Posts by Mark Baker
You can set a story anywhere. The challenge is not to make it consistent with our world but to make it self-consistent within itself. And I think this is a universal literary problem (and therefore...
It is almost certainly just a really really bad idea and you should stick to either one. At novel length it has been made to work by people like Charles Dickens and Cormac McCarthy, but at short st...
I think the point of requiring evidence of prior research is to avoid clogging up the site with endless repetitions of the same basic questions. The point of a Q/A site, or, at least, the stated go...
The question you always have to ask about a reveal is, what is it paying off and how its it paying it off. The narrative technique you use should be appropriate to the type of payoff you are creati...
I think you need to make a distinction between a change of character and a change of heart. Characters, inherently, don't have changes in character, because they are characters and character is all...
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 description...
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, on...
If you are going to refer back to something that a character used earlier in the story, give it some significant characteristic that will help the reader identify it when it comes up again later. T...
I had to think about this one for quite a while, but finally I realized that there are two distinct kinds of patience, which I will call anticipatory patience and enduring patience. Anticipatory ...
Yes, it can be confusing. The basics are simple, through commonly misunderstood, but there are grey area along the borders. The first and most basic rule of copyright is that you cannot copyright...
With all due respect to Lauren's answer, there is a fourth rule. 4) Speech that is incidental to action stays with the paragraph that describes the action. That is, if the character runs, jumps, y...
I am reasonably sure that you need to begin by selling the concept to a publisher, and once you do sell it, I am reasonably sure that the publisher is going to answer all of these question for you....
From a purely stylistic point of view: "any combination of: apples, oranges, pears" But you say this is for a legal document and lawyers may construe ambiguity where ordinary reasonable people wou...
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 roun...
There are no jobs that pay well for which the only requirement is writing. This is a simple matter of supply and demand. There are lots of people who can write well enough for commercial purpose. T...
Falling in love has the quality that you are often not fully conscious of it while it is happening. The moment where you articulate to yourself that you are in love with someone can often come as a...
If you are worried that it is too complicated, it is probably too complicated. Not there there is not a place for narrative innovation in literature, but the basics are the readers want to be immer...
Stories are fundamentally about people, not places. The psychology of why we like stories has been fairly well worked out, and the archetypes of stories are fairly well understood. At its simplest,...
I can't see why, at time of writing, you would ever include a detail that did not seem apt and necessary at the time. Nor can I see why you would ever omit a detail that did seem apt and necessary....
The Web is an open book. If you make a connection between two personas it is there for people to find. How likely are they to find it? That is very hard to say. But if you don't acknowledge the rel...
I am asking this question because I think we need a precise definition of what Show Don't Tell means if we are to decide if it is good advice or bad, or if it is a valid suggestion for certain pass...
I think the most important reason may be that it is one small step into faery. There is always something of faery about every story. Stories take place in a neater, stronger, brighter world than ou...
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 ...
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 ...
For an example of just this being done brilliantly, read Harper Lee's Go Set a Watchman. A journey is a rite of passage, a gate between worlds. Handled correctly is it a fantastic way to open a nov...
