. It makes me able to include at least one 
subject related to Disney-comics in this letter. ;-)

A good Duck story combines all the ingredients you mention IMHO, 
although adventure doesn't nescessarely count for 10-pagers (for this 
kind of stories the plot is very important).

It's important (at least to me) that a story also has a kind of realism 
in it. Otherwise you can make up almost anything to make a story. It's 
for this reason that I don't like Barks' "Interplanetary Postman". The 
first pages promise you a very good story, but then it kind of seems 
like Barks got stuck with the story and made up the Venus-thing so he 
was able to at least finish it. (I know this is not the case, but it 
*seems* like that.)

Of course humour is very important in Duck stories. I really like 
Barks' opinion that a good story at least needs one good gag per page.

About "simpleness"... what do you mean with that? Maybe you mean that a 
story needs a clear direction? In this meaning I certainly agree. Of 
course a story can have a sudden change in it, but it certainly must not 
confuse the reader.

Another important ingredient for a good story is originality.


Greetings,

--- Daniel