Activity for Mark Baker
| Type | On... | Excerpt | Status | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Answer | — |
A: What determines genre? People buy books they way they buy vacations. The are looking for a specific kind of experience. There are certain elements that must be part of the experience. There are certain elements that must not be part of the experience. A certain amount of surprises and novelty are welcome as long as they ar... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #39335 |
Post edited: typos |
— | over 4 years ago |
| Comment | Post #39335 |
@Amadeus, fixed, thanks. (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #39335 |
Post edited: typos |
— | over 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #21248 |
Post edited: typos |
— | over 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #39336 |
Post edited: typos |
— | over 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #39336 | Initial revision | — | over 4 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: How shall we handle our old (imported) content? The model on SE was moderation, not curation. Nothing was ever removed. Duplicates, were marked, but never resolved. The only way any kind of curation occurred at all was through voting, and voting was not based on the expertise of the voter. Bad advice was supposed to sink to the bottom of the page,... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #39335 | Initial revision | — | over 4 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: Is a lawful good "antagonist" effective? There is almost never just one antagonist in a story. There may be a chief antagonist, a person who is directly working against the protagonist, but most stories are not actually like that, and even in the ones that are, there is more than one force, more than one person, whose actions frustrate the ... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #39334 | Initial revision | — | over 4 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: Tools to overcome a block from: "My words are bad" I've never subscribed to this notion that you should just start writing. Sure, depending on your level of skill and experience, some number of things about your first draft will probably be bad. A novel is an incredibly complex piece of art with severe constraints on its form. It is hard to get every... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #39326 | Initial revision | — | over 4 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: Can we dialoguify sounds? 1. Quotation marks are for words that are actually spoken. Nothing else. If you must do this, use italics. But don't do this. 2. Don't try to do sound effects. A novel is not a movie. You can describe sounds, when they are relevant, but don't try to reproduce them. If you want us to hear the soun... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #39325 | Initial revision | — | over 4 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: How do we end a description properly? First of all, there is nothing inherently wrong with describing a character's psychological state and inner thoughts (thought I would suggest focussing on the emotional state rather than the psychological). This is something that only the novel can do, and therefore a vital element of stories that on... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #39324 | Initial revision | — | over 4 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: Questionable Promotions! Pondering this, I wonder what the point is of improving questions/answers that no one is reading. Is writing new answers to those questions going to make then suddenly start turning up in searches? It occurs to me that as long as the version of this site on SE exists, it is what is going to show ... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #39316 | Initial revision | — | over 4 years ago |
| Question | — |
Email subscription This place is not exactly lively yet. That is not a surprise. But one quickly loses interest in visiting just to find nothing new day after day. Pretty soon you don't come back at all. What would help would be a subscribe to new questions feature that would send an email when a new question is as... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
| Comment | Post #39299 |
Re number 3. The Ask button is right next to the Meta button. So once you have located the Meta button, you have also located the Ask button. So when you want to ask a question in Meta, you don't look for an Ask button, because you already know where it is. You just press it. The notice that comes up... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #39313 |
Post edited: typos |
— | over 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #39315 | Initial revision | — | over 4 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: Can a fight scene, component-wise, be too complex and complicated? In any scene, you need to look at what story values are at stake. Narrative is interesting insofar as it develops or changes story values. It is boring insofar is it does not. Technical descriptions of how things work usually don't develop or change story values. Occasionally they do, as in the examp... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #39312 |
Post edited: |
— | over 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #39314 | Initial revision | — | over 4 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: How to balance the agendas of co protagonists that periodically conflict? I don't think you do keep them balanced. Or, at least, I don't think you should. If their goals are incompatible, the reader has to choose whose goals they are going to root for. And at the end, one is going to achieve more of their goals than the other. So you are not going to achieve balance in the... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #39313 | Initial revision | — | over 4 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: Good exposition examples Exposition is a problem for movies, because movies, generally, do not have a narrator. The audience sits and watches events unfold. But if the story needs the viewer to be aware of events that would be tedious to watch unfold, they have to be told to the viewer somehow in the context of the events th... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #39312 | Initial revision | — | over 4 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: How can I make names more distinctive without making them longer? The problem with your names is not that they fail to be distinct, but that they fail to be sticky. The stickiness of a name is a measure of how easily the brain can retain it and assign it to an object. If names are not sticky, making them more distinct will not help the brain retain them. The reader... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
| Comment | Post #37857 |
Both allowed and obnoxious. Allowed because it is sufficiently supported by convention and usage. Obnoxious because it should be unnecessary in well written prose. Lots of things are both allowed and obnoxious. (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
| Comment | Post #39277 |
Agreed. Even if the "interobang" exists (it's a new one on me), familiarity is *the* core value of communication. Use the most familiar word that does the job. Use the most familiar punctuation that does the job. Personally, if I saw '‽' in a book I would take it for a printing error. (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
| Comment | Post #39304 |
But if when I sign up I am told that Monica is in charge and here is what she will tolerate and what she won't, that's much easier. It does not require me to agree to your principles. It just tells me that if you don't like what I say, you will shut me down. Agreeing to submit to authority is much l... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
| Comment | Post #39304 |
My point, as in the SE case, is that if I am required to subscribe to a code, I have to look at that code as a whole and decide if I can subscribe to all it implications and assumptions. In the case of SE, I could not, even though the chances that I would ever have actually violated it are extremely... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
| Comment | Post #39304 |
@MonicaCellio, exactly. And that comes down to where authority lies. Does authority lie in the moderator or in the code. If authority lies in the mod, there is no arguing with the decision. If it lies in the code, then there is endless ground for arguing about the decision of the mod. (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
| Comment | Post #39304 |
@ThomasMyron What cannot be legislated must be adjudicated, and what must be adjudicated depends on the character and principles of the Judge. There is no way around this. This too is the human condition. In the end, thought, admitting this can result in a less restrictive covenant.
(more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
| Comment | Post #39307 |
Seems to have worked, @ArtofCode. Thanks! (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
| Comment | Post #39304 |
A policy that says no harassment must be intended is unenforceable. A policy that says no harassment must ever be felt is impossible to comply with. That's where the loophole lies, and it is a loophole in human nature that no code of conduct, however worded, can ever close. (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
| Comment | Post #39304 |
And someone may feel harrassed by even the most innocent and innocuous of comments that just happens to fall on an already raw nerve that the speaker could not possible have known about. People also can and do claim to be harrassed solely for the purpose of shutting down a contrary opinion. (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
| Comment | Post #39304 |
@ThomasMyron that is the fundamental problem with the notion of harassment. There is the intent to harass and the feeling of being harrassed. An argument might be advanced passionately, in the heat of argument, with no intent other than to prove the point at issue, which might make certain parties fe... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #39308 |
Post edited: |
— | over 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #39310 | Initial revision | — | over 4 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: How do I distinguish between self-doubt and objective recognition of fault? Some of the stuff you write is going to suck. Some of it is going to be without substance or inconsistent or just dull. And some of it is going to be brilliant in conception but dreadful in execution. The first you should junk. The second you should fix. But you won't always be able to tell w... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #39309 | Initial revision | — | over 4 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: In a dialogue, how can I hint that the characters aren't telling the whole truth? The way you do this effectively is through dramatic irony, which is where the reader knows something that the protagonist does not know. There is a fantastic scene in Upstairs Downstairs where one of the characters is seeing another off on an ocean voyage and they are all happy and full of plans and ... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #39308 | Initial revision | — | over 4 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: Writing slurred speech Dr. Johnson is supposed to have said that you cannot reproduce the effects of dullness and garrulity without actually being dull and garrulous. Being slightly less 18th century (I'm more of a Victorian, truth be told), I would say, just because it is true does not mean it isn't tedious. I think w... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
| Comment | Post #39307 |
If my ID was user16226, then that's it. Otherwise, it is gone. (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
| Comment | Post #39304 |
The site owner is entirely within their rights to do that. It is the same principle on which I invite people into my house. It leaves no wiggle room for barrack room lawyers, and it forces no one to take an ideological test to join. (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |