Activity for Mark Baker‭

Type	On...	Excerpt	Status	Date
Answer	—	A: Is it wrong to use the same word multiple times within a few sentences? You can use the right word repeatedly in the course of several sentences as long as it is the right word in each case. There was a writing school fashion a while back for using as much vocabulary as possible, but this is generally regarded as bad technique today. (In some ways it gets confused with a... (more)	—	about 7 years ago
Answer	—	A: To what extent do I have to explain certain reasons or choices to my audience? In The Sound and the Fury, Faulkner tells each part of the novel in the voice of a different character. In No Country for Old Men Cormac McCarthy switches back and forth between first and third person narration. In Bleak House, Dickens switches back and forth between a rather haughty and detached nar... (more)	—	about 7 years ago
Answer	—	A: Will a publisher create a custom font? I question whether a publisher is going to produce a book using a custom font. The complications of making sure such a book was formatted correctly on all possible digital devices don't seem worth the risk and expense. If they are willing to include them at all, I expect they will do so using a graph... (more)	—	about 7 years ago
Answer	—	A: Effective hero journeys that don't kill the villain? You don't always need someone to die. Remember that the Hero's Journey is a universal archetype. It does not just apply to quest stories where the hero literally goes on a journey. It is (it is proposed as) the archetype of all stories. Thus it is proposed as the archetype of Pride and Prejudice just... (more)	—	about 7 years ago
Answer	—	A: What's gained from NaNoWriMo? People are motivated by competition. We can do more, often much more, when we have others to compare ourselves against. In the Tour de France, riders ride in teams. Each lead rider has a team of ten or so teammates to set the pace for them. In any competition, athletes do better when competing agains... (more)	—	about 7 years ago
Answer	—	A: How many pages should cover the Ordinary World of the Protagonist? This is the third question today that I am going to answer with essentially the same point, but stories are fundamentally about a choice of values. To establish the grounds for a story, you must first establish the values that will be at stake. In a loss of home and family story (like LOTR) you have... (more)	—	about 7 years ago
Answer	—	A: Should my opening include a religious initiation ritual? A drama is fundamentally about values and about a choice between values that reveals who the protagonist is in their heart of hearts. The first question that a story has to answer, therefore, is one of values. Who is the protagonist, what does he have now that he cherishes, and what does he desire th... (more)	—	about 7 years ago
Answer	—	A: How do I start writing a good plot line? What you have done so far is to create a history. A history is fine, but it is not a story. A story is a drama and dramas have a specific shape. You can think of a drama as being built around a choice, specifically a choice between competing values. A conventional hero is on a journey of discovery. W... (more)	—	about 7 years ago
Answer	—	A: How is an antithesis used in creative or formal writing? The first principle of highlighting anything in any work of art is contrast. If you want a white dot to stand out, you put it on a black wall. If you want a high note to stand out, contrast it with a low one. If you want a character to appear more saintly, compare their conduct to that of a sinner. ... (more)	—	about 7 years ago
Answer	—	A: Can't write, can plan At the heart of all art is vision. The artist is an artist because the see something and find a way to express what they have seen so that others can share in the experience. No work of art can succeed without vision. If you have not seen, you cannot show. It may or may not be necessary or helpful f... (more)	—	about 7 years ago
Answer	—	A: How to be mindful of the reader when handling disturbing/distressing subjects? You should always be mindful of why a reader is reading your book. People are reading for a reason. In the case of fiction, they are reading for pleasure. People may take pleasure in reading about serious and difficult subjects. One of the functions of fiction is to provide vicarious experiences that... (more)	—	about 7 years ago
Answer	—	A: Are more or less details better for details that do not play a role in the story but describe where part of the story takes place? The reader needs to be able to see the scene in their mind's eye. This does not mean that every reader needs to see it the same way. In fact, it is a virtual certainty that each reader will see it slightly differently, or even radically differently. We build our pictures of scenes from the stock of i... (more)	—	about 7 years ago
Answer	—	A: When my story has a powerful phrase but that loses its power when I read it again in the next day, should I keep it or remove it? Delete it ruthlessly. As writers, we are often addicted to the clever phrase (or the phrase that seems clever at the time). But we succeed or fail not as crafters of phrases but at tellers of stories. The storyteller in you has to keep the writer in you on a short leash or your story is going to get ... (more)	—	about 7 years ago
Answer	—	A: Could I get a publisher outside of my home country to publish my work? Yes you can. In fact, people do so all the time. I am Canadian. I have published one book with a European publisher, one with an American publisher, and have another coming out from an American publisher later this year. I have also contributed to two other books from American publishers and had a nu... (more)	—	about 7 years ago
Answer	—	A: Is there a YouTube for writers? Basically a way to share manuscripts on social media What distinguishes YouTube is not the number of contributors, though that is huge, and essential to its success, but the number of viewers, which is extraordinarily large. What makes a content platform is always its appeal to consumers. For any content platform, the primary appeal to producers is tha... (more)	—	about 7 years ago
Answer	—	A: Why are words like In stressed sometimes and not others? While words with multiple syllables do have an internal stress patterns, stress is more a matter of the role a word plays in a sentence. Often a writer who is sensitive to this will recast a sentence just to make the stress fall on one word rather than another, or two have stress fall on two related ... (more)	—	about 7 years ago
Answer	—	A: "Group think" and least common denominator in writing groups? This is absolutely a problem with critique groups. On of the fundamental facts for 90% of critique groups is that your critique partners are not your natural readership. Most of the critiques I give start with "This is not the kind of thing I read, but..." We would all like to think that if a piece ... (more)	—	about 7 years ago
Answer	—	A: Is it possible to read your own words too much? (and begin to hate them as a result) I think this is what separates the pros from the amateurs and the unpublished from the published. Writing is hard. Getting it right can take a huge amount of work and many writers report being royally sick of a book by the time they have finished it, or even by the time they have finished the first d... (more)	—	about 7 years ago
Answer	—	A: Usefulness of writing conferences and realistic expectations of obtaining an agent Going to writing conferences will increase you chances that a literary agent will read your manuscript, compared to the chances if you simply submit over the transom. It will not make it a more publishable manuscript. Why do agents go to conferences (a significant cost in time, if nothing else)? Bec... (more)	—	about 7 years ago
Answer	—	A: Flash-forward as Prologue and then Flashbacks too complicated? This is a very common technique among aspiring writers. It feels like playing tricks with the narrative line solves all kinds of writing and story problems for you. But this is largely an illusion. You rarely find these kinds of tricks in successful published works. Sometimes, certainly, but not ofte... (more)	—	about 7 years ago
Answer	—	A: Rewriting a scifi story to fit with actual science, should I do it as I go? Fix it now vs fix it later is a perennial question in writing. Often the answers given are absolutist one way or the other, or come down to "whatever works for you". But I would suggest a different approach, one which divides changes into structural and cosmetic. If you were building a house and you... (more)	—	about 7 years ago
Answer	—	A: What are the risks and benefits of using humour in business/commercial writing? There are two reasons for a reader to read something, because they are interested in the subject matter and because they like how it is written. The risk of using humor in business or technical writing is that it can turn people off even if they are interested in the subject matter. The opportunity... (more)	—	about 7 years ago
Answer	—	A: Classic fantasy races lazy or boring? I think it is important to remember where these creatures came from. They are all religious in origin, and as such represent fundamental religious themes that have a corresponding resonance in the human heart (whether we actually believe the religious ideas or not, those ideas still resonate because ... (more)	—	about 7 years ago
Answer	—	A: Do some people lack the ability to generate ideas or content for writing? The term writing is kind of like the word walking, except that writing gets used as a collective term in a way that walking does not. Lots of people walk as a major part of their jobs: letter carriers, police, floor salespeople, soldiers, etc. We don't refer to them collectively as "walkers". We rese... (more)	—	about 7 years ago
Answer	—	A: When does use of offensive language in a book go from a character trait or to convey emotion to bad use of English skills The purpose of fiction is to give pleasure to the reader. The use of profanity, like anything else, works when it gives pleasure to the reader. Of course, certain profanities will displease certain readers, so you will certainly lose some potential readers if you use profanity. The question is, are ... (more)	—	about 7 years ago
Answer	—	A: How can I explain my world if the character is technologically not yet capable of understanding it? If you are using POV characters to explore a world, you are not doing storytelling, you are doing world building. That is a perfectly legitimate hobby, but it is not literature and the normal concerns of literary writing, such as suspension of disbelief, or, for that matter, point of view, don't appl... (more)	—	about 7 years ago
Answer	—	A: What raises the stakes and suspicion in a plot? Stakes, in a plot, as not what the character wants, but what they will have to give up to get what they want. Love is a desire. But gaining the one you love may require giving up your pride or your prejudice. Is you character willing to do that? Those are the stakes. So, Lassie wants to rescue Timmy... (more)	—	about 7 years ago
Answer	—	A: Referencing Screen shots in technical/knowledge base articles? There are three basic reasons for using figure references in a document, rather than just putting the figures inline in the text next to the point where they are referenced: - You are referencing a figure from more than one place in your document. Using figure references lets you insert a reference ... (more)	—	about 7 years ago
Answer	—	A: Why are the paragraphs of a document often indented and not vertically separated? A factor that has not been mentioned yet is the difference between material that is meant to be read vs. material that is written to be scanned. Narrative works such as novels and histories are written to be read. Thus they are formatted to facilitate the easy movement of the eye through the text. Pu... (more)	—	about 7 years ago
Answer	—	A: Considering the audience for technical publications There is no real way to tell if you are doing enough, of doing the right things, just from a brief description of your product and your users. The questions you really have to come to grips with are: - When your user look for information on how to do something with your product, are they finding it?... (more)	—	about 7 years ago
Answer	—	A: How can I give a novel a particular atmosphere? Suppose you are hosting visitors to your city and you want to control the impression they get. If you want to give them the impression that your city is safe, you take them down certain streets at a certain time of day. If you want to give them the impression that your city is dangerous, you take the... (more)	—	about 7 years ago
Answer	—	A: What is the balance between 'stating a problem clearly' and Hemingway's literary iceberg? This is an interesting question. The answer, I believe, lies in remembering that people read for pleasure. And when it comes to our pleasures, we value predictability very highly. This is not to say that surprise has no role in pleasure, but it is a very confined one. When we read a mystery, we want ... (more)	—	about 7 years ago
Answer	—	A: How Often To Proof Read Book I'm Self-Publishing First, let's be clear on terms. Proofreading is going through a manuscript looking for mechanical errors: missing punctuation, misspelled words, grammatical errors, etc. If you are rewriting sections, that is editing, not proofreading. Proofreading is generally the last step in the preparation of a ... (more)	—	about 7 years ago
Answer	—	A: Are tables of contents mandatory in novels? Starting around the 1920's dust jackets started to get decorative and became a place where you could market the book. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust\jacket#Oldest\dust\jackets) That function has now migrated to the back page of the paperback. There is no place to put marketing material on the co... (more)	—	about 7 years ago
Question	—	Has self-publishing killed the in-person critique group? I belonged to an excellent critique group for many years. More than one member of that group went on to commercial publication of the works that they refined in that group. But since we moved a couple of years back, it seems very difficult to find anything remotely equivalent. One group I joined fizz... (more)	—	about 7 years ago
Answer	—	A: I wrote a book, but changed my mind on the ending Yes, this is going to be a death march. But the thing that is going to kill you is not this rewrite, but the next one and the one after that as your story gradually become more and more disorganized through the process of revision if you fall into the trap of trying to get there by rearranging scenes... (more)	—	about 7 years ago
Answer	—	A: Little did he know The phrase is being used here to refer to what is commonly called either Sophoclean irony or Dramatic irony, a literary device in which the reader knows something that the character does not -- something which is going to have a material effect on the character's future. This device is extremely usef... (more)	—	about 7 years ago
Answer	—	A: What's a good writing software for Android phones/tablets? It is perhaps worth pointing out that in the 6.5 years since the question was originally asked, Microsoft had made Word available on Android. Whatever you think of Word as a writing app, there is an obvious appeal to cross platform software with files in a shared space. Ditto for OneNote for the note... (more)	—	about 7 years ago
Answer	—	A: Common mistakes made by first time fantasy novelists? As far as I can tell from the MSS I have read in critique groups and from the kind of questions asked here, the biggest mistake of aspiring fantasy writers it to focus too much attention on worldbuilding, followed by too much attention on word choices, with very little attention being paid to story, ... (more)	—	over 7 years ago
Answer	—	A: What makes writing emotional? Writing isn't emotional; stories are emotional. Paint isn't emotional; pictures are emotional. Notes aren't emotional; music is emotional. While some words are certainly more emotionally changed than others, even the trigger power of certain words depends on their context in a story. Emotion in a st... (more)	—	over 7 years ago
Answer	—	A: First Person vs. Third Person: Advantages and Disadvantages? First person vs third person narration does not really change what can be narrated. In both cases, the narrator is the narrator and it is their role to tell the story. You can tell a character's thoughts in third person or in first person, including the thoughts of characters other than the narrator,... (more)	—	over 7 years ago
Answer	—	A: How to structure a sentence containing long code examples? Do the simplest thing that works, which in this case is example 3. The rules of sentence structure don't really cover these kinds of things. That is a defect of the rules of sentence structure, not of the examples themselves. Remember that the first rule is clarity. Grammar rules and style guides ex... (more)	—	over 7 years ago
Answer	—	A: In searchable documentation, what function does a glossary serve? In terms of providing definitions for general terms, I would say that glossaries are pointless in online documentation. User can easily search for any term they do not understand. If there are terms that refer to concepts that you describe in your documentation, I would say that it is far more valua... (more)	—	over 7 years ago
Answer	—	A: What is a subplot based on: conflict or tension? I think you have to start with understanding the role of a subplot. Artistically, I think it is fair to say that a subplot exists to provide a counterpoint to the theme of the main plot. If a short story is a singer accompanying themselves on a guitar, a novel is an choral symphony with complex harmo... (more)	—	over 7 years ago
Answer	—	A: Not sure if my idea for a conclusion is introducing a new argument Rhetorically speaking, your conclusion should not be a mere summing up of arguments already presented. Rather, it should build a rising tide of emotion and conviction to carry your reader irresistibly to act as you would have them act. The whole point of communication is to change the reader's behavi... (more)	—	over 7 years ago
Answer	—	A: How to make my story structure less repetitive? The first issue I see here is not that the writing is repetitive but that the details are banal. That is, they are bits of everyday life that happen to everyone. They are repetitive or everyday life without telling us anything specific or vivid about your character of your story. Yes, sometimes your... (more)	—	over 7 years ago
Answer	—	A: What should I do if halfway through a story, I am not anymore convinced with the plot and the storyline ? It sounds like you are starting with an incomplete story idea and discovering, half way through writing, that your idea is incomplete. For some writers, it would seem, it is quite normal to start with an incomplete idea and for them to discover the rest of the idea as the story develops. (The tale g... (more)	—	over 7 years ago
Answer	—	A: How to cite annotation in an annotated copy of Shakespeare's Othello An annotated edition of a work is essentially a book within a book. The inner book is the original text and the outer book is the volume of annotations. Cite the book you are citing, inner if you are citing the original text, outer if you are citing the annotations. Details are here: http://penandthe... (more)	—	over 7 years ago
Answer	—	A: Where to put counter-examples within a 5-paragraph essay? I think you need to remember that the five paragraph essay is not a normal literary form, it is an artificial training exercise (of dubious merit, if you ask me, but that is beside the point). Training exercises are designed to isolate certain aspects of an activity in order to focus on them in pract... (more)	—	over 7 years ago
Answer	—	A: Is it better the use the present or the past tense for a novel written in the first person You are almost certainly going to use both, since it is almost impossible to say very much without making reference to actions past, present, and future. But I think what you are really asking is, should you write in the narrative present or the narrative past. The narrative present means that you a... (more)	—	over 7 years ago

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