Activity for Mark Bakerâ€
| Type | On... | Excerpt | Status | Date |
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A: Switching between past tense and historical present tense It is perfectly acceptable to switch tenses generally, using each as it is appropriate to the thought being expressed. One thing to note in regard to tenses is that the choice of tense has nothing directly to do with past, present, and future time. Rather, they have to do with events relative to the... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: What's the effect of placing "of course" at the beginning or at the end of the sentence? Virtually none. Both the beginning and the end of a sentence are prominent positions to emphasize something. English allows for many variations of word order with the same semantics. The only effect of one choice over another in many cases is a change in emphasis, in where the reader's attention is d... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Term for writing mostly in first-person, but switching to third-person for things the POV doesn't yet know? It is called a frame. A frame is a literary device in which one narrative is contained within another, the outer frame being used to in some way set the scene for the other. A frame has nothing to do with person or POV directly, but it is not unlikely that the frame and the narrative it frames may be... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Writing about a subject on which you have no expertise? Most fiction that includes technical details get them wrong. Fiction does not sell based on the accuracy of its technical details, but on the strength of its story. Indeed, many stories absolutely depend on getting the technical details wrong, or, at very least, ignoring obvious technical solutions, ... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: How long is a single-title romance novel supposed to be? Publishing is a risky business. Publishers lose money on a lot of the titles they publish and new authors are a much greater risk than established ones. The longer a book, the more it costs to produce, and therefore the greater the loss if it does not sell. Therefore publishers look for books from fi... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Online resources searchable for example sentences from literature Well, the obvious answer is Project Gutenberg. All the material is there and searchable. The question would be how to confine your search to just the works that fit your definition of classic English literature. What I think you are really looking for is a concordance of English literature, and Goog... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Better Ways of Showing Fear Two thoughts: 1. As an author, your job is not so much to show that your character is afraid, but to make the reader afraid for them. The physical expressions of fear are far more often played for comic effect. (Think about how they are used in the movies. Almost any time you see a character's face ... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: How do you describe your characters? Well, it is impossible to tell from what you have told us which of these problems you have, but there is a fairly easy test you can do to find out. Write character descriptions of real people you know. If you are happy with those descriptions than your ability to write descriptions is fine and the pr... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Is it better to leave out the "filters/filler" in situations like this one? This is all about where you want to direct the reader's attention. As a writer, you have almost total control over where the reader's attention is focused in a scene. If you write: > A rabbit sticker sealed the manila envelope. Graceful handwritten words read: To Kiyoshi. Then the reader's attenti... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Time frame of a traditional publisher, submitting to publishers, and need for an agent The number of publishers that will even accept unsolicited fiction manuscripts is very small, so unless you are submitting to some very specific niche market, it is hardly worth talking about. Most major publishers will only accept work that is submitted by agents, so basically you need an agent to ... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Where should I pitch a book of short stories in English accompanied by French translations? To answer any "where should I pitch" question, you should ask yourself the following questions: - Who would want to read this? What is its market niche, and how big is it?. - What are the other notable works that people in this niche read? - Which publishers serve that niche? Publishers build t... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Is there a template for how to write a movie summarization? By their very nature, such templates tend to be specific to individual publications. For example, the general shape of a recipe is universal and well known, but the details like whether to include a picture or a wine match, or substitutes for key ingredients, or a list of nutritional values, are spec... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Resource for rejected novel manuscripts Yes, it is called Amazon Digital Services. It is where authors publish manuscripts that have been rejected by publishers, or which they have rejected themselves by not bothering to submit. Writing is a craft and publishing is a commercial enterprise. Like other enterprises that depend on appealing t... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: How do I cover many years with little activity without it feeling rushed? You are writing a story, not a history. Were the characters of your story real people (which they are not) many things would happen to them in their day to day lives that are not in any way relevant to the story. Your story is not going to tell us how many times they went to the bathroom or brushed t... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: What writing process should I use to produce the kind of writing I want? I'm going to dissent from the spin straw into gold argument that others have made. It's not that I don't see merit in it, its just that I think prose rhythm is a heard thing, by which I mean that some people hear it in what they read and some do not, and that some writers hear is in their heads as th... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Can I avoid free writing? There is story development and there is narration. You need to compose a story before you can narrate it. Some people are naturals at story development. For them the story flows so naturally that they can focus on narration from the moment they start writing. Some people struggle with story developm... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: How do you write an evil character without making him "sexy" or "cool"? Cowardice. Villains who are bold and brave like Darth Vader have a cool factor because of their boldness and bravery. However evil their deeds, they display characteristics that we admire and would wish to possess. But the cowardly villain, the obsequious sneak like Uriah Heap or Wormtongue has not s... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: In a formal syntax notation, how should I indicate many optional elements? The problem here is that you are conflating two separate things: the syntax for parameters in a function expression and the list of available parameters. The syntax itself is straightforward enough: CREATE PARSER [schema.]function [WITH [parameter='value' [, parameter='value']+] ]; ... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: How can you show that a character is feeling amazing? You use the full narrative pallet that the novel form makes available to you. Different emotions manifest themselves in different ways. Some are very overt, some and entirely hidden from external view. Don't worry about doctrinaire interpretation of show vs tell; Use whatever techniques are useful in... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: How can I write a fictional mythology diary? One of the most common forms of dating in the pre-Christian era was by regnal dating. That is, events were recorded as occurring in such and such a year in the reign of king X. (For that matter, Christian era dating is actually regnal dating based on the reign of Christ as king.) The use of regnal da... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: What kind of effect can the name of a place or character have on a reader? I'm not sure that the phrase "Curley's wife" was intended to express possession. Be careful not to view things through a contemporary political lens. (Actually, two points here: don't let contemporary politics color your interpretation, and don't assume that literature was intended to be read in the ... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: "Am I mixing my tenses?" She asked, scratching her head Stop worrying about this stuff. English tenses are enormously complicated, but they are tools of analysis, not composition. If you are a native English speaker you will have learned how tenses are used in English by osmosis. Trying to follow the explicit rules that have be developed to explain how te... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Worth writing, if end is obvious The ending is obvious in most books. In a romance, will the heroine get the guy? Obviously yes. In a detective novel, will the detective get the bad guy? Obviously yes. Wanting to know how it ends is not actually about wanting to know the facts of the ending, or no one would ever reread a book. It i... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: What is considered "childish" in fictional writing? The emotional lives of children, adolescents, and adults are very different. This sometimes lead adults to dismiss the emotions of children and adolescents as trivial or inconsequential, which is unfair. If anything, the emotions of children and adolescents are more deeply felt than those of adults. ... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: When writing a novel, is it wise to switch from first-person to third-person? What is the most effective way to do this? Perhaps the most famous example of switching from an involved to external narrator is Dickens Bleak House. No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy is a more recent (and shorter) example. It is worth noting that in both these cases, there is far more than a change of narrator going on. The whole ton... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: How to focus on external conflict rather than inner/interpersonal conflict? I would suggest that rather than thinking in terms of external conflict rather than internal conflict, you should think in terms of internal conflict caused by external conflict. In a romance, the story tends to focus caused by the internal conflict between the desire for a romantic relationship and... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: How do journalists prepare to cover unfamiliar fields? It really isn't possible to bone up on the vocabulary of a field in a few hours. The vocabulary of a field exists to express experiences, distinctions, and idea that are unique to that field. In other words, its vocabulary is tied to its history and community, and you can't bone up on those things in... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Writing for a broad spectrum of readers. How do you engage the elite whilst appealing to the base? To appeal to a broad audience, write simply and directly about things of interest to a great many people. Nothing in this formula stands in the way of creating great literature. Greatness in literature depends on creating a rich and enduring experience that is deeply true and exceedingly vivid, not i... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: What happens with changing POV Irregularly? I just hate the common categorization scheme for point of view and voice. It is so misleading and causes so much unnecessary anxiety, not to mention awkward narration. To begin with, point of view and identity of the narrator are different things. You can have a character as narrator or the storytel... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: How should I plan blog content and themes for the best reader experience? This is perhaps a bit cavalier, but I'm going to say it anyway. A blog needs either a personality or an editorial calendar. People are interested in people, particularly in people whose interests are the same as theirs. If you find a blog in a field that interests you that is written by somebody wit... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: How do you write a character that HATES being born into a well-off family? We hate those things that keep us from the things we love. If a character hates being a member of a wealthy family, it is because that family, or its wealth, or its responsibilities, keep them from something they love, or harms the thing they love. To write hatred simply as hatred, therefore, is neve... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: How do I avoid making all my characters speak like me? The main thing that distinguishes the speech of different characters is what they say, not how they say it. If you understand the motives and the fears of every characters in your scene, and if you make sure that every word they speak proceeds from their fears and desires, then their speech will seem... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Does a novel require a conflict? I don't know the eastern tradition well enough to comment on whether or not it has stories without conflict. But of course, this depends on what you mean by story. But then the question is not about stories, it is about novels and the novel is not an eastern art form. It was invented in the west with... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: "just telling the tale" - does this work? Stories are not about proving points. A novelist may have a point they want to push, but if the point overwhelms the story than the result can only appeal to the people who already agree with the author's point. The great novelists who had a point they wanted to make (Steinbeck, Dickens) told a story... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Writing my Watson trope Here's the thing about Watson: he is a fully developed character. If you met him at a party, you would say to yourself, isn't that Doctor Watson? This is even more true in the Sherlock TV series (in no small part because Martin Freeman is a much better actor than Benedict Cumberbatch). I think the f... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: How do I turn a "screensaver" into an actual story? At the heart of every story (or most stories, anyway) is a character arc, and in the center of a character arc is a decision, a hard decision, a decision that will cost the character something valuable, that will make them face the question of what sort of person they are or want to be. Plot exists ... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Finding fantasy genre a bit too complex You don't specify what length of story you are trying to write, but a novel, at full length, is a highly complex piece of work regardless of genre. If you were learning to be a programmer, you probably would not choose to write an enterprise content management system as your first project. You would ... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Copying Certain Information From A Official Website Just to add a little to what Lauren has said, make sure you understand the difference between copyright and plagiarism. Copyright is the legal right to make a copy of the whole or parts of a work. Copyright automatically belongs to the person or organization that created the text, unless they sell i... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Tracing the line between a (genuinely) dramatic and a melodramatic/over-dramatic story Well, from a commercial point of view, there is nothing wrong with melodrama. People make very good livings producing melodramas, and for the most part I think they are unapologetic about it. In part this is simply a matter of taste. Saying that food is sweet or spicy refers to something objective: ... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Why do newswriters separate women when they report on disasters? Do they really still do that? The origins are not hard to guess at. It has been a fundamental social presumption for centuries that the essential role of men is to protect women and children. On sinking ships, the rule was women and children first, and woe betide a man who survived a shipwreck in whi... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: How many plot points ( whatever you call them ) do you need for a novel? A plot point is a turning point. It is something that turns the the story in a new direction. Taken together, a set of plot points describes a complete story arc. What you are describing are incidents. Incidents get you from one turning point to another (and every incident should contribute to gettin... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: How does (or should) an inner conflict span a series of novels? This is an interesting question. I'm not a big reader of series fiction, but based on the series I have read or watched on TV I can think of several patterns: - New book, new character. Each of the chronicles of Narnia has a new central character, often with the central character from a previous boo... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Is it too cliche to have the villan of my story from a different planet? Other as enemy is one of the most basic tropes in all of fiction because it speaks to one of our most primal fears -- fear of the strange, the alien, the unpredictable. We are tribal beings. Individually we are weak. Our strength lies in our ability to form alliances and to cooperate with each other... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Help! I've got Writer's Block I have an old Shoe cartoon somewhere in which Shoe has his feet on his desk, smoking a cigar, and staring off into space. But when Cosmo interrupts him, Shoe exclaims furiously, "Can't you see I'm writing!" There are two parts to writing, composition and transcription. Sometimes transcription flows ... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: How far do I need to go to show "fit" between two "dating" characters? Showing that one person is a better fit psychologically is very difficult, especially since we don't seem to know what constitutes fit or why one relationship works in real life and another does not. (I think the truth is that when people "fit" it is more because they grow together, grow around each ... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Finding someone to publish, in the digital age Agents represent people, not manuscripts. The author/agent relationship is a long term business relationship on which the author's career and livelihood largely depends. If you don't like and trust your agent, you are not going to be happy. If an agent does not like or trust their client, they are no... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Use of Regional Diction in Writing Dialect writing was quite popular among authors in the 19th and early 20th century. Both Twain and Kipling indulged in it extensively. In an age where few had the opportunity to travel and there were no movies to bring the sounds and sights of foreign lands to people, the appeal of the exotic in fict... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: How does a new writer keep from getting scooped? Your ideas are valueless. (Sorry!) My ideas are valueless too. There are approximately 197 billion story ideas floating around the litosphere just waiting for someone with a net to scoop them up. What is valuable is your ability to take a literary idea and turn it into an interesting story. People w... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Should I add more detail to my story, or just leave it vague and add it all in later? There is a huge difference between plot and story. A plot is a sequence of events that happened for a reason. A plot requires only technical detail. A story is an experience. It is the observation of or an entry into the live of, a particular person in a particularly place and time, who is experienc... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: First-person narrative: Does it make more sense to focus on internal thoughts than external gestures? There is a third, and, to me, preferable alternative. The two alternatives you have given are both attempts at what we might call invisible narration. The reader is not listening to a narrator but somehow eavesdropping on a scene. > No, impossible. Could someone I barely knew know so much about me? ... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |