Activity for Mark Baker
| Type | On... | Excerpt | Status | Date |
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A: Do people still read blogs? My blog is still being read, and at about the same level it always was. But as blogs have become a popular form of content marketing, it is inevitable that fewer and fewer of them are being read. Ineffective marketers pump out boat loads of drivel which people do not read. Since producing something ... (more) |
— | over 8 years ago |
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A: How to structure the text when describing the steps of a procedure which has simultaneous processes? I think you need to join them into a single step, or else there is a risk that the user will do the first step without paying attention to the indicator arm, and may thus hold the input vane open too long. And I presume that there is a third step here, which is to close the input vane when the indic... (more) |
— | over 8 years ago |
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A: Should I start writing even if I'm not sure how the story will end? You don't have to know how it ends, but you do have to know how it begins. It begins with some pain, some longing, some need, some disturbance in the equanimity of life that forces some deep deviation from the ordinary course of affairs. You don't have to know how the deviation will end, or even wha... (more) |
— | over 8 years ago |
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A: How often do writers develop characters before plot, and why? Story arises out of a challenge to character. The same event may challenge some characters and not others. A given character will be challenged by some events and not others. So, to create a story, you need a character and an event that challenges that character. Which comes first? In some cases, I... (more) |
— | over 8 years ago |
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A: How many characters can I introduce in the first chapter before the reader gets overwhelmed? At risk of sounding glib, I would say "as many as will fit". But I think that probably is the answer. A chapter should have a shape to it. It should accomplish something. It should have focus. As many characters as fit within that shape and contribute to that goal should be fine. Sometimes that will ... (more) |
— | over 8 years ago |
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A: Starting a sentence with the name of a program or command-line tool: capitalization? The GNU site itself treats the name of the Make utility as an uppercased word: https://www.gnu.org/software/make/ There does seem to be a convention to frequently use `make` (the command) where Make (the name) would seem more appropriate. The GNU Make manual seems to do this almost exclusively (http... (more) |
— | over 8 years ago |
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A: The order of says in the present tense I don't believe that one is preferred over the other or that you have to be consistent. However, I do believe that they signal something slightly different, at least in certain locales. In the England I grew up in, "says Max" signals that Max's interjection is unexpected or cheeky. It might be used ... (more) |
— | over 8 years ago |
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A: Technical Writing Software I would say that the newest, and in my view most promising, trend in in the use of lightweight markup languages, specifically Markdown, reStructuredText, and ASCIIDoc. Both commercial WYSIWYG tools like FrameMaker and XML vocabularies like DocBook and DITA require complex and somewhat cumbersome edi... (more) |
— | over 8 years ago |
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A: Are there legitimate uses for using bold for emphasis within a sentence? Bold is one way to emphasize something in a sentence. Recasting the sentence to put the emphasis where you want it is another method. Is one preferable to another? I'm not sure. The point of any writing is to communicate your point clearly and if using bold does that, why not? Conventional practice,... (more) |
— | over 8 years ago |
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A: When is a screenshot really useful in training documentation? It all comes down to the familiarity of the audience with the interface. The words of a procedure describe parts of the interface. Will the audience immediately recognize which parts of the interface those words refer to? If yes, then screenshots are unnecessary and will simply slow the reader down. ... (more) |
— | over 8 years ago |
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A: How can the antagonist mislead the readers? Don't mislead the reader. It is a cheap trick that will leave the reader unsatisfied and disinclined to trust you as an author. This does not mean you cannot have surprise, but the surprise should be produced by the logical progress of the story, not by artificially withholding information. Ask your... (more) |
— | over 8 years ago |
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A: Description: How to apply an adjective to a list of nouns without seeming redundant? Simply choose another adjective: > I drove past the empty stables and the deserted servant's quarters, and after another quarter mile I entered a very large circular driveway. Or break up the sentence so that you can group them together. > Both the stables and the servant's quaters were empty as I... (more) |
— | over 8 years ago |
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A: How do sci-fi stories hold up if their premise or details become discredited? Tolkien wrote a wonderful essay called "On Fairy Stories" in which he essentially rejected the notion of suspension of disbelief as an explanation of what is going on when a reader reads any kind of fantasy (and science fiction is a branch of fantasy). Tolkien argued that a story is an act of sub-cre... (more) |
— | over 8 years ago |
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A: How to write a "strong" passage? What makes a passage strong is almost always its context. We walk by the wonders of nature unseeing everyday. Only at certain times and in certain moods or circumstances do we pause to notice them or be moved by them. Squirrels accidentally plant forests by hiding nuts and forgetting where they put ... (more) |
— | over 8 years ago |
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A: How to write a religious experience? It is easy to imagine that moments of religious experience are great strum and drang affairs, but they are more often moments of quietness. Not the storm but the calm after the storm. Consider 1 Kings 19:11-13: > 11So He said, "Go forth and stand on the mountain before the LORD." And behold, the LOR... (more) |
— | over 8 years ago |
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A: Should a main character be like the reader, or better than him? I'm not sure where we got the notion that readers have to identify with the main character. We are one of the most narcissistic societies of recent memory but we are still interested in people other than ourselves. We do still read about characters who are interesting even though (or even because) th... (more) |
— | over 8 years ago |
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A: YA novel with old protagonist? There are plenty of examples of novels about adults written for young people in the canon. Look at Rosemary Sutcliffe for example. But this involves a different view of how a reader identifies with a work. Traditionally, most works were written for the reader looking outward. They were windows. For ... (more) |
— | over 8 years ago |
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A: How do I know whether to revise or submit elsewhere? You can certainly look at it from the market perspective. What one editor rejects another may accept. What 100 editors reject, the 101st editor may accept. But you can also look at it from the perspective of your own ability to make it better. The passage of time allows us to see work in a new light... (more) |
— | almost 9 years ago |
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A: How can I make believable motivations for antagonists? Two dogs. One bone. The dogs are antagonists. Which is the good dog? Which is the bad dog? One dog may have the objective right to the bone, but that does not change how each dog sees things. Each lives in a world in which that bone is their bone. Your antagonist lives in a world in which the bon... (more) |
— | almost 9 years ago |
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A: Efficiency or correctness in communication? John Carroll did extensive research on an aspect of this in the 80s. His finding are recorded in a book called "The Nurnberg Funnel" and lead to the development of a practice called "minimalism" in technical communication. What Carroll observed was that people do not read manuals linearly. They pref... (more) |
— | almost 9 years ago |
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A: How can you write less to say more? The key question to ask in deciding if something is in or out in technical communication is this: What would the user do differently if they knew this? If the answer it that they would not do anything different, then leave it out. Once you have determined if the user would do something different if... (more) |
— | almost 9 years ago |
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A: Can technical writing suck less The number one thing that you have to realize about technical writing is that people do not read it for its own sake. They read it because they are trying to do something and they need more information. The writing does not need to engage or entertain because the reader is already engaged with the ta... (more) |
— | almost 9 years ago |
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A: What to avoid when foreshadowing a death? Think about the purpose and effect of foreshadowing. If you are walking home and you see a column of smoke rising over your neighbourhood, you will probably rush forward with a lump in your throat fearing that you house is on fire. But when you turn the corner and see your house in flames, you will p... (more) |
— | almost 9 years ago |
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A: Story Structure All these analytical schemas are interesting, but I don't think you can rely on them for building a story. It is like dissecting a body. An autopsy may tell you what killed them, but it won't bring them back to life. I think they can be great tools to figure out why a story is not working. But I don... (more) |
— | almost 9 years ago |
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A: Trying to avoid being cliché Readers are not hooked by outlandish openings. Readers are hooked by character, story, and setting. You can introduce a character, story, or setting in an outlandish way. (See Steinbeck's introduction to Monterey in Cannery Row for an example.) But it will hook or not hook depending on its effectiven... (more) |
— | almost 9 years ago |
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A: Why should I try to create realistic fantasy characters? All stories are morality plays. That is, they all deal with moral questions and moral choices. They may express very different moral viewpoints, but to make a satisfying story, they have to speak to the moral concerns, beliefs, or experiences of real readers. Because stories are fundamentally moral ... (more) |
— | almost 9 years ago |
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A: Why do hardcover books retail for more than three times the cost of softcover books? Prices of goods have nothing to do with cost of production. They are entirely determined by what people will pay for them. Goods that cannot be produced for less than people will pay for them simply do not get made. Hardcovers are a case of market segmentation. You have rich consumers and you have p... (more) |
— | almost 9 years ago |
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A: Describe a main character There are several techniques for doing this, as Lauren Ipsum illustrates, but consider that the first person narrator is also a character and how they narrate the story is part of how their character is formed in the story. So if the narrator describes their physical appearance, the fact that they ar... (more) |
— | almost 9 years ago |
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A: Should I worry that my storyline is very similar to another? There are only a few basic storylines. Some say there are only seven basic plots in all fiction. What differentiates different works is the telling. If the telling of your work reminds people too strongly of the telling of another work it will seem derivative. But if the basic story structure does no... (more) |
— | almost 9 years ago |
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A: Picking a place to start (In media res) I don't think in medias res should necessarily be understood as jumping into the middle of the story. I think we should look at it more as a story is embedded in a history. You may need to understand the history in order to understand the story, but the story itself -- the character's moral arc -- do... (more) |
— | almost 9 years ago |
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A: Forming a strong relationship between 2 characters Relationships are contrived. They are contrived by the people in them. They are formed because one of the parties sets out, more or less deliberately, with more or less forethought, to create the relationship. In other words, relationships are the result of courtships. We are social creatures and we... (more) |
— | almost 9 years ago |
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A: What defines a Fairy Tale versus typical Fantasy? These are probably evolving terms rather than hard and fast divisions, but what I would say distinguishes fairy tales from fantasy is that a fairy tale is a tale about a human being encountering fairy folk, who represent a danger to ordinary human life. Fairies have been Disnified in recent years, bu... (more) |
— | almost 9 years ago |
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A: Why would an agent request an exclusive submission? Because evaluating an author's work is expensive. It consumes time that could otherwise be spent finding other authors. That time is a dead loss if the author signs with another agent. In the end this is a matter of power. While the agent does work for that author, there are more authors looking for... (more) |
— | almost 9 years ago |
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A: How to write a death scene without making it overdramatic? The impact of any turning point in a story depends not on how the scene is written but on how invested the reader is, in how much they are hoping for or dreading or startled by the turning point. Over dramatic writing is the result of not having created the conditions in which the reader will react ... (more) |
— | almost 9 years ago |
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A: What to avoid when writing a villain? Avoid making him a caricature. Don't make him villainous simply by having him espouse a caricature of political ideas you oppose. Remember that no one thinks of themselves as a villain. He is a human being with an agenda that is opposed to, or incompatible with, the agenda of your hero. He has fully ... (more) |
— | almost 9 years ago |
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A: Different types of "Flashbacks" I think we should distinguish between what I would call a personality flashback and a plot flashback. A plot flashback occurs when, for whatever reason, the narrative begins after the events of the story begin. A personality flashback occurs when there is an aspect of a character's personality that... (more) |
— | almost 9 years ago |
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A: Using filler words like 'So', 'Anyway' I don't think soften is quite the right word for what these kinds of words do, nor is filler. I think of them as signal words. They indicate to the reader what direction the text is about to take. They are like the curve signs on the highway. The signs don't make the road curve. In this sense they do... (more) |
— | almost 9 years ago |
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A: What is the best way to learn technical writing? The key to good tech writing is not style. Style helps with clarity, and that is useful, but it is not enough. They key is to present the right information to enable a particular user, with a particular background and set of skills, to complete a task. The goal is correct action, not necessarily unde... (more) |
— | almost 9 years ago |
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A: Plural of single letter variables I would say > as the two variables named c are not part of the same field. Even if technically acceptable, any form of cs is hard to read. Italics applied to only one letter, especially a round one like c are hard to spot. I changed "both" to "the two" because both invites the reader to consider t... (more) |
— | almost 9 years ago |
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A: How to make travel stories interesting? Travel stories are about the longing for something with a counterpoint of fear of the unknown and its dangers. To make your story interesting, find the object of longing and find the the source of peril. The longing and the peril may be great or small, but they are always at the heart of the story. ... (more) |
— | almost 9 years ago |
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A: Why is having too many symbols a bad idea? The ring in LOTR is not a symbol. Because of the timing of its publication many took the ring to be a symbol for the bomb, but Tolkien denied this, and the history of composition makes it impossible. (Lewis talks about this a length in one of his essays.) A symbol is simply an idea or image that sta... (more) |
— | almost 9 years ago |