Activity for Mark Bakerâ€
| Type | On... | Excerpt | Status | Date |
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A: How Can I Make a Great Plot? There are no great plots. There are great stories and there are lousy stories. Great stories and lousy stories can have exactly the same plot. The soundness of a story lies in the rising tension of the story arc. The greatness of a story lies in the telling. There are, I think, different kinds of gr... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Where in the writing process do you work in subtext? First, I think we need to make a distinction here between what we might call Easter eggs -- little in jokes of the sort of which Stephen Moffat and his cronies are particularly fond. Sherlock and Dr. Who are full of these, and they encourage the fandom to go looking for more, finding many were I am s... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Is a male character crying realistic or are his reactions here excessive? Men do cry, but they are always ashamed of themselves for doing so. They weep, therefore, only when the struggle not to weep is unwinnable. If a male character is coming across as unrealistic when weeping, therefore, it may well be either because it is not convincing that that character could not hol... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Is it practical to write a novel with two viewpoints and written from different points in time? Yes, it can be done. But I would think twice about it. A novel should be about telling a story. It should not be about seeing if you can pull off an unconventional storytelling technique. People read novel for stories, not for technique. Generally speaking you should use the most straightforward and... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Reasons to use "red herrings"? I don't think you quite have the sense of what a red herring is. It really isn't a general plot device. It is more a specific technique in a puzzle kind of plot, such as a who-done-it mystery. It is something that suggest, and leads the reader to believe, that the gardener did it, when in fact it was... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Should I use contractions in a technical tutorial? It makes no difference to the reader. Or if it does, they will probably prefer the less formal. It makes a difference to some companies, but most are discovering that a more informal style makes them seem less stuffy and more approachable. The idea that a "formal" style was more appropriate for tech... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: I have 97 pages in my book draft. Is it too late to swap to third person from first? It is never too late to change from first person to third. Writing in first person is almost always a bad idea. It is a confining suffocating point of view. When it does work, it is usually as a frame or a covert form or omniscient. But those are not techniques for beginners to mess with. Change it.... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Do it your own way or inspire in already done ways? Human being have a inbred psychological need for stories. Like all our other needs, there are specific receptors that have to be matched for the need to be satisfied. If the body does not recognize a story as story, it will reject it. We can't change the reader's need for story, anymore than we can c... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: How do I handle a backstory big enough to be a story of its own? I think the question you are really asking is, is the backstory the story you want to tell, or is it simply a fable on which the real story is based. None of us can answer that for you. If I had to guess, though, it sounds from the way you ask the question like you regard it as a fable that sets up t... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Vanity publishers - authors who have paid for a service- what are our rights? This is not a copyright question, it is a contract question. You signed a contract with them. The terms of the contract tell you what you can and can't do. No one here can tell you what your contract says. Find it and read it. If you are uncertain how to interpret it, ask a lawyer. (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Is a bandit ambush a fatal, cliche mistake? If they can't possibly lose, it is not a battle, it is a spot of exercise. There is nothing exciting about a bandit ambush if the bandits have no chance. Certainly going to win and do is not exciting. Probably going to lose and don't is exciting. (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Is it good to repeat the same form of event? I think you can get away with it, using an approach such as Lauren suggests, with one important caveat. You need to make sure that the stakes are higher than last time. If you have not raised the stakes, it is going to seem like a skipping record, the same passage repeating over and over again. (Does... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: To Cut or not to Cut, that is the Question You are either presenting real science principles or you are writing a novel. You can't do both. You might as well say that you are presenting a symphony concert but first you are starting off with a monster truck rally. It's not the same audience. Even if there is a crossover between the two audienc... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: How many subjects in the same story is "too many"? And is it too bad? You can have as many subjects as you like; you can only have one story arc. Or, at least, you can only have one story arc per character. Do all of these aspects of the protagonist's life contribute to the story arc? Do they inform his desire or frustrate his achievement of his desire? If yes, do they... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: How can I raise the stakes and make a character's decision compelling? As you rightly perceive, this is about sacrifice. It is about loss. It is about how much the character is willing to bleed for this. The implication of this is that much of the story has to be dedicated to making it very clear how much bleeding would be involved for the character in this situation. ... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: How can I Switch Protagonists Between Books? In the classic model of a story, the protagonist pursues their desire to the limits of their endurance, concluding in some profound change or revelation (depending on whether you think people can change). In some sense, this drains the character of story potential. They have either achieved their des... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: How do I add more characters into my story? Are you writing this in first person? The choice of first person is the cause of many writing woes because it is a POV that essentially puts the writer in a box. If you are writing first person and your protagonist is withdrawn and friendless, any people she meets are going to be two dimensional to h... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: How to get a derailed book back on track? You may be discovering the difference between a plot and a story. A plot is a series of events. A story is an arc of rising tension followed by a resolution. Events intervene in the lives of characters to drive the rise in tension, but the tension itself comes from the characters, who they are, what ... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Curbing Self-Indulgent Writing There is writing and there is storytelling. Writing is about the words. Storytelling is about the event, the people, the sights, sounds, smells, tragedies, joys, births, deaths, surprises, victories, and defeats. Writing does not matter except as a vehicle for telling the story. It is very easy to f... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: How should formula variables be formatted in narration? Don't mention it. Seriously, don't mention it. No one wants to read a short story or a novel with equations in it. Tell us that your character calculated the result if it is really central to your story arc, but seriously do not put the actual equation into the story. If you are writing about the eq... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: How can I describe technology while avoiding problems with scaling? It doesn't matter. The tech is a McGuffin. It's a device to drive the story. The entire plot of Casablanca revolves around a pair of passes that cannot be revoked by the local Nazi authorities. The passes are a McGuffin. They are absurd on the face of it. Of course any such passes could be cancelled... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: I'm shy to let my friends read my books Here's the thing. You don't write to be admired. You write because there is something burning inside you to be said. The question to your friends is not, do you like it? Do you think it's good? Did I do a good job? The question is, do you get it yet? Do you understand what I am saying? If not, that ... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Print runs, unsold books, books by weight and do authors get some compensation for unsold? Booksbyweight appears to be simply a used bookstore with a bulk pricing model. In the paper world the economic model for books is that the publisher sells copies. The copy then belongs to the person who bought it. They can resell it to whoever they want, including used book stores. The author and pu... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: How much humour can you afford to have before losing a serious atmosphere? Any creature that can foresee its own death must learn to laugh or go mad. In other words, it is a mistake to think that humor is the opposite of seriousness. Humor is the way humans deal with the essential grimness of our lives and their inevitable ends. A serious work that is lacking humor is in s... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Am I guilty of bad 'as' writing? Weak writing is never in the individual word choices. This is the biggest trap in all of writing. Strong writing says interesting things. Weak writing says boring things. Strong writing comes from writers who understand what makes writing interesting. (It's not more explosions.) Weak writing comes fr... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Which canned Licence to use when posting short fiction? You don't need to licence content to post it on your website. Post it, stick a copyright notice on it, and it remains yours and you can sell it any time you want. A license only comes into effect if you want to give people permission to post it on their sites or include it in their books. While reta... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Dynamic characterization: How do you show development/change in an inherently flawed character, like a psychopath? Robert McKee maintains that people don't change, and that a story arc is not about them changing, but about showing how far they will go. A story arc, per McKee, consists of a character with a desire meeting a series of increasingly difficult challenges to that desire until they are pushed to the edg... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Characterization: is there any guidance for writing "the romantic interest"? Are you sure that that criticism came from someone who actually likes romance novels? I ask because "flat, uninteresting and no one would care if they lived or died, death would be better because they wouldn't bore me so much" seems to describe every character in a genre romance novel to anyone who i... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Do men fall "in love" (romantic, sensual or desire) with fictional characters? I tend to think of the process of writing a novel as follows: Invent a bunch of characters. Spend time with them until you fall in love. Then torture them to the brink of madness. The redeem or condemn them as you choose. It seems to me very difficult to read The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe with... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: How can I get in the Habit of Writing with Twists? I'll first refer you to my answer to this question: https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/24551/how-to-determine-whether-or-not-a-plot-twist-is-needed. Now I will point out an implication of that answer: a plot twist is a twist back to the story arc. In its essence, a plot twist occurs when a ... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: How do I keep from plagiarizing others? While ethically correct, giving credit and creating links to other sites would be antithetical to the aims of a content marketing blog, which is to attract potential customers to a site and to demonstrate the expertise of the company. So linking to other sites as the source of information would defea... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Is there any stylistic reason to avoid the word "got"? English is a development of Anglo Saxon and old Norse with many borrowings from Latin, mostly via Norman French, thanks to the Norman conquest of 1066. For a long time after the conquest, the nobility spoke French and the peasantry spoke Anglo Saxon. This is the reason our names for animals on the ho... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Who are the most instructive authors to read to improve one's description skills? Evelyn Waugh and John Steinbeck would be excellent places to start. But while there are no doubt many ways to excel at description, metaphors, broad vocabulary, and figures of speech are not any of them. Great description is not about flowery language, it is about highlighting the telling detail. ... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: How do I decide whether to answer questions, or leave them unexplained? A lot of this depends on where the focus is. If it is a psychological piece, the focus is on the psychology and inconsistencies in the use of technology won't matter much. If it is a love story, dito. But if it is a technical how do we get out of this mess story, then the focus is on the tech, and an... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: How do I know when my work is ready for critique? It is not so much about the work being ready for critique as about the writer not being able to make it any better without an outside critique. So, a beginning writer, or a poor reader, who can not see the faults in their work needs a critique at the point when the story is in a much weaker form tha... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Style-less writing -- Lack of real structure for blog article Remember that experiment you did back in grade school with the iron filings and the magnet. I think that is a good illustration of how a good piece of writing works. It is not that everything lines up neatly in rows and columns like a database or a spreadsheet. And it is not that all the elements are... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: If I write a word with a letter that isn't used, will I confuse my reader? Pronunciation is part of aural speech and cannot be wholly derived from the written form of languages, at least not in English. There are thousands of real place names that people pronounce differently. If you are going to make up place names in a written work that no one will ever hear pronounced, t... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: What should be done if there is a dispute of opinions within the editorial team? This does strike me as a general ethical question. A publication represents an interest which sponsors its publication. A journalist who accepts employment at that publication is working for hire to perform services for the interest that owns the paper. The interest is entitled to create an organ th... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: How do speech writers find the contents that make their speeches so impressive? I would start by making a distinction between a good speechwriter and a good speaker. Ted Sorensen explains it very well in this essay on Smithsonian.com. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/ted-sorensen-on-abraham-lincoln-a-man-of-his-words-12048177/ > Lincoln was a better speechwriter than speak... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Writing a novel, can I do [this or that]? GLENDOWER I can call spirits from the vasty deep. HOTSPUR Why, so can I, or so can any man; But will they come when you do call for them? -- Henry IV, part 1 | Act 3, Scene 1 In other words, "Can I do ..." is always the wrong question. "Will anyone want to read ..." is ... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Ways to avoid repetition of "filler" words in writing? Everyone has their pet phrases and turns of phrase. That in itself does not matter much. What matters is whether you are expressing repetitive or monotonous ideas. Yes, you can go in and insert synonyms for words you use frequently, but if the real problem is that your ideas are repetitive, that is ... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: I'm not enjoying my attempt at a science-fiction novella; should I continue? Longform storytelling (which is what a novel or novella is) is very very difficult. It is also only tangentially related to writing. You can be good at writing and know nothing about longform storytelling. It is rather like the difference between painting a house and painting a mural. You need all th... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: How much and which parts of a manuscript should I submit to an agent? You submit what their submission guidelines tell you to submit, nothing more, nothing less, nothing different. If you don't follow the guidelines, they won't even look at you. And the guidelines will always, always, always, want the first chapter if they want any chapters at all. No agent, no editor... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Should I send my manuscript again if I forgot the synopsis after sending it to a publisher? The publisher essentially wants to know two things about you. 1. Can you tell a good story. 2. Can you behave professionally and deliver on your commitments. Omitting the summary obviously reflects badly on the second point. Following up promptly to correct the mistake mitigates the problem as bes... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Will it help you to get published if you have a lot of followers of your writing? A blog can definitely build an audience for a book, and the existence of that audience can definitely help sell the book to a publisher, and afterwards the blog can help sell the book to the public. That is exactly how I did it with my book Every Page is Page One, which is a book about writing for th... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Why is there such strong objection to the use of said-bookisms? There is a pervasive misunderstanding today about how language works. It is, in its operation, heavily symbolic and analogical. Can a fever rage? Of course it can. Language is naturally analogical, and far more deeply analogical than most people realize when they are claiming things like "technically... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: How should I "remind" the reader of something that they may have forgotten? Storytelling is about sequencing. If you have a big gap between a detail and major events that depend on that detail, that means you have got the sequencing wrong. This is a pervasive problem in writing. Most of the impact lies in how the story unfolds. But often we have put months of work into crea... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Is writing only scenes a good way to earn writing skills? I would be careful. Yes, there is much to be said for learning a complex skill by practicing in parts. But there is a real and pervasive danger of getting caught up in language when you should be focusing on story. As Robert McKee points out, it is easy for writers for fall in love with individual sc... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: How do you use showing in animal fantasy? Here's an example to consider: > Peter was most dreadfully frightened; he rushed all over the garden, for he had forgotten the way back to the gate. Now you may be thinking that this example can't possibly be any good since it tells the reader that Peter was frightened, rather than showing his whis... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Impact of views about author on buying book There seem to be three different parts to this question: 1. Does the author's public reputation affect the sales of books? 2. Do the view expressed in a book affect the sales of the book? 3. Do the private views of an author who is not otherwise a public figure affect the sales of books if they be... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |