Activity for Mark Bakerâ€
| Type | On... | Excerpt | Status | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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A: Does a story necessarily need a theme? Theme is not necessarily a message. It is more the thing that you are exploring. If the theme is love, for instance, you don't have to take a position on love, you don't have to have a covert message, like "love hurts" or "love sucks". The theme is love simply because the story is about love, is an e... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: Does the concept come before other "literary devices" in philosophical science fiction? If you lead with a compelling concept, you should write an essay. A story is not, principally, about exploring an idea. Principally it is about creating an experience. Creating an experience can be a fantastic way to explore the implications of an idea. But it can only do so effectively if it is firs... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: Is a ghost writer an honorable professional, or a hack? Most works of art bear the artist's name. Most works of craft do not. The person who paints your portrait signs their work. The person who paints your house, or your sign, does not. Using a ghostwriter to produce a work of craft writing is no different from hiring someone to paint your house. It is ... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: Would it be possible to create a character without substantial motivation? What you describe is a person who denies the value of anything, and yet creates things. This is a contradiction. If nothing has value or meaning, there is no point in creating anything, and, for that matter, no point in trying to convince anybody of anything, including nihilism. And yet this person ... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: How to portray a passively arrogant character? A character is a bundle of desires. They are defined first by their primary desire: the thing that is driving their action in the story. Second, they are defined by their secondary desires, the things that shape or limit how they pursue their primary desire. Tom wants to win an athletic scholarship ... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: How much does a manuscript change through publication? I think the answer to this is, almost anything. More characters, fewer characters, different setting, different ending, longer, shorter, rougher, gentler. People get asked for all of these things and much more. Publishers are trying to fit a book to a certain market, and they will want you to produce... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: What are the keywords of fantasy that might deliver the feeling of fantasy Words individually do not give the feeling of any genre. It is how you put them together to create a picture in the reader's mind. Just as a painter may use the same pallet of colors to paint a unicorn or a cart horse, so an author can use the same pallet of words to paint a fairy palace in the air o... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: Issue with flow of dialogue Dialogue consists of two characters trying to get something from each other. Each has a desire that they want the other to fulfill. Each has some reluctance in fulfilling that desire, or else has difficulty figuring out what that desire is because the other is not, for one reason or another, stating ... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: How do I incorporate Vocabulary in my writing that I already know? Don't. I know the use of fancy vocabulary may seem like a sign of sophisticated writing, but it's not. Every fancy word you use makes you prose less accessible to readers. The only reason to bring in a fancy word is if you cannot express the idea you need to get across using simple words. The hallmar... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: Magic and logic There are two basic uses of magic in literature. One is as a catalyst for a cautionary tale on the dangers of power. Examples of this include The Lord of The Rings and A Wizard of Earthsea. The former is a treatise on the nature of temptation, and the latter on the nature of pride. The second use is... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: What aspects of written dialogue are important when giving characters a unique voice? Few readers will notice difference of style between different characters. Perhaps for one or two of them, but not for a dozen. What distinguished people much more than their style is what they want and the kinds of things they are willing to say. One may be kind to a fault while another is cruel. The... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: What's better in fiction: to make personal statements or universal statements? The point of fiction is not to make statements. If you want to make statements, write an essay. The point of fiction is to give the reader an experience. The reader may, of course, reach a conclusion as a result of a fictional experience, just as they may reach a conclusion as the result of a real e... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: Credibility of using English in non-English-speaking worlds The notion of "willing suspension of disbelief" is one of the most misleading phrases in the literature of writing (right up there with "show don't tell"). It is very much worth reading Tolkien's On Fairy Stories, in which he offers an extensive critique of the concept. Tolkien's argument is essenti... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: How to writer longer stories for a SciFi novel? A story must always be a story, which is to say that it must have a story arc. The arc of a story is fundamentally built around desire and the things people will or will not do to achieve their desire. Thus the crux of a story is always a choice the protagonist must make about the price they are will... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: Is this an example of an unreliable narrator? I'm not sure if what you are describing is unreliable narrator at all. An unreliable narrator is not one who is mistaken about facts. An unreliable narrator is one who is deliberately deceiving the reader. You say the twist is that B is really right about who did it. But how do we know that this is ... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: How much character development is necessary beyond what the story line provides? In story, character is desire. Character is the things you want and the things you are willing to do, or not willing to do, to get the thing you want. Some stories hang a lot of rich detail on these bones, and some pretty much rely on archetypes to do it all for them, but in essence it is always abou... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: How to head off a legal reading of a term or phrase? There really is no way to indicate that you are using a term in a non-technical sense if you use it in a context in which the technical sense would normally be inferred. The best approach to avoiding ambiguity in these cases is to approach the entire descriptions differently. Don't just substitute a ... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: What are the Criteria that Distinguish a Thriller from Horror? A genre is a promise from the publisher to the reader about the kind of experience that the book will give them. The definitions of genres therefore are not technical, they are emotional. A couple fighting monsters in Arizona in 2073. Is it romance, horror, or sci fi? It all depends on the kind of ex... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: Legality over using a REAL museum and REAL artifacts in a fictional - HEIST novel Thought experiment: If Dan Brown had required the permission of the Vatican to publish The Da Vinci Code, do you imagine it would ever have been granted? Do you think the Pentagon or the White House would ever give permission for most of the novels set there? Ergo, you don't need it. If you want yo... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: Should a reader have enough information to deduce the twist? By definition, it is not a twist if the reader sees it coming. In fact, there is nothing worse than a plot twist that you see coming. Nothing makes a story seem more contrived than when you see the twist coming and it does. Now, if the reader sees a twist coming and then the story actually twists th... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: How to know the quality of query letter critiques? A query letter is a sales tool. The feedback you want is not from writers but from people in the business of selling books. I don't know that there is a reliable way to know if you are getting that on line. I think you would do much better to seek advice in person. Ideally, try to find someone in you... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: Are idioms in query letters a bad idea? Writers often indulge a charming fantasy that publisher and agents are looking for originality. They are not. They are looking for works that fit into a well established sales channel and that habitual readers of a genre can quickly identify as the kind of book they like to read. Pretty much the wors... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: How to write a manipulative protagonist that the audience can connect with The core of this problem may be the misconception that the reader needs to identify with a character. That is oft repeated, but simply not true. A story creates an experience. One way to enter into that experience is to identify yourself with one of the characters in that experience. But it is not th... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: How do I end a comedy sketch? It is well said that there are no rules in funny. A traditional story needs a specific story shape in order to work because the payoff is in the climax and denouement. But comedy, though it can conform to this structure, does not need to. The payoff is funny. It does not need to end logically. It jus... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: How do I know when to include subplots? You could think of a subplot like a side dish to a meal. It provides contrasting or complementary flavours that enhance the overall dining experience. How many side dishes are too many? When they overwhelm or confuse the senses? How many are too few? When the main dish grows dull and monotonous with... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: Can a book be written without an antagonist? There are a certain class of works in which the theme is discovery or enlightenment and the antagonistic force is simply ignorance. The effort to overcome ignorance may be a struggle, and enlightenment a victory, without any external attempt by anyone to hinder or obscure discovery. In others, the a... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: Spoilers; What Makes A Feel Good Tragedy? Stories are an attempt to endow life with meaning. Where ordinary life seems possessed of a terrible randomness, we look to stories to assure us that there is actually meaning and purpose in life. This may or may not be true, but the thought that it is true is of enormous comfort to us, even in the f... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: What can publishers do for me in a niche market? Publisher do two things for you, other than those you have listed, and they are things that you absolutely cannot do for yourself. 1. They provide provenance and branding. Once published by an established publisher, your book enjoys the provenance that comes with that publisher's name. More people w... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: Where to break paragraphs in dialogue? You should follow normal paragraph rules, which are, essentially, that a paragraph contains a complete thought. Of course, this is a fuzzy definition. What makes a thought complete? A sentence, a chapter, or an entire book are all in different senses the expressions of a complete thought. Paragraph i... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: I am teaching myself how to write a novel -- where can I find support and resources? This is the reality of the thing: there are hundreds of thousands of people who would like to have written a novel. Many of them are willing to spend a considerable amount of money to advance their ambitions. This creates a market for writing courses and books on how to write. Where such a market exi... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: Is a single main character really important in a novel involving a team effort? You can certainly have an ensemble cast, and you can certainly send a team on a shared quest. Hundreds of novels and movies do exactly that. But while a team can have a shared plot, a plot is not the same thing as a story arc. A story arc is the difference between a story and a piece of imagined his... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: The protagonist can't defeat the antagonist without the antagonist being stupid Actually, most stories that have a specific antagonist depend on the antagonist being stronger than the protagonist, so logically the antagonist should win most of the time -- unless they do something stupid. We love to root for underdogs. After all, most of us are underdogs. If the hero was clearly... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: Writing the nitty-gritties of a particular scene The danger you can run into with that kind of detailed planning (there are dangers in all approaches to a large piece of work) is that it can lead you to focus on plot at the expense of conflict. Stories are essentially about recreating the experience of conflict and its resolution: what is it like ... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: I feel stuck in a [description/action] sentence structure There is nothing terribly wrong with the sentence structure per se, but it has an effect that may or may not be desirable, and probably is not desirable quite as often as you are doing it: it changes the emphasis on the action being described. Each of these sentences describes two actions, one leadi... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: How can I get my readers in the gut? As you rightly perceive, the moments that have a potential for gut emotional appeal are well known, but merely creating the moment does not always produce the emotion -- precisely because we all know what the moments are: loss, sacrifice, enlightenment, affirmation, conversion, reunion, acceptance, m... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: What is the best way to avoid plagiarism when importing information from a source? The definition of plagiarism varies by context. Technically, you avoid the charge of plagiarism by citing sources, but that ignores the issue of what you are using the quoted material to do. A quotation should be used to support your argument, not to express your argument. In other words, if you are... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: Formatting multiple languages while avoiding italics for native speakers in their POV It strikes me that this difficulty in deciding how to format all of these languages is just a canary in the coal mine keeling over to let you know that this is all going to be too confusing for the reader. This is one of those times when it is better to tell than to show. If the mother switches back... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: Technical Writing Other Than Software This is one of the great debates in technical communication. Do you need to be a technical expert or is it enough to be an effective communicator? Different tech writers, and different employers, come down on different side of this debate. I think there are two main factors to consider here. First,... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: How similar can I make fictional and real cultures? Well, if you garner enough attention to get any critics interested in savaging you, you will already be doing well. But critics qua critics are unlikely to savage you for it unless you do it clumsily. The accusation of cultural appropriation is a relatively new weapon in the culture wars. Indeed, ad... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: How do I write an uneducated character with a genius level intellect in a medieval society? In that period, education was not the province of the nobility but of the church. A intelligent and idealistic young man or woman would have a very obvious outlet for their intelligence and idealism, and an opportunity for an education, by joining a monastery. Monasteries were not just the seats of r... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: Can a person get bogged down by science fiction research? I would suggest that the key question you should be asking yourself is whether you actually have a story to tell. The heart of any story is a decision. The protagonist (and possibly other characters as well) have to make a decision which is hard for them. Either decision they make will cost them some... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: How to write montages in prose? (fantasy novel) You can't do a montage in prose, anymore than you can paint a symphony or score a sunset. It is simply a technique of a different media. Each media has its own storytelling devices and you should not try to mimic the devices of one media while working in another. It is worth asking, in this regard, ... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: Is it hard for a foreigner to publish in English? It will make very little difference. The publishing industry is desperate for good stories. They don't much care where they come from. Anything interesting or exotic about the author's background can be exploited for marketing purposes, but really it is all about good stories. I wish people would st... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: Should you avoid offensive hyperbole? This questions is unanswerable except in regard to a specific market. We live in an age of taking offence, and also in an age of giving offence. Certain things will close doors to certain segments of the market, certain things may open doors to other segments of the market. Deliberately giving offen... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: How do I gather enough material to write a close reading essay? The basic material for a close reading is the text itself. Literally, you read it closely, line by line. Is it clear what is being said? Are there allusions to things outside the text that may affect its interpretations? If so, go look them up and show how the allusion affects the reading of the text... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: I am an unestablished author with a decent book. Should I publish online, or try to find a 'real' publisher? Personally, I would not regard self publishing as an alternative to traditional publishing but as a market for work that does not fit in the traditional publishing sphere. Publishing is book marketing. Marketing is about knowing a particular part of the market and figuring out how to sell to it. Eac... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: Where does the "black moment" fall in a novel? You can create an average of any data set. If you average out enough story data than you can describe an average story arc and assign names to all of the moments in that arc. This exercise is not without value. It gives some insight into the nature of the beast. But few if any stories will actually c... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: Is it a bad habit to reveal most of the information still at the beginning of the story? Good stories are not created by withholding information from the reader. They are created by constructing a satisfactory story arc, by creating the desire to know what happens next. The desire to know what happens next is not created by withholding information. It is created by engagement with the st... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: Should each book in the series be a similar length? Artistically, each book should be as long as it needs to be. Commercially, there are certain limits determined by salability and risk. A thin book may not be perceived by the reader as value for money and so may not sell. A fat book costs more to produce and so represents a bigger risk for the publi... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: Would it be wise to make the turning point of a story coincidental? There is nothing wrong with serendipity in a story. Our lives are like that anyway, governed largely by chance. What matters in a story is the moral arc of the characters. What chance occurrences should not do is resolve the moral arc of a story. Practical problems are usually caused by chance and ar... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |