Posts by Mark Baker
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 ...
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...
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 fr...
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 contra...
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...
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 exciti...
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 s...
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...
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 ded...
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, victorie...
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 ...
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. T...
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 per...
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 f...
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 i...
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 desi...
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 t...
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 con...
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, di...
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 n...
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-...
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 s...
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 story...
The publisher essentially wants to know two things about you. Can you tell a good story. Can you behave professionally and deliver on your commitments. Omitting the summary obviously reflects ...
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 ...