Activity for Mark Bakerâ€
| Type | On... | Excerpt | Status | Date |
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A: Can a book be written without an antagonist? There are a certain class of works in which the theme is discovery or enlightenment and the antagonistic force is simply ignorance. The effort to overcome ignorance may be a struggle, and enlightenment a victory, without any external attempt by anyone to hinder or obscure discovery. In others, the a... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: Spoilers; What Makes A Feel Good Tragedy? Stories are an attempt to endow life with meaning. Where ordinary life seems possessed of a terrible randomness, we look to stories to assure us that there is actually meaning and purpose in life. This may or may not be true, but the thought that it is true is of enormous comfort to us, even in the f... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: What can publishers do for me in a niche market? Publisher do two things for you, other than those you have listed, and they are things that you absolutely cannot do for yourself. 1. They provide provenance and branding. Once published by an established publisher, your book enjoys the provenance that comes with that publisher's name. More people w... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: Where to break paragraphs in dialogue? You should follow normal paragraph rules, which are, essentially, that a paragraph contains a complete thought. Of course, this is a fuzzy definition. What makes a thought complete? A sentence, a chapter, or an entire book are all in different senses the expressions of a complete thought. Paragraph i... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: I am teaching myself how to write a novel -- where can I find support and resources? This is the reality of the thing: there are hundreds of thousands of people who would like to have written a novel. Many of them are willing to spend a considerable amount of money to advance their ambitions. This creates a market for writing courses and books on how to write. Where such a market exi... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: Is a single main character really important in a novel involving a team effort? You can certainly have an ensemble cast, and you can certainly send a team on a shared quest. Hundreds of novels and movies do exactly that. But while a team can have a shared plot, a plot is not the same thing as a story arc. A story arc is the difference between a story and a piece of imagined his... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: The protagonist can't defeat the antagonist without the antagonist being stupid Actually, most stories that have a specific antagonist depend on the antagonist being stronger than the protagonist, so logically the antagonist should win most of the time -- unless they do something stupid. We love to root for underdogs. After all, most of us are underdogs. If the hero was clearly... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: Writing the nitty-gritties of a particular scene The danger you can run into with that kind of detailed planning (there are dangers in all approaches to a large piece of work) is that it can lead you to focus on plot at the expense of conflict. Stories are essentially about recreating the experience of conflict and its resolution: what is it like ... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: I feel stuck in a [description/action] sentence structure There is nothing terribly wrong with the sentence structure per se, but it has an effect that may or may not be desirable, and probably is not desirable quite as often as you are doing it: it changes the emphasis on the action being described. Each of these sentences describes two actions, one leadi... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: How can I get my readers in the gut? As you rightly perceive, the moments that have a potential for gut emotional appeal are well known, but merely creating the moment does not always produce the emotion -- precisely because we all know what the moments are: loss, sacrifice, enlightenment, affirmation, conversion, reunion, acceptance, m... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: What is the best way to avoid plagiarism when importing information from a source? The definition of plagiarism varies by context. Technically, you avoid the charge of plagiarism by citing sources, but that ignores the issue of what you are using the quoted material to do. A quotation should be used to support your argument, not to express your argument. In other words, if you are... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: Formatting multiple languages while avoiding italics for native speakers in their POV It strikes me that this difficulty in deciding how to format all of these languages is just a canary in the coal mine keeling over to let you know that this is all going to be too confusing for the reader. This is one of those times when it is better to tell than to show. If the mother switches back... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: Technical Writing Other Than Software This is one of the great debates in technical communication. Do you need to be a technical expert or is it enough to be an effective communicator? Different tech writers, and different employers, come down on different side of this debate. I think there are two main factors to consider here. First,... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: How similar can I make fictional and real cultures? Well, if you garner enough attention to get any critics interested in savaging you, you will already be doing well. But critics qua critics are unlikely to savage you for it unless you do it clumsily. The accusation of cultural appropriation is a relatively new weapon in the culture wars. Indeed, ad... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: How do I write an uneducated character with a genius level intellect in a medieval society? In that period, education was not the province of the nobility but of the church. A intelligent and idealistic young man or woman would have a very obvious outlet for their intelligence and idealism, and an opportunity for an education, by joining a monastery. Monasteries were not just the seats of r... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: Can a person get bogged down by science fiction research? I would suggest that the key question you should be asking yourself is whether you actually have a story to tell. The heart of any story is a decision. The protagonist (and possibly other characters as well) have to make a decision which is hard for them. Either decision they make will cost them some... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: How to write montages in prose? (fantasy novel) You can't do a montage in prose, anymore than you can paint a symphony or score a sunset. It is simply a technique of a different media. Each media has its own storytelling devices and you should not try to mimic the devices of one media while working in another. It is worth asking, in this regard, ... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: Is it hard for a foreigner to publish in English? It will make very little difference. The publishing industry is desperate for good stories. They don't much care where they come from. Anything interesting or exotic about the author's background can be exploited for marketing purposes, but really it is all about good stories. I wish people would st... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: Should you avoid offensive hyperbole? This questions is unanswerable except in regard to a specific market. We live in an age of taking offence, and also in an age of giving offence. Certain things will close doors to certain segments of the market, certain things may open doors to other segments of the market. Deliberately giving offen... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: How do I gather enough material to write a close reading essay? The basic material for a close reading is the text itself. Literally, you read it closely, line by line. Is it clear what is being said? Are there allusions to things outside the text that may affect its interpretations? If so, go look them up and show how the allusion affects the reading of the text... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: I am an unestablished author with a decent book. Should I publish online, or try to find a 'real' publisher? Personally, I would not regard self publishing as an alternative to traditional publishing but as a market for work that does not fit in the traditional publishing sphere. Publishing is book marketing. Marketing is about knowing a particular part of the market and figuring out how to sell to it. Eac... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: Where does the "black moment" fall in a novel? You can create an average of any data set. If you average out enough story data than you can describe an average story arc and assign names to all of the moments in that arc. This exercise is not without value. It gives some insight into the nature of the beast. But few if any stories will actually c... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: Is it a bad habit to reveal most of the information still at the beginning of the story? Good stories are not created by withholding information from the reader. They are created by constructing a satisfactory story arc, by creating the desire to know what happens next. The desire to know what happens next is not created by withholding information. It is created by engagement with the st... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: Should each book in the series be a similar length? Artistically, each book should be as long as it needs to be. Commercially, there are certain limits determined by salability and risk. A thin book may not be perceived by the reader as value for money and so may not sell. A fat book costs more to produce and so represents a bigger risk for the publi... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: Would it be wise to make the turning point of a story coincidental? There is nothing wrong with serendipity in a story. Our lives are like that anyway, governed largely by chance. What matters in a story is the moral arc of the characters. What chance occurrences should not do is resolve the moral arc of a story. Practical problems are usually caused by chance and ar... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: Intellectual rights for a guest blog submission IANAL, but, you own all the rights to work you create. No one else acquires any rights to that work unless you grant it to them through an explicit agreement. By sending them your articles to publish, you grant them permission to do just that: publish them on their site. Unless you agree to grant the... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: Why introduce new physical appearance details late in the narrative? This is the result of two misguided pieces of advice given to most aspiring writers today: "show, don't tell", and "jump right into the action". Taken together, these two piece of advice leave no room for the writer to set up their story. So writers ask, how am I supposed to tell the reader the backs... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: How to describe a kiss between the protagonists in third person? I suspect that you don't really want to describe their emotions in the clinical sense. Rather, you want the reader to know how they feel, and to feel how they feel, or at least to feel sympathy for how they feel, at the moment of the kiss. If so, the way you do that is not through what you say in th... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: Documenting the no-args call of a command line program Arguments modify the behavior of a program. Running it without arguments means you get is default, unmodified behavior. So the help should describe the default unmodified behavior first, in the body of the description. $ foo -h foo [OPTIONS...] Foo does X. For example: f... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: Can this sentence have the same detail and yet be simple to comprehend? There is nothing wrong with a long sentence, but it should still be a sentence. Long sentences generally result from qualification and elaboration of a single point. But that is not what is happening in this sentence. Rather it is telling a sequence of events as the midwife reassembles the child. Thi... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: Pay rate and terms for writing book series under contract If this were a conventional commercial publisher that was in position to distribute the books widely it would be a very good deal. If it is a purely speculative venture by someone with no previous experience of the book trade, then it is probably not such a good deal. The deal between a publisher an... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: Do 'text walls' scare off readers? Almost anything will scare off some readers in some contexts. That does not make them wrong things. It just makes the things that appeal to one person more than another. No work of art or communication should strive to appeal to anyone other than its natural audience. If someone is looking for video... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: How to handle translation of a language in a comic, while preserving a sense that the language is significant? This is how it was handled in the Asterix comics. Specifically Asterix and the Goths:  (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: I am familiar with the Monroe Motivated Sequence, which is used for speeches. What are some other frameworks which make the outlining process easier? There are a great many systems for structuring the argument of a piece of writing. Each taking different approach to what to structure and how. Some to check out include: - Information mapping - STOP - DITA - Minimalism) - Inverted pyramid In addition you should look at structured writing generall... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: Is it best to make a description metaphorical, or upfront? It is better to be a straightforward as possible in all descriptions. The aim is to form an image in the reader's mind, and the simplest language that does that is the language you should choose, since to do more risks the reader getting stuck in the thicket of words and not receiving the intended im... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: How can I figure out my main character's overall goal? Story is driven by desire and that which stands in the way of achieving desire. If your character had a strong desire, she would have a goal. If she does not have a strong desire, that means she has everything she wants. Or at least she has everything she is willing to work hard to get. That's fine.... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: How do I turn a premise into a story? The part that is most obviously missing from what you describe is "why?" Character provides the why. But equally importantly, the why provides the character. A character is a person who would do this thing in this way. You can start with the character and then ask yourself, what would this person do... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: How feasible is it to write a story without any worldbuilding? If your question is, can you set a story in an imaginary place without telling the reader that you have done so, the answer is yes, but the reader will not know that you have done so. The problem is, if any of the features of that imaginary place are necessary to the plot, then the plot will not make... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: Past tense writing troubles. Specifically the word "Now" Here's how to fix your problem. 1. Pick up your grammar books. 2. Hold them over a fire. 3. Let go. You can't write out of a grammar book. You can only write out of a fluent grasp of usage in the language you are writing in. In the case you cite, your grasp of English usage is clearly far ahead o... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: How are opening chapter expectations affected by genre? > Suspense is called suspense for a reason, you suspend aspects of the story that are revealed later. No, that is not why suspense is called suspense. Suspense is a story that is suspenseful in itself. Something bad might happen and the characters don't know if it will or not. They try to prevent it... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: What Can Ensure Re-Readability? A book can be a puzzle or it can be an experience. If it is an interesting puzzle, and you are the kind that likes puzzles, the puzzle may pull you through to the end. But once you reach the end, the puzzle is solved. There is no reason to read the puzzle again once you know the answer. An experienc... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: How to make sure that you don't end up writing a Self-Insert? Turn your gaze outward. A writer writes what they see. If your gaze is turned inward, you will write about yourself. If you are brutally honest with yourself, this may be revealing, but since we seldom are brutally honest with ourselves it is more likely to be a fantasy of yourself, or a form of pers... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: Approaches to finding critique group for creative nonfiction I do think it is more difficult to find a critique group for non-fiction. All fiction has a common core: an interest in story. You can still usefully critique a piece that is outside of the genre's you usually read because there is still a story there, or should be. In fact, critiques from people out... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: Is there any resource available listing words for facial expressions? If you read with attention you will realize that there is very little of this in fiction. Actors can display all kinds of things with facial expression, which is why a script has to leave the actor room to work. But prose does not work that way. If you want a reader to know how a character is reactin... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: Quote or Italicize Prior Dialogue It is a quotation so it goes in quotation marks. It is not the function of punctuation to indicate when a speech was uttered. If you need to make that clear, then you must do so in the text. (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: Where would I find a Critique Partner or Group? I don't think it is wise to try to do this online. You have no idea who you is giving your the critique. Some people will just always be nice. Some will just always be nasty. You can't tell who are are dealing with if you don't meet them face to face. If you want feedback, join a critique group or t... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Does age matter if you want to publish a non fiction book? For non-fiction, publishers basically want two things. They want you to prove that you are qualified to write the book, and they want you to have a platform -- a bunch of people who already follow you or know about you would would be likely to buy the book and recommend it to others. I have never he... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Is 'temping' a culture-specific term? All slang is culturally specific. The meaning of most of it can be figured out by context though. Certainly "temping" falls into that category. But vocabulary recognition simply does not happen on a word by word basis. It happens in the context of the story being told. As kids, we pick up new words ... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Is it okay to publish some material in blog first, then incorporate into book? Not only possible, but better. Publishers want to know that there is a market for your work. The success of your blog posts proves that there is. But there is a catch. Under what contract did you write those guest posts? Did you assign copyright to the site or did you retain it. If you assigned copy... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Are rhymes bad in prose? What rhymes? None stand out in that piece. Prose is full of words that rhyme with each other, but you only notice when they occur in the same rhythmic position, as they do in poetry. It takes rhythm to make rhyme. EDIT: To demonstrate what I mean, since Neil disagrees: > Old Mrs Smith went to the p... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |