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Posts by Mark Baker‭

1.1k posts
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Q&A Formatting multiple languages while avoiding italics for native speakers in their POV

It strikes me that this difficulty in deciding how to format all of these languages is just a canary in the coal mine keeling over to let you know that this is all going to be too confusing for the...

posted 8y ago by Mark Baker‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

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Q&A How to head off a legal reading of a term or phrase?

There really is no way to indicate that you are using a term in a non-technical sense if you use it in a context in which the technical sense would normally be inferred. The best approach to avoidi...

posted 7y ago by Mark Baker‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

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Q&A How much character development is necessary beyond what the story line provides?

In story, character is desire. Character is the things you want and the things you are willing to do, or not willing to do, to get the thing you want. Some stories hang a lot of rich detail on thes...

posted 7y ago by Mark Baker‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

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Q&A Legality over using a REAL museum and REAL artifacts in a fictional - HEIST novel

Thought experiment: If Dan Brown had required the permission of the Vatican to publish The Da Vinci Code, do you imagine it would ever have been granted? Do you think the Pentagon or the White Hous...

posted 7y ago by Mark Baker‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

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Q&A Are idioms in query letters a bad idea?

Writers often indulge a charming fantasy that publisher and agents are looking for originality. They are not. They are looking for works that fit into a well established sales channel and that habi...

posted 7y ago by Mark Baker‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

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Q&A How do I end a comedy sketch?

It is well said that there are no rules in funny. A traditional story needs a specific story shape in order to work because the payoff is in the climax and denouement. But comedy, though it can con...

posted 7y ago by Mark Baker‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

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Q&A Spoilers; What Makes A Feel Good Tragedy?

Stories are an attempt to endow life with meaning. Where ordinary life seems possessed of a terrible randomness, we look to stories to assure us that there is actually meaning and purpose in life. ...

posted 7y ago by Mark Baker‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

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Q&A I am teaching myself how to write a novel -- where can I find support and resources?

This is the reality of the thing: there are hundreds of thousands of people who would like to have written a novel. Many of them are willing to spend a considerable amount of money to advance their...

posted 8y ago by Mark Baker‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

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Q&A Is a single main character really important in a novel involving a team effort?

You can certainly have an ensemble cast, and you can certainly send a team on a shared quest. Hundreds of novels and movies do exactly that. But while a team can have a shared plot, a plot is not t...

posted 8y ago by Mark Baker‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

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Q&A The protagonist can't defeat the antagonist without the antagonist being stupid

Actually, most stories that have a specific antagonist depend on the antagonist being stronger than the protagonist, so logically the antagonist should win most of the time -- unless they do someth...

posted 8y ago by Mark Baker‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

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Q&A Writing the nitty-gritties of a particular scene

The danger you can run into with that kind of detailed planning (there are dangers in all approaches to a large piece of work) is that it can lead you to focus on plot at the expense of conflict. ...

posted 8y ago by Mark Baker‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

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Q&A I feel stuck in a [description/action] sentence structure

There is nothing terribly wrong with the sentence structure per se, but it has an effect that may or may not be desirable, and probably is not desirable quite as often as you are doing it: it chang...

posted 8y ago by Mark Baker‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

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Q&A How can I get my readers in the gut?

As you rightly perceive, the moments that have a potential for gut emotional appeal are well known, but merely creating the moment does not always produce the emotion -- precisely because we all kn...

posted 8y ago by Mark Baker‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

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Q&A Intellectual rights for a guest blog submission

IANAL, but, you own all the rights to work you create. No one else acquires any rights to that work unless you grant it to them through an explicit agreement. By sending them your articles to publi...

posted 8y ago by Mark Baker‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

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Q&A Where to break paragraphs in dialogue?

You should follow normal paragraph rules, which are, essentially, that a paragraph contains a complete thought. Of course, this is a fuzzy definition. What makes a thought complete? A sentence, a c...

posted 7y ago by Mark Baker‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

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Q&A How similar can I make fictional and real cultures?

Well, if you garner enough attention to get any critics interested in savaging you, you will already be doing well. But critics qua critics are unlikely to savage you for it unless you do it clumsi...

posted 8y ago by Mark Baker‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

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Q&A What are effective methods for getting reviews for a non-fiction business book?

There is probably nothing you can do that will get publications like the Economist to review a self published book. Major outlets like this are bombarded with more book review requests than they co...

posted 7y ago by Mark Baker‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

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Q&A Can a person get bogged down by science fiction research?

I would suggest that the key question you should be asking yourself is whether you actually have a story to tell. The heart of any story is a decision. The protagonist (and possibly other character...

posted 8y ago by Mark Baker‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

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Q&A How do I write an uneducated character with a genius level intellect in a medieval society?

In that period, education was not the province of the nobility but of the church. A intelligent and idealistic young man or woman would have a very obvious outlet for their intelligence and idealis...

posted 8y ago by Mark Baker‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

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Q&A Should you avoid offensive hyperbole?

This questions is unanswerable except in regard to a specific market. We live in an age of taking offence, and also in an age of giving offence. Certain things will close doors to certain segment...

posted 8y ago by Mark Baker‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

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Q&A Is it a bad habit to reveal most of the information still at the beginning of the story?

Good stories are not created by withholding information from the reader. They are created by constructing a satisfactory story arc, by creating the desire to know what happens next. The desire to k...

posted 8y ago by Mark Baker‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

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Q&A Where does the "black moment" fall in a novel?

You can create an average of any data set. If you average out enough story data than you can describe an average story arc and assign names to all of the moments in that arc. This exercise is not w...

posted 8y ago by Mark Baker‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

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Q&A Should each book in the series be a similar length?

Artistically, each book should be as long as it needs to be. Commercially, there are certain limits determined by salability and risk. A thin book may not be perceived by the reader as value for m...

posted 8y ago by Mark Baker‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

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Q&A Would it be wise to make the turning point of a story coincidental?

There is nothing wrong with serendipity in a story. Our lives are like that anyway, governed largely by chance. What matters in a story is the moral arc of the characters. What chance occurrences s...

posted 8y ago by Mark Baker‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

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Q&A How do I gather enough material to write a close reading essay?

The basic material for a close reading is the text itself. Literally, you read it closely, line by line. Is it clear what is being said? Are there allusions to things outside the text that may affe...

posted 8y ago by Mark Baker‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

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