Activity for Mark Bakerâ€
| Type | On... | Excerpt | Status | Date |
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A: How to focus on external conflict rather than inner/interpersonal conflict? I would suggest that rather than thinking in terms of external conflict rather than internal conflict, you should think in terms of internal conflict caused by external conflict. In a romance, the story tends to focus caused by the internal conflict between the desire for a romantic relationship and... (more) |
— | almost 7 years ago |
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A: How do journalists prepare to cover unfamiliar fields? It really isn't possible to bone up on the vocabulary of a field in a few hours. The vocabulary of a field exists to express experiences, distinctions, and idea that are unique to that field. In other words, its vocabulary is tied to its history and community, and you can't bone up on those things in... (more) |
— | almost 7 years ago |
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A: Writing for a broad spectrum of readers. How do you engage the elite whilst appealing to the base? To appeal to a broad audience, write simply and directly about things of interest to a great many people. Nothing in this formula stands in the way of creating great literature. Greatness in literature depends on creating a rich and enduring experience that is deeply true and exceedingly vivid, not i... (more) |
— | almost 7 years ago |
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A: What happens with changing POV Irregularly? I just hate the common categorization scheme for point of view and voice. It is so misleading and causes so much unnecessary anxiety, not to mention awkward narration. To begin with, point of view and identity of the narrator are different things. You can have a character as narrator or the storytel... (more) |
— | almost 7 years ago |
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A: How should I plan blog content and themes for the best reader experience? This is perhaps a bit cavalier, but I'm going to say it anyway. A blog needs either a personality or an editorial calendar. People are interested in people, particularly in people whose interests are the same as theirs. If you find a blog in a field that interests you that is written by somebody wit... (more) |
— | almost 7 years ago |
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A: How do you write a character that HATES being born into a well-off family? We hate those things that keep us from the things we love. If a character hates being a member of a wealthy family, it is because that family, or its wealth, or its responsibilities, keep them from something they love, or harms the thing they love. To write hatred simply as hatred, therefore, is neve... (more) |
— | almost 7 years ago |
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A: How do I avoid making all my characters speak like me? The main thing that distinguishes the speech of different characters is what they say, not how they say it. If you understand the motives and the fears of every characters in your scene, and if you make sure that every word they speak proceeds from their fears and desires, then their speech will seem... (more) |
— | almost 7 years ago |
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A: Does a novel require a conflict? I don't know the eastern tradition well enough to comment on whether or not it has stories without conflict. But of course, this depends on what you mean by story. But then the question is not about stories, it is about novels and the novel is not an eastern art form. It was invented in the west with... (more) |
— | almost 7 years ago |
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A: "just telling the tale" - does this work? Stories are not about proving points. A novelist may have a point they want to push, but if the point overwhelms the story than the result can only appeal to the people who already agree with the author's point. The great novelists who had a point they wanted to make (Steinbeck, Dickens) told a story... (more) |
— | almost 7 years ago |
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A: Writing my Watson trope Here's the thing about Watson: he is a fully developed character. If you met him at a party, you would say to yourself, isn't that Doctor Watson? This is even more true in the Sherlock TV series (in no small part because Martin Freeman is a much better actor than Benedict Cumberbatch). I think the f... (more) |
— | almost 7 years ago |
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A: How do I turn a "screensaver" into an actual story? At the heart of every story (or most stories, anyway) is a character arc, and in the center of a character arc is a decision, a hard decision, a decision that will cost the character something valuable, that will make them face the question of what sort of person they are or want to be. Plot exists ... (more) |
— | almost 7 years ago |
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A: Finding fantasy genre a bit too complex You don't specify what length of story you are trying to write, but a novel, at full length, is a highly complex piece of work regardless of genre. If you were learning to be a programmer, you probably would not choose to write an enterprise content management system as your first project. You would ... (more) |
— | almost 7 years ago |
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A: Copying Certain Information From A Official Website Just to add a little to what Lauren has said, make sure you understand the difference between copyright and plagiarism. Copyright is the legal right to make a copy of the whole or parts of a work. Copyright automatically belongs to the person or organization that created the text, unless they sell i... (more) |
— | almost 7 years ago |
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A: Tracing the line between a (genuinely) dramatic and a melodramatic/over-dramatic story Well, from a commercial point of view, there is nothing wrong with melodrama. People make very good livings producing melodramas, and for the most part I think they are unapologetic about it. In part this is simply a matter of taste. Saying that food is sweet or spicy refers to something objective: ... (more) |
— | almost 7 years ago |
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A: Why do newswriters separate women when they report on disasters? Do they really still do that? The origins are not hard to guess at. It has been a fundamental social presumption for centuries that the essential role of men is to protect women and children. On sinking ships, the rule was women and children first, and woe betide a man who survived a shipwreck in whi... (more) |
— | almost 7 years ago |
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A: How many plot points ( whatever you call them ) do you need for a novel? A plot point is a turning point. It is something that turns the the story in a new direction. Taken together, a set of plot points describes a complete story arc. What you are describing are incidents. Incidents get you from one turning point to another (and every incident should contribute to gettin... (more) |
— | almost 7 years ago |
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A: How does (or should) an inner conflict span a series of novels? This is an interesting question. I'm not a big reader of series fiction, but based on the series I have read or watched on TV I can think of several patterns: - New book, new character. Each of the chronicles of Narnia has a new central character, often with the central character from a previous boo... (more) |
— | almost 7 years ago |
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A: Is it too cliche to have the villan of my story from a different planet? Other as enemy is one of the most basic tropes in all of fiction because it speaks to one of our most primal fears -- fear of the strange, the alien, the unpredictable. We are tribal beings. Individually we are weak. Our strength lies in our ability to form alliances and to cooperate with each other... (more) |
— | almost 7 years ago |
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A: Help! I've got Writer's Block I have an old Shoe cartoon somewhere in which Shoe has his feet on his desk, smoking a cigar, and staring off into space. But when Cosmo interrupts him, Shoe exclaims furiously, "Can't you see I'm writing!" There are two parts to writing, composition and transcription. Sometimes transcription flows ... (more) |
— | almost 7 years ago |
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A: How far do I need to go to show "fit" between two "dating" characters? Showing that one person is a better fit psychologically is very difficult, especially since we don't seem to know what constitutes fit or why one relationship works in real life and another does not. (I think the truth is that when people "fit" it is more because they grow together, grow around each ... (more) |
— | almost 7 years ago |
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A: Finding someone to publish, in the digital age Agents represent people, not manuscripts. The author/agent relationship is a long term business relationship on which the author's career and livelihood largely depends. If you don't like and trust your agent, you are not going to be happy. If an agent does not like or trust their client, they are no... (more) |
— | almost 7 years ago |
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A: Use of Regional Diction in Writing Dialect writing was quite popular among authors in the 19th and early 20th century. Both Twain and Kipling indulged in it extensively. In an age where few had the opportunity to travel and there were no movies to bring the sounds and sights of foreign lands to people, the appeal of the exotic in fict... (more) |
— | almost 7 years ago |
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A: How does a new writer keep from getting scooped? Your ideas are valueless. (Sorry!) My ideas are valueless too. There are approximately 197 billion story ideas floating around the litosphere just waiting for someone with a net to scoop them up. What is valuable is your ability to take a literary idea and turn it into an interesting story. People w... (more) |
— | almost 7 years ago |
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A: Should I add more detail to my story, or just leave it vague and add it all in later? There is a huge difference between plot and story. A plot is a sequence of events that happened for a reason. A plot requires only technical detail. A story is an experience. It is the observation of or an entry into the live of, a particular person in a particularly place and time, who is experienc... (more) |
— | almost 7 years ago |
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A: First-person narrative: Does it make more sense to focus on internal thoughts than external gestures? There is a third, and, to me, preferable alternative. The two alternatives you have given are both attempts at what we might call invisible narration. The reader is not listening to a narrator but somehow eavesdropping on a scene. > No, impossible. Could someone I barely knew know so much about me? ... (more) |
— | almost 7 years ago |
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A: Is blending genres well received by readers? You can very clearly blend elements of genres. Lots of people have done it. The real question is, will it produce a work with crossover appeal? That is, will it appeal to fans of both genres? A good example to look at here is Joss Whedon's Firefly. It is a very clear blending of elements from wester... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: Why would my "Hero" start his Quest to save the world? I'm afraid that you have gone about this a bit backwards. The basic structure of a story can be described in many ways, but one of the best and most well-founded is that of the hero's journey, as described by Christopher Vogler in his book The Writer's Journey. The story begins in the hero's normal w... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: Variations of the same story? There is an old piece of advice in writing circles that says "slay your darlings". When a story has been worked and reworked many times, you will have created a number of great scenes, great characters, great plot lines, great emotional arcs, great endings. (At least they will seem great to you, they... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: How does External Conflict set up the Climax? There are many ways of describing story structure, most of which are essentially pointing to the same thing. One of the simpler ones is that proposed by James Scott Bell which is a small elaboration on the basic three act structure. I think it may be a useful way to look at this question. In Bell's ... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: What are character flaws and what makes a good one? The word "character" is used in two different senses. There is "character" in the sense of "characteristics" -- the way that a person does things that is different from how others do things. If someone whistles while they work, that is a characteristic. The second meaning is moral character. A moral... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: Physical description of characters A character does not have to be described at all to feel real. In many stories we are told little of their appearance beyond whether they are male or female, and occasionally not even that. Where physical appearance is described it can really go no further than to place the character in a general cl... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: How to turn the world "alive"? Worlds and their histories are abstractions. People don't live in worlds and they don't live in history. They live in a particular neighborhood at a particular time. Their horizons are small. Only their local bubble is known by direct experience. The wider world is known largely through stories, whic... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: Can there be multiple translated versions in the same language of a public domain book? Can you think of other cases where there are multiple translation of the same book into the same language? If you search Amazon for classics in one language, do you find multiple translations into other languages? (Try the Divine Comedy or Beowulf or the Iliad -- or the Bible.) What do you find? (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: How to make the reader feel like the protagonist is not a single character, but the group/squad? Short answer: you can't. Stories are about emotions and they are about choices. Groups don't have emotions and they don't make choices. Only individuals do. Stories about groups of friends are, of course, very common. But in such stories, each person in the group has their individual story arc. Thos... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: How do I ensure what I am writing captures what I'm feeling as I write it? The job of the writer is not to convey emotion (or only in a secondary sense that I will come back to in a minute). The writer's job is to create emotion. A story is fundamentally an experience. You don't push emotions onto the reader during the experience, rather you design the experience to create... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: What is the Purpose of an Inner Conflict? Inner conflict is the whole enchilada. All good stories lead up to a moment of crisis in which the protagonist must make a choice. That choice must be personally difficult. It must come at personal cost. Deciding to buy the Chevy rather than the Ford is a choice, but not one that comes at a personal ... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: What I kind of project can I do for a writer's group to show that I have mastered character development? > I have begun writing a story about two city-states in the year 2307 in an arms race to create a time machine. The essence of your difficulty is right there in your opening sentence. Stories are not about city states. Stories are always always always about a man/woman/boy/girl/small furry animal wh... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: What is the difference between Literature and entertainment literature Books are classified for various reasons. The word literature is used in more than one classifications scheme. For the purpose of selling books, "literary fiction" is a genre like any other. Genre is sometimes thought of in terms of subject matter, but it would really make more sense to think of it ... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: Grammar for describing novel plots? Story structure is essentially a sequence of incidents. It is important and contrary to what is said in some of the comments, literature has it just as much as light entertainment. But while all conventional stories have story structure, those incidents must happen to someone in some place and some ... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: How do I break away from imitating published works? There is a fundamental difference between the desire to imitate and the desire to create. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the desire to imitate. Indeed, it is the foundation of our social order. Imitation is how we learn to get along with each other. It is why originals tend to be outcasts. We... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: Act 3 totally broken...keep writing? Stop writing and put it in a drawer. Go write something else for a while. There is no point in continuing when you know, as you clearly do, that this story is off the rails. It is not going to yield either usable prose or usable insight. At the same time it is clear that you have not yet had the po... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: Is stating the feeling in the action that describes it a sign of bad writing? In real life, we experience emotions ourselves and we observe them in others. Thus some emotions are observed but not felt and that is fine. As far as felt emotions are concerned, we feel emotions in response to events. We do not feel an emotion because we are told to feel it. Felt emotion, therefor... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: How to keep it interesting before the inciting incident? Inciting incident is a term for one of the bones of a story, the thing that give it shape. But while a story needs shape, shape alone is not enough. The basic story shapes are well enough known and not particularly complicated. Anyone who does a little elementary research should be able to write a st... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: Is it possible for an aggressive character to become sensitive? You are writing a story, not a psychology textbook. Stories appeal to our hopes and to our sense that the world is (or our wish that it should be) a fundamentally orderly place, by which I mean a place with a fundamental moral order. Virtue is rewarded. Vice is punished. Love conquers all. Whether y... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: Is it bad idea to directly state the message/moral of a story? Fundamentally, a story is a an experience. Strictly speaking, an experience does not have a meaning. Different people may reach different conclusions based on the experience they have had, just as they may with real life experiences. The novelist should be content to create an experience that is true... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: Nintendo Based Copyright IANAL, but this is one of those questions where you can start out by asking, are other people doing this. If not, there is a good chance that the answer is that you can't do it either. This is essentially what is called a tie-in. Your book would be tied into the world of the games. People who play t... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: How to write hidden details There is no background in prose. The reader receives every word and they receive them one at a time. Thus there is no place to hide anything. Where you can be more subtle is in the connections between things. If you mention a rose, it is a foreground rose for the moment the reader is reading a word,... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: Is it a bad idea to write and edit chapter by chapter? A story is an experience, but it is an experience in which all the threads of that experience point at something, like the pattern the iron filings assume around the head of a magnet. If you have a very strong sense of how the magnetic fields of your story align, then I think you are in a position t... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: How to casually reveal the relationship of two recently introduced characters? The answer to this is crushing simple. You tell us that they are brother and sister. > "Pass the butter," Pamela said. > > "Get it yourself," her brother replied. Don't try to slip information into dialog that naturally and properly belongs in narration. It will always sound forced and unnatural a... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: How can I make the final realisation less depressing? A good story creates an experience. The reader draws their own conclusions and has their own emotional reactions to the experience it provided. Some will therefore find your ending more of a downer than others. What we want from stories is not necessarily uplift. It can be understanding. It can be a... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |