Activity for Mark Baker
| Type | On... | Excerpt | Status | Date |
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A: How to plausibly write a character with a hidden skill A story is an experience. The reader has to trust that experience. If they stop trusting the experience, they essentially drop out of the world created by the experience, and once that happens, their enjoyment of the story is over. Exactly what creates a trustworthy experience is not entirely straig... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: How do I introduce a large cast in an interesting way First, understand what a character is in fiction. A character is not simply a person. A character is an instrument for making a story work. You can't simply sit down, dream up a bunch of people, and then expect to insert them into a story and have them work. Characters have to be designed to drive th... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: How to write a sincerely religious protagonist without preaching or affirming or judging their worldview? Avoid the imputation of naiveté. In the real world, of course, all most all people hold their beliefs reflexively and naively. Most atheists have not thought through or are even aware of the epistemological and ontological difficulties of their position. The same is true of most Catholics, Jew, Hind... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: How to "Start as close to the end as possible", and why to do so? I would take this as an expression of what I think of as knowing the difference between history and story. Every story is embedded in a history. A history is a sequence of event connected by causality. A plot, in itself, is a history. A story takes place within a history, but the story is not the hi... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: What makes a character irredeemable? No character is irredeemable. If professional wrestling teaches us nothing else it teaches us that any character can make a face turn just as any character can make a heel turn. But authors don't really write that way. If an author intends to redeem a character, they lay the groundwork for that rede... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Writing about real people - not giving offence You don't. Turning a life into drama will almost certainly cause pain to those who remember that life. Life is more subtle than drama. Drama needs a definite shape that life lacks. That is why we value drama: it gives a shape to human experience that our pattern-seeking brain craves but cannot find i... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Double lies as sources of conflict in a single arc There are two theories of character. One, to which most people give lip service (at least) today, is the one that Galastel has expressed: characters, like people, are complex multidimensional constructs. This view of character seems to come from the modernist school of literary realism. It can, accor... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Documenting framework features and descriptions I would definitely not recommend using Word for this. It is just not what it was designed to do. There are multiple documentation systems that have been developed specifically for the purpose of writing developer documentation. They provide frameworks and tools, and, what may be more important to yo... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: How can I get into the mindset to write? Writing is a stupid waste of time. It will make you lonely, but it won't make you rich. I can think of only two legitimate reasons to write: 1. A profound and unshakable regret for not having written. 2. A publishing contract with a deadline attached. It follows that the only reasons to write ar... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Is it a good idea to give your manuscript for publishing to a considerably new publisher (start-up)? It depends what your goal is. If you want to build a readership and make money from your writing, then paying anyone to publish you is not a good idea. If a so-called publisher makes money by charging writers a fee, then their business model is based on collecting as many fees from as many writers as... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: How to identify whether a publisher is genuine or not? First, real publishers don't advertise. It is really as simple as that. No legitimate publisher advertises for submissions because any real publisher is bombarded with manuscripts on a constant basis. Their concern is not to find more. Their concern is to make the barrage stop. If real publishers are... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Two footnote numbering sequences I'm not sure that it is a given that the numbering needs to be different from the original footnote numbers. Footnotes numbers are not necessarily a canonical part of the text, and since it would be virtually impossible to ensure that the pagination of the translated work would be the same as that of... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Detail vs. filler Setting is character. That is, setting functions in a story very much the way secondary characters function: it shapes and reflects the character of the protagonist, and it functions to propel the protagonist along their arc. To a certain extent, we are shaped by the people around us, and by the env... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Recounting events in dialogue Recounting events that the reader has already seen is almost never OK. It is repetition. It is boring. The essence of drama is tension. Writing a novel is difficult precisely because it is difficult to maintain tension over hundreds of pages. Going back over old ground is very antithesis of tension.... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Averting Real Women Don’t Wear Dresses There is always an issue in literature with how strength, or any other human trait, is portrayed. In movies and TV in particular, that which is within can only be shown by external action. Books can look inward, but even so, representing qualities through action is still a major part of how books ope... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Averting Bathos To build on Galastel's point, bathos is not simply about the juxtaposition of tones. It is about the unworthiness of the emotion expressed to the event that has occurred. So if you present a serious event, the death of a child, say, and then follow it with the emotion appropriate to the loss of a too... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Subverting the emotional woman and stoic man trope Subversion is not just a way to introduce literary variety. It is actually subversive. It overturns the established order. So you have to ask yourself, why does the established order exist, and what would be the motive for subverting it? The stoic male is an established literary trope because it is ... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Thesis writing: consistency of symbols In any work in which you use symbols, you have to establish the scope of each symbol when you use it. There is nothing to say that you can't use the same symbol to mean different things in different places as long as you clearly scope it each time it is used. On the other hand, you should not assume... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: How do you use the interjection for snorting? Closest I can think of, though perhaps a little archaic: > "Harumph, you're quick on the uptake I take it." But, like DPT, I would be more inclined to keep it out of dialogue tags. (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: How do you make characters change believably? First, TV serials are virtually impossible to end in a way that satisfies the audience. The whole dramatic structure of a TV drama militates against bringing it to a dramatically satisfying conclusion. The probably applies to book series to. The whole art of the serial is to subvert the traditional s... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Is it a good idea to leave minor world details to the reader's imagination? Your readers are not going to imagine what LILLAHI birds look like. At best, this sort of technique calls forth the impression of an exotic location from their memory. For a westerner, for instance, references to exotic birds, gems, and flowers, may call to minds old Hollywood movie scenes set in Ind... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Production/edition focus order The chances of getting a three volume set of 400,000 word novels by an unknown writer accepted for publication are as near to zero as makes no difference. Such a project would be extremely expensive and represent a huge risk for a publisher. It is not entirely impossible, but it is highly unlikely. S... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Research Paper Summary: How much should be citations versus original thought? My rule of thumb has always been, don't quote anything unless you are going to comment on the quotation. If all you are doing is citing an information source to support an assertion, make the assertion in your own words and cite the source in a footnote. But a summary is not about proving or support... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Resolving moral conflict There are, fundamentally, two kinds of problem: technical problems and moral problems. A technical problem requires working out a workable technical solution. It is subject matter for a technical manual. A moral problem requires a choice between two values. It is the subject matter of novels. The re... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: As a discovery writer, how do I complete an unfinished novel (which has highly diverged from the original plot ) after a time-gap? This is the first ever draft of your first ever novel. If you were able to simply pick up where you left off and bring it to a successful conclusion, you would be a phenom. The novel is a highly complex construct. The complexity may not be apparent when you read a good novel that works well. (As in ... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: I feel like most of my characters are the same, what can I do? I'd venture to guess that you are caught in the worldbuilding trap. Worldbuilding is a perfectly fine hobby. You can make up characters and people and kingdoms and creatures. You can draw maps. You can imaging histories. This is all a perfectly fine way to keep yourself occupied on long rainy days. B... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Secondary characters in character-study fiction That is what secondary characters are for. If you conceive of a story as the arc of a principal character, then every event and every secondary character exists to define that arc, to push the character along that arc, and to demonstrate the change that occurs in the character (if any) as they traver... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Do I need to start off my book by describing the character's "normal world"? Start with a wind blowing through the normal world As others have stated, you need to start in the normal world because we need to understand who the main character is, how they live, what they love, what they are capable of, etc. in order to understand what is at stake as the story unfolds. At the... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: When writing non-linear, do I have to note time changes? How a time change is indicated in the finished film is up to the director. You just need to indicate to the director that the time has changed, not specify how this is shown. (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Correct way of Citing References in a writing a Non-Fiction book? Different publishers will have different preferences about this. An academic press is likely to prefer a more academic style. A popular press will prefer a more popular style. Ultimately, this decision is going to be up to the publisher. If you know who the publisher is, ask them which style they pre... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Is there a writing style I can use to show "the result that appeared is contrary to the expectation"? Writing is all about conditioning the reader's expectations. All the big effects in writing come from an appropriate setup. If you want to show a result contrary to the narrator's expectations, you make sure that the reader is aware of the narrator's expectations before the event occurs. This is the ... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: How to ensure that neurotic or annoying characters don't get tiring in the long run A character has to have an arc and be seen to move along that arc. You can't show the reader the same thing they have seen before, you have to show them development -- which may mean development of the character, but more often means development of the situation in which the character finds themselve... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: How to switch pov characters mid-scene without jarring the reader? This is definitely a high wire act. I had to do it for one scene a novel where I had two lovers who were both misunderstanding the other's motives and actions. The only way to make full sense of what happens in the scene was to be in both heads. Whether I was successful in pulling this off remains to... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: How to write characters doing illogical things in a believable way? Foreshadowing. Basically, anything you do, any coincidence, and personality quirk, that you introduce in order to move the plot in the direction you want it to go will appear as transparent manipulation to the reader if there is no precedent for it in the story. On the other hand, almost any coincide... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: What should come first—characters or plot? Yes, there is an objectively better place to start, and that is with character. This is not to say that it is the only place to start. As long as you put all the bits together in the end, it doesn't matter how you got there. However, you stand to save yourself a lot of bother if you start with charac... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: How to deal appropriately with an inappropriate sexual relationship Well, I think you need to start by reading Lolita -- not because it will give you a clear answer to your question, because Lolita is hugely controversial to this day -- but because it will give you an example of a great artist treading the same treacherous ground you are proposing to tread. And you w... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Should you only use colons and full stops in dialogues? You should punctuate dialogue exactly the way you would punctuate the same sentence if it were not in dialogue (excepting the typographic rules around the placement of quotation marks). A sentence is a sentence. A sentence fragment is a sentence fragment. Two independent clauses joined together are ... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Very simple markup language for writing fiction Just because markup preferences are personal, I will mention the markup system I developed for writing my last non-fiction book. It is called SAM (Semantic Authoring Markdown). It is a general purpose language, like XML, but with lightweight syntax, like Markdown. This means that while it has standar... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Writing a love interest for my hero As it stands now, your question seems to boil down to: how can I write a story that no one will criticize? The answer to that is, don't publish it. If you publish it, with any degree of success, someone will criticize it. The more successful you are, the more people will criticize it and the more vic... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: How much should I pay the copyright holder for the right to translate a book and sell copies? I think the issue of translation is largely beside the point here. What you are seeking is the right to publish the book in a new form for a new market, presumably one that the current publisher does not serve. So, for instance, if you wanted to publish this Ukrainian book in Spanish, you would be lo... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Where's the balance between realism and story? Is there a breaking point where people say, "that makes no sense"? Certainly there is, but I don't think it is anything you can quantify. In fact, it is demonstrable that that point is different for different readers, some condemning works for making no sense while others ignore the contradictions qu... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Doubt about the double action of the concept of plot in fiction writing You may be interpreting McKee too narrowly. "Design in time," for instance, does not have to imply a strict sequence. But I would suggest that you look at the word "plot" in much the same way as you would look at it in the real world. A plot in the real world is a conspiracy to make something happen... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Switching languages within dialogue Placing foreign languages phrases in italics is a well established convention that extends outside the bounds of fiction. It is always vastly preferable to stick with established conventions since people are much more apt to recognize them than anything you invent for yourself. Still, I would recomme... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Leaving wiggling room for your characters while avoiding contradictions In the end, the story you are creating will either be convincing or not. But being logically coherent has little to do with making a story convincing. (The fact that there is an entire YouTube subculture dedicated to finding plot holes in blockbuster movies should convince you that a plot hole is not... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Getting an editor after the second draft At this point you need one of two things, either time or someone you trust to tell you the truth. The problem with most beta readers is that they are friends or acquaintances and they don't want to upset you or jeopardize your relationship. I recently did a beta read for a friend and basically told ... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: How do we create our own symbolisms? The short answer is that you can't. Symbolism is really a property of a culture, not an individual work. Symbols are a kind of second order language, and you can no more make up symbols out of whole cloth than you can make up language -- at least, not if you hope to be understood by a broad audience.... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Is there a "right" way to interpret a novel? If so, how do we make sure our novel is interpreted correctly? This notion that a novel has a meaning that we can ferret out and interpret has been a staple of English teachers for decades. Essentially it is an attempt to turn a novel (or any other work of art) into a simple proposition. As far as I can tell, they do this because otherwise they can't figure out ... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: How do I start off in web comics? Every writer should understand the Hero's Journey. Not everyone agrees on whether it describes the archetype of all stories or just a particular genre of stories, but either way it provides a lot of the language that is used to talk about story structure. It is hard to talk about storytelling without... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Is there a better way to introduce acronyms through a dialogue? In this particular case, don't, because the term NASA is more well known than its expansion. Sometimes acronyms evolve into words, such as scuba and radar. Once they become words, use them as words. As a matter of usage, NASA is no longer an acronym but a word (like FBI or CIA). Use it as such. As a ... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: How exactly can a writer write a horror story without making it so scary to the point where it's actually hard to read or watch? I think you need to make a distinction between horror, which runs largely on anticipation (like every other genre) and splatter porn (which relies on the perverse titillation that some people feel when regarding scenes of gore, torture, etc.). If you are writing splatter porn, you probably can't go ... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |