Activity for Mark Bakerâ€
| Type | On... | Excerpt | Status | Date |
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A: Dialogue and action question You need to think about where the reader's attention is supposed to be. You are painting a picture with words, asking the reader to build a picture in their head based solely on the words on the page. If your text hops about all over the place that gets to be much more difficult to do. If you want t... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Can I switch from past tense to present tense in an epilogue? Switching to present tense in the epilogue would suggest that the story is in a frame. That is, the story is a narration in the present of events that took place in the past. The narrator is not relating in real time, but is looking back over the entire story and relating it in hindsight. This is a ... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: In multiple narratives, does time have to be in sync? Stories are not organized according to time sequence, they are organized according to narrative arc. A narrative arc is built on rising tension, not the passage of time. Narrative arc can often be asynchronous. Any story with a flashback in it has an asynchronous narrative arc. A multi narrative sto... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Which Bullet Points to Use First Under Different List Nesting Styles Logically, no. The headings delineate the hierarchy of the document. Bullets delineate the structure of lists, not matter where they appear in the document hierarchy. If your style is to indent sections based on the document hierarchy, this is going to result in lists occurring at different indentati... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Bibliography/Citation when writing a book I think your real question here is not about the format of a bibliography but about the requirements for citation in various kinds of work. Some fields have very specific requirements both for what you are supposed to cite and for how you are supposed to cite it. These are laid out in style guides a... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Writing guides for writing like the Oxbridge tradition? By purest serendipity I came across a reference to a book on writing in the classic style just yesterday. http://classicprose.com/. I have not read it myself, but it was recommended by an acquaintance whose judgement I respect. It might be what you are looking for. (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: When to evaluate whether your book will sell? You can't. Major publishers publish thousands of books a year that don't sell. Movie studios release hundreds of movies that no one watches. TV Networks create new shows every season that get cancelled after a few episodes because no one watches. We don't know how to evaluate if a book will sell or n... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Program for Tracking Scene Information I assume that you have googled for outliners and have rejected all of the many version available out there. So here are a couple of thoughts on alternatives. 1. Trello, or something similar. Trello is actually a process management tool, but it basically consists of boards to which you can add lists,... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Reported speech in a dialogue Grammatical formalisms (as opposed to fundamental grammar) do not apply in dialog. Dialog is a report of what someone actually said. In fiction, what characters actually say and how they say it is part of their characterization. What matters is, does this speech reflect who the character is. If you a... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: How can I prevent the ends of my chapters from feeling forced? It is hard to be sure from such small samples, but I would guess that the problem is not really abruptness. All chapter endings are in some sense abrupt. The action simply stops. The problem is, where should it stop. Every chapter should have a dramatic arc. It should stop at the end of that arc. A ... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Best Resources for Improving your craft? Once you get past the ra ra enthusiasm of the forums, you need genuine criticism, both of your own work and of literature and the writing process in general. That is hard to find online, in part because of the sheer volume of ra ra out there, and also because there is less of an outlet for mature cri... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Investing in the 'wrong' character, is it a problem with the story? Sci Fi and Fantasy are perhaps the genres least concerned with character. Worldbuilding (so called) is often the central obsession of authors in those genres. (Historical can just the same sometimes, with many authors, and readers, obsessed about getting the buttons right.) Characters in these genre... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Stripping the Main Character's Plot Armour? The problem with plot armor is not false safety, but false peril. The central peril of a story is always moral, not physical. It is about what a character wants and what they are willing to do to get it. Physical danger may test the character's resolve or complicate their plans, but the real heart o... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Where can I find a market for "offbeat" short stories about God's relationship with us? Novels are about people. This is true for Christian novelists such as Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, Walker Percy, or Flannery O'Connor, just as much as it is true for novelists of no faith. When a novel treats the relationship between God and a character, they do it from the point of view of the chara... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Splicing/Mixing Scenes A movie can establish a scene very quickly based on visuals. Once a scene has been established visually, you can cut back and forth between scenes very quickly because the viewer instantly recognizes the key visual elements. A novel builds up a scene one word at a time. When you change scenes you ha... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: There's an actor with my lead character's name - how big a problem is this going to be? There are names and there are brands. Lots of people have the same name and it is not reasonable to expect that no fictional character to have a name that no one else does. Brands, on the other hand, enjoy a degree of uniqueness protection that ordinary names do not. Some actor's names are not only ... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Should I follow my instinct or public demand when writing a story? Let's come at this from a different angle. There is a difference between the ending the reader wants and the ending that they find satisfying. An happy ending can be emotionally empty. A sad ending can be emotionally fulfilling. (There is a reason, a profound reason, why we listen to sad songs. They ... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: What Can I Do to Familiarize Myself with my Characters? I would suggest starting with three very basic questions: 1. What does he want. 2. Why does he want it? 3. Why can't he get it? If you can't give clear and consistent answers to those questions, you don't have a character yet. In a plot-driven story, it is perhaps easy to lose the handle on these... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Making People Unsure which Characters will Survive It does not matter if the reader expects them to die or not, it matters if they care whether they die or not. Suspense is not mathematical in nature, it is moral. It is not about how likely an event is, but how much you care about it. Every character should have an arc. That is, they should want som... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: How can I Avoid Being Frightened by the Horror Story I am Writing? Human life is ultimately terrifying. We are all going to die, and the thought of our own extinction horrifies us. But it is not just the fact of death, but also the fact that death (if it is not premature) is accompanied by a systematic loss of our abilities and of our friends. Man is uniquely cursed... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: How do you avoid unnatural sounding language? While we may be able to break down a successful long sentence analytically, I'm not sure that this is going to help you write them fluently. Language is about rhythm and balance and how the reader's focus is directed. I think that has to come from training your ear. The best way to train your ear is... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Diagram wider than text width It depends on the book design. Generally speaking, the width of a text column is kept within certain bounds in order to make the text scannable. A column of text will become much more difficult to read if the text gets wider than the reader can comfortably scan. But many books choose a wider page wid... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: How do I make sure my audience is aware of subplots? You need to be very conscious of the difference between history and story. If you have multiple sub plots that are not obvious, there is a good chance that they are more history than story. History is a bunch of stuff that happens. History consists of many things happening at the same time in indepe... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Runbook template example? In the end, every technical document should contain whatever information the users need to get their jobs done. This takes precedence over any template or convention. To the extent that there are standard templates for a technical document it is because it is often difficult to tell what information... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Editing an Anthology or Compilation I am reasonably sure that you need to begin by selling the concept to a publisher, and once you do sell it, I am reasonably sure that the publisher is going to answer all of these question for you. But I also reasonably sure that no traditional publisher is going to even look at you as an anthology ... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Should I follow my instinct or public demand when writing a story? I think this is a false dichotomy. To be sure, there are many reasons to write. You may be writing only for your own amusement or catharsis, in which case merely getting your thoughts down on paper will suffice and you will have no need to consider anybody else. And to be sure, you can write purely... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Chapters - Writing Order You may or may not be able to pull this off, but this is the danger you face: You may end up writing scenes that you fall in love with as scenes but which do not fit the arc of your story. Robert McKee describes this as one of the great pitfalls of story, and of revision. The first draft of a script... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Will what worked 'back then' work today? (Novels) The vast majority of the fiction produced in any age is of the type that would generally be called pulp or potboiler. It is simple non-challenging stuff meant to occupy a vacant hour for an reader who is a mood for something light and frothy. Generally pulp does not have much of a shelf life, though... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Section of a book that explains things You are telling a story, not writing a manual. Everything goes in the story. The order in which it occurs in the story is the order in which it matters to the story. There are two ways to introduce background material into a story. You can tell the reader yourself as narrator, or you can have one ch... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: How to replace "and/or" in sentences with multiple terms? From a purely stylistic point of view: "any combination of: apples, oranges, pears" But you say this is for a legal document and lawyers may construe ambiguity where ordinary reasonable people would not, so if your question is a "will it hold up in court" kind of question, this is the wrong place to... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Does it make sense to set a sword & sorcery fantasy in a post-apocalyptic world on Earth? You can set a story anywhere. The challenge is not to make it consistent with our world but to make it self-consistent within itself. And I think this is a universal literary problem (and therefore I don't think this question belongs on worldbuilding). All stories take place in what Tolkien called a ... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: A written action scene, interrupted? I think this very much depends on the narrative tone and style that have been used up to this point. If this is the first time you have done such a digression in what has otherwise been a straightforward narrative, the result is likely to do exactly what you reader says: take them out of the story. T... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: How do I keep a major emotional upheaval from seeming artificial and abrupt? Falling in love has the quality that you are often not fully conscious of it while it is happening. The moment where you articulate to yourself that you are in love with someone can often come as a surprise to you. (It is a common enough trope in movies and books that the best friend has to explain t... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: What jobs or professions involve writing? There are no jobs that pay well for which the only requirement is writing. This is a simple matter of supply and demand. There are lots of people who can write well enough for commercial purpose. The price for that skill alone is rock bottom. And indeed, the ability to write is not of much use by it... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Translating from mind to paper Other answers assume that the problem you are having is inertia, and perhaps they are right. Perhaps you just need to start writing and keep writing. But perhaps inertia is not the problem. Perhaps that problem is that what seems like a story in your head is not a story when you get it down on paper... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Example of a fictional story without any characters (the story being 1000+ words) This question really comes down to the definition of story (and, to a certain extent, of fiction). If we take story in the broad sense of a sequential narrative and fiction in the broad sense of any statement that is not true, then clearly there can be stories without characters. If we take story an... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: How can one not let their voice show through in all the characters? There are two places a novelist may find a character: inside of themselves and out in the world. The desire to write may come from many places: sometimes from a desire to "express oneself", sometimes from a desire to share what you have seen and heard in the world around you. I doubt there is any way... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Tips for continuing plot when the spearhead character is not the protagonist? Every protagonist wants something and is struggling to get it. Every plot point in a story consists of the protagonist's attempt to get the thing they desire and the things that frustrate that desire. This does not require the protagonist to be in charge of events. Nor does it require that they achi... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Folktale within a folktale The classic example would be The Arabian Nighs (AKA One Thousand and One Nights) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One\Thousand\and\One\Nights) in which Scheherazade tells her husband an new story each night to keep him from cutting her head off. (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: How to write a utopia? Well, a true utopia would have no room for story. Story runs on desire and frustration and the moral challenges that result from the frustration of desire. A true utopia would leave no desire frustrated and therefore no moral challenge to be met. But given our limitations, and the limited resources ... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Original writing is lost when using other people's ideas? When we give credit to a designer for an article of clothing, we do not caveat our praise by pointing out that they did not weave the fabric or grow the cotton or design the sewing machine or smelt the metal used to build the sewing machine, or invent the concept of clothing. All work is enculturate... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Can I use "fuck" as a non-vulgar verb in a fantasy/steampunk world? The sexual act can be tender or it can be violent. Its violent aspects can be consensual or non consensual. There are many different words for it, reflecting each of these connotations. F\\\ is one of the more violent of these words. But f\\\ also has other connotations: to cheat, for instance, or to... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Can Originality Sell a Book? Harry Potter was not original. Anyone who grew up reading English Children's books would recognize that it is a pastiche of virtually the whole canon of 20th century English Kid Lit, in which trains and boarding schools and magic all play a role. Everything I read growing up is in there. If Rowling ... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: A villain that doesn't even know the hero's existence? Certainly a story can have this structure. But your analysis of it seems to assume that the antagonist is a role equal to that of the protagonist in story structure, and that is not the case. Story structure is about the desire of the protagonist and the things that frustrate that desire. Generally t... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: freelance writing: how much of a test for a job would be considered actual work done for free? Freelance writing, as a career, is enormously oversubscribed. At the bottom of the market there are far too many writers chasing far too little work, and therefore prices are rock bottom and market conditions greatly favor the client. At the same time, most freelance writers absolutely and irredeema... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Why are audio books more expensive than a movie ticket? Prices are set based on supply and demand. Cost of production has nothing to do with it, except to determine whether a product is worth producing. (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: To visually and logically plan out stories One small point in addition to What's excellent summary: It is important to make a distinction between story and plot. In Aspects of the Novel E.M. Forster says that story is what happens, and plot is why it happens. Today, I suspect, we would reverse the terms when making this distinction. Plot is w... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: How early in the narrative should I start my book? A story should start with the revelation of the desire that will drive the main character. In the case of an exile story, the desire is usually either revenge or to return home (which may mean to find a new home). To establish revenge as the desire, you start by establishing the character's love for ... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: How much falling action can follow the climax? The climax of the action of a story is not necessarily (or even usually) the climax of the moral arc of the story. The climax of the action is the crucible in which the hero is tested and purified. What remains after the crucible and purification is very often the reconciliation: the mending of relat... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: How can I determine the public opinion of an author? There is no universal public opinion of any author. People read of pleasure and for edification. There are various pleasure you can get from reading, and various forms of edification. Some hold that some pleasures are higher than others -- aesthetic pleasure higher than vicarious adventure, for examp... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |