Posts by Mark Baker
For non-fiction, publishers basically want two things. They want you to prove that you are qualified to write the book, and they want you to have a platform -- a bunch of people who already follow ...
I suspect that you don't really want to describe their emotions in the clinical sense. Rather, you want the reader to know how they feel, and to feel how they feel, or at least to feel sympathy for...
Arguments modify the behavior of a program. Running it without arguments means you get is default, unmodified behavior. So the help should describe the default unmodified behavior first, in the bod...
There is nothing wrong with a long sentence, but it should still be a sentence. Long sentences generally result from qualification and elaboration of a single point. But that is not what is happeni...
If this were a conventional commercial publisher that was in position to distribute the books widely it would be a very good deal. If it is a purely speculative venture by someone with no previous ...
It is better to be a straightforward as possible in all descriptions. The aim is to form an image in the reader's mind, and the simplest language that does that is the language you should choose, s...
This is how it was handled in the Asterix comics. Specifically Asterix and the Goths:
Story is driven by desire and that which stands in the way of achieving desire. If your character had a strong desire, she would have a goal. If she does not have a strong desire, that means she ha...
Suspense is called suspense for a reason, you suspend aspects of the story that are revealed later. No, that is not why suspense is called suspense. Suspense is a story that is suspenseful in...
A book can be a puzzle or it can be an experience. If it is an interesting puzzle, and you are the kind that likes puzzles, the puzzle may pull you through to the end. But once you reach the end, t...
Turn your gaze outward. A writer writes what they see. If your gaze is turned inward, you will write about yourself. If you are brutally honest with yourself, this may be revealing, but since we se...
If you read with attention you will realize that there is very little of this in fiction. Actors can display all kinds of things with facial expression, which is why a script has to leave the actor...
I do think it is more difficult to find a critique group for non-fiction. All fiction has a common core: an interest in story. You can still usefully critique a piece that is outside of the genre's...
In addition to what Chris Sunami said, I would point out that a scene is a lens, not a window. A great scene works by focusing your attention on just one thing. You can have many different things g...
All slang is culturally specific. The meaning of most of it can be figured out by context though. Certainly "temping" falls into that category. But vocabulary recognition simply does not happen o...
What rhymes? None stand out in that piece. Prose is full of words that rhyme with each other, but you only notice when they occur in the same rhythmic position, as they do in poetry. It takes rhyth...
Not only possible, but better. Publishers want to know that there is a market for your work. The success of your blog posts proves that there is. But there is a catch. Under what contract did you...
I think you should make a very clear distinction between tragedy and futility. Classically literature has recognized both tragedy and comedy as essentially heroic forms. In a tragedy, the hero stri...
Publishers are in the book marketing business. Their job is to figure out which books will sell and how to sell them. There are three reasons why a publisher may reject a book: It is not good e...
I really doubt that you can. Literature rests fundamentally on the sympathetic observation of human life. Whether you are writing literature or pulp, your success depends on creating convincing cha...
Every character had an arc. This does not mean that every character has their own subplot in your novel. But it means that they are driven in the same way that your hero is driven: they want someth...
Don't focus on vocabulary. It is very hard to change your vocabulary and the only real and natural way to do it is by extensive reading. Any attempt to artificially liven up your prose with exotic ...
The basic shape of any character's story arc is that they want something and there are forces that make it difficult for them to get it. They try the least expensive thing they can to achieve their...
The audience that actually cares about worldbuilding is pretty small. Most people who read LOTR, for example, don't care a fig about the whole legendarium. They only care about the story. Most st...
Most stories are not psychological studies, and even those that are are not necessarily accurate. Indeed, many story characters undergo far more trauma than most ordinary people could ever psycholo...
