Activity for Mark Baker
| Type | On... | Excerpt | Status | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Question | — |
What makes an ending "happy"? In this answer, Amadeus makes the case for happy endings based on their far greater popularity compared to unhappy endings. This leads me to wonder, what exactly makes an ending "happy"? Before I go further, though, let me say that talking about a "satisfactory" ending doesn't address this question... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Is there any difference between these two sentences? (Adverbs) Well to start with, "Adverbs are the devil" is not a rule. It is not even correct. Adverbs are a perfectly peaceable law abiding part of speech like any other. That many people use adverbs poorly is a valid observation (thought not a rule). A reasonable rule would be, if you want to write well, lear... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: 'This one' as a pronoun There is a distinct use of "this one" in English which is a matter of usage rather than grammar. It is used by one person to refer to another person (often, though not always, an inferior), who has done something stupid. Thus: > We were driving along in the rain and this one decided to hit the sunro... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Doubt about the concept of "true (or complex) character" A character is not a human being. A character is a construct created entirely by the author for the purpose of telling a story. This works because stories are much neater simpler things than real human life. They exist in part to allow us to escape our humdrum human lives, and in part to help us unde... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: How do we know if a dialogue sounds unnatural without asking for feedback? Characters seem natural when they pursue their goals in a way that is consistent with their values. (Their actual values, not necessarily the values they give lip service to for the sake of social acceptance.) Characters seem natural when they act this way because that is how human beings act. The p... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: How to eliminate standoff between "Lengthy" vs "Concision"? Every propositional document (that is, one that is not telling a story) consists of three parts: the conclusion, the argument, and the evidence. The native or intuitive way that most people write such a document is to mix in bits of evidence as they develop the argument and then sprinkle bits of conc... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: What is one way to write about feeling someone's sadness? There are multiple ways to approach a character's emotions, each of which may be appropriate in context. First, you can simply name the emotion. This is appropriate when their emotion is incidental to the main focus of the scene. It is also appropriate in cases where the character is giving no outwa... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Should I contact agents/publishers to see if they would be interested in my book before finishing it? If your book is fiction, it must be finished before an agent or editor will consider it. They are not going to invest any time or effort in an unfinished project by an unknown and unproven writer. After all, many novels never do get satisfactorily finished, and they already have a superabundance of f... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: What is a more techy Technical Writer job title that isn't cutesy or confusing? The conventional term is "programmer writer" or, sometimes, "programming writer". It is generally used to describe someone whose training and focus is programming rather than technical writing, but who is currently performing a technical communication function specifically aimed at documenting things... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: How can I highlight changes in HTML output from Flare, based on branch diff? Even if you could find a way to format dif output in HTML, that in itself would not give you the dif navigation tools that you get from a dif tool (next change, last change, etc.). One way to very quickly get a navigable WYSIWYG dif of two HTML documents (old and new) would be to open them both in Wo... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: For HTML documentation sets, are there meaningful guidelines for topic length? I spent so much time trying wrestling with just this problem that I wrote a book about it: Every Page is Page One: Topic-based Writing for Technical Communication and the Web. (https://xmlpress.net/publications/eppo/). The answer I came up with after much research and experimentation is that it is... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: Third Person POV: What level of telling is acceptable for character motivation? Please understand that "third person limited" and its ilk are categories of analysis applied to works after the fact by those who find it entertaining to categorize everything. They are not rules that you are obliged to follow. You are not obliged to pick one box and stick to it. Also note that the ... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: How can I make an in-universe random event feel like it was really random instead of just RNJesus' will? What Chris said, but with the concomitant point that solutions must be merited. They don't have to be probable. Little in most stories is truly probable. Stories basically run on coincidences. Their logic is moral. Misfortune is often merited by a moral flaw, but is can also exist to create some mo... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: Overcoming "Possibility Paralysis"? In any life, there are moments when you can turn one way or another. With fictional characters, largely untrammeled by the cares of real people about where they are going to sleep or what they are going to eat or when they will run out of money, there are more and bigger moments at which they can tur... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: Should I be able to 'feel' my outline? No, you should not expect to feel your outline. An outline, by its nature, strips away all the particular details that create an emotional response. Our emotional responses are naturally regulated, tamped down, if you will, to make life bearable. If we reacted equally to every emotional stimulus, par... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: Character motivations facing death? At the core of every story, there is a moral choice. That is, a choice between values. Circumstances force the protagonist to the point where that choice must be faced and made and lived with. Such choices can obviously end well or badly, and can involve triumph or sacrifice or defeat for the main ch... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: Is my story too similar to an existing published work? A story is like a person. Many people lead similar lives and yet each person we meet is unique. Every fireman we meet is a different fireman. Every nurse is a different nurse. Every teacher is a different teacher. Every cop is a different cop. Even when they fall into stereotypical behaviors -- even... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: Will it be disappointing for the reader to not know who the main character is until the end? Yes, it will be disappointing, but that disappointment will not likely occur at the end, but much earlier when the reader begins to get the sense that the character they are following has no arc. Once they realize that, they will stop reading and never reach the end. A story is not a history. A hist... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: Is it true that "Any story can be great in the hands of the right storyteller"? By and large, yes. thought it does depend on what you mean by story. Every story is unique. It is a particular set of words that tell a particular tale about particular characters, and it is the total immersive experience of the reading that make it great, not some particular twist of plot or eccentr... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: Academic Writing: Paraphrasing few words when quoting If something is a quotation, you put it in quotation marks. If you are replacing part of a quotation with a paraphrase, you put the paraphrase in square brackets. "[Faith] can be active and effective only when man, through the exercise of his Reason, has already acquired knowledge of God, belief in... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: Difference between DITA and S1000D Yes, these sorts of comparisons between systems are very difficult, essentially because there is no independent definition of terms like topic and module outside of the particular systems that use them. In other words, both systems, as well as several other similar systems, use similar terms to descr... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: Can ‘Stupid’ Characters Make Plot Narratives Memorable? Remember that all stories are moral. They deal with moral conflict, both within the individual and between individuals. Questions of what it is most effective to do to address a given problem as the matter of essays, not fiction. If fiction deals with them at all, it is to address the related moral i... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: Topic-based authoring vs. Modular authoring This is a complex question -- complex enough that I wrote a book about it: Every Page is Page One: Topic-based Writing for Technical Communication and the Web from XML Press (https://xmlpress.net/publications/eppo/). At the heart of the confusion is ambiguity about what the word "topic" means. For ... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: Is it considered lazy writing to have a dry prelude at the start of a book? Not too lazy. Your work habits really have nothing to do with it. The question is, can you make it interesting? Providing context is difficult because it is a chicken and egg problem. No one cares about the context until they know what is a stake, and no one can tell what is really at stake until th... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: How does a writer go about consulting experts? Pick up the phone and call them and say, "Hello, my name is X. I am a writer and I am researching a piece on Y for Z. I will credit you, of course." This pushes the I'm-gonna-get-my-name-in-the-paper button. After food and sex, getting your name in the paper is the third most potent human drive. At 1... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: Is it permissible to use subconclusions for argumentative paragraphs if they contain multiple arguments in support of the main point? It is certainly permissible because outside of specific educational programs, there are no prohibitions on paragraph structure that would make it impermissible. That topic-sentence etc. model is simply a particular systems of training wheels and there are innumerable good paragraphs that don't fit th... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: How can I write about historical realities that readers mistakenly believe are unrealistic? I feel for you. I write about the Anglo-Saxon period in England and I am careful to portray my characters living and working in huts and wooden halls and guarding their villages with wooden palisades. No matter. My readers conjure up castles out of thin air. Of course, this is how fiction works -- h... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: How do Red Herrings work? Stories run on anticipation. A reader keeps reading because the anticipate that certain things are going to happen, and that we are making progress towards those things happening. By and large, the reader reads on because they anticipate the enjoyment of watching those thing happen, and thus enjoy th... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: What are alternatives to "is that" as in "[something] is that [something]"? The alternative is to stop listening to people who say silly things like that. There is, unfortunately, a sub-culture of writers who obsess over the minutia of prose without having any actually stylistic skill. This means that come up with a collection of vacuous rules, and one of the most vacuous o... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: Archetype or Stereotype? An archetype is a role. A stereotype is a bundle of characteristics. Thus the wizard (wise man, not necessarily magical) is an archetype character because he plays a specific role in the hero's journey (providing information, gifts, admonishment, or encouragement). A common set of characteristics c... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: How much value do publishers and editors place on informative/educational content in fiction stories? It depends on the genre. The purpose of a story is to give pleasure to the reader. Learning things is certainly one of life's pleasures. In historical fiction, for instance, readers often take the story as a kind of history text and expect to learn things about the period. In age of sail novels, a la... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: How many characters are too many? The number of characters in a novel is probably not a number you can fix. The number of characters in a scene, and in an arc, however, can be significant. Essentially, each character in a scene should create tension in the scene or arc, should shape the way the scene or arc unfolds. The basic test h... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: How to construct a technical tutorial when the user can't verify the results after each step? There is not really much you can do in a situation like this other than to clearly alert the reader to the situation up front. If there is no way to verify the next five actions until you have completed all of them, put a warning in big shiny letters saying: > WARNING: The next five steps must all b... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: How much agency should main characters have in the plot? At the heart of every story is a choice about values. The protagonist is brought to a point where they must choose between two things they value. This requires the ability to actually make the choice and accept the consequences. That much agency at least is required. On the other hand, there must be... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: Are there any rules to follow about the narrator mixing past and present tense in writing? Stories are not written all in one tense. Even sentences are not written all in one tense: > I think I will go to Paris tomorrow, the place where I was born. The only thing that the concept of tense applies to is individual verbs. One of the uses of the present tense is to express general qualitie... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: How do you show character reactions without making them do something physically that is unrealistic? Lamentably, a great many authors today are mentally acting out scenes in their heads because they are subconsciously directing a movie rather than writing a novel. Both the screen and the page are limited media. They do some things well and some things badly. Showing facial expressions and body lang... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: What could be done to generate and maintain reader interest in plots without a lot of conflict / tension? All stories are moral. That is, all stories are about a choice between values -- a choice that the protagonist does not want to make but is eventually forced to make. Saying that stories are moral does not mean that they make judgements about which choice is correct (though the readers often will). I... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: Eliminating the Dash in Prose Writing The em dash does not mean pause. There is no piece of punctuation that means pause. The em dash is a more emphatic substitute for the comma, colon, or parentheses and can be used to indicate omitted words. If you need to indicate that someone pauses in speech, say "John paused". Be particularly awar... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: Why do most literature magazines take so long (several weeks or months) to respond to submissions despite having only a few hundred subs per month? In addition to what GGx and robertcday have mentioned, it is because the submissions you are talking about, the over the transom submissions, are their lowest priority. Publishing houses, agencies, and magazines would much rather deal with people they know, people referred by people they know, people... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: Describing an important emotional turmoil in the character's life I've never been through There is a very simple rule here: don't describe emotions; create them. You are creating an experience for the reader. If you describe emotions, you are creating a clinical experience, one that is detached from what is happening. But if people want a clinical experience, they usually turn to non-fict... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: Can I assume readers will root for my protagonist in a man vs. beast story? For us to be interested in your protagonist, there must be more at stake than mere survival. Survival is merely a technical problem. The physical action of an escape story is usually used to explore a deeper escape story, one that is more psychological, more moral, in nature than physical. In facing ... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: Mentioning quickly repeated events in first person? > I knocked several times but no one answered. No more than that. Any emotional response to knocking and getting no answer has to be set up in advance. Show us that a reply was expected. Show us that much depends on the reply. Show us that the lack of a reply is a sign of great peril. Then just say,... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: How to describe something, that would normally be shown by facial expressions? Watch much less TV and read far more books. TV/Movie storytelling is different from book storytelling. If you are thinking in terms of facial expressions, your storytelling apparatus is running in video mode, not prose mode. Both prose and video are limited media. Prose has limited access to visual ... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: Writing Unequal Societies (Without Supporting Inequality) While there are injustices in every society, and the rich and strong oppress the poor and weak in every society (including our own), current ideas about what is biased or unfair treatment can't be projected back on past societies. Modern society is highly anomalous in its individualism and in the cen... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: Avoiding Slang whilst Writing Neither your individuality or your creativity is precious, no matter what they told you in kindergarten. Your story may or may not be precious, depending on whether it is any good or not. Creating a good story is not about expressing yourself (no matter what they told you in kindergarten), it is abou... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: Avoiding Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy At the heart of every story there is a moral choice -- a choice about values. The hero will be brought by some means to a point where they must choose between two things that they love. They may choose well or ill. The consequences may be for good (comedy) or ill (tragedy), but there must be a choice... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: What is the structure and important points to cover in a first chapter? In classic story theory, a story begins in the normal world, the world from which the hero will be forced to depart and to which they will attempt to return, often transformed. This does not mean a physical journey, necessarily. A coming of age tale requires the hero to leave the normal world of chil... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: Can I assign actions to broad concepts? Our speech and writing is full of anthropomorphic language. We ascribe actions to inanimate objects and abstractions all the time. It is almost impossible to communicate effectively without doing this. Unfortunately, there are people who think of language as a machine (rather like the way a programm... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: Why do heroes need to have a physical mark? The idea of the anointed one is as old as recorded history and recorded literature. But we should remember that this idea exists in the context of societies in which everyone has a specific role to play. The rejection of this notion that everyone has a place and a role and a responsibility in the co... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: How do experienced writers introduce the topic sentence halfway or near the end of the paragraph? Personally, I would regard this more as a critique of the notion of a topic sentence than as and evidence of skilled writing. The theory of the topic sentence is part of a theory of paragraph design that really doesn't hold much water when you look at the practice of real writers. So maybe the fact t... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |