Posts by Mark Baker
Using footnotes to substantiate claims of fact by reference to published sources is a common and accepted practice. However, it is more common in academic work, or in popular works that pretend to ...
Yes, those pages are copyright. Copyright is automatic. Everything written is copyrighted from the moment it is written unless it has passed into the public domain or has been explicitly placed int...
I don't think it is reasonable to call a setting thematic in itself. It should also be said that a theme is not a message. A theme is what you deal with in a story or an essay, not what conclusions...
There is an obvious moral hazard in the literary consultancy business, but it is hardly alone in that. There is a moral hazard in the financial planning business, for instance (advisors profit from...
Different writers work in different ways (you are going to hear the terms "plotter" and "pantsers" from multiple people -- plotters being those who plan first and pansters being those who just sit ...
First person limited is not a rule and therefore cannot be violated. It is an analytical category that can be used after the fact to describe what an author has done. The author's responsibility it...
It is not necessary to qualify every statement you make. You are the one making the statement. It goes without saying that you believe the statement you are making. However, there are specific ti...
No, it is not eccentric at all. As I am sure you can tell from reading your two examples, the first is livelier and much easier to read -- and that is 95% of the argument in any question of style. ...
I would not assume that the reason for using a pen name is the desire for anonymity. Sometimes it is about marketing. If your name is Rock Hardplace and you write sweet romances, you probably wan...
This is not an opinion based on academic practice, but on general writing principles: If you think that the typical reader is going to want to read the table when they get to it, include it inlin...
There are occasions where word choice is very important. These usually come where you are trying to express a new idea or make a distinction that people do not usually make. Each word takes the rea...
In Story, Robert McKee warns very strongly about the dangers of writing in scenes. His point is that what makes a story is its overall arc. Given a set of characters you have invented, each with a ...
There are four basic reasons to self publish: The work is not good enough for a commercial publisher to accept. You are not willing to put in the work to get it professionally published. You are ...
Let's start with two basic observations: All dialogue is artifice. People in Jane Austen's day did not speak like characters in a Jane Austen novel. Dialogue is not speech. Genuine transcribed sp...
"Don't confuse the reader" is not a rule, but it is an action with consequences. You can decide to break a rule, but you cannot decide to exempt yourself from consequences. The consequence of confu...
Blog audiences (and for that matter audiences for most content) are primarily built word of mouth (or perhaps today I should say tweet of thumb). Yes, you have to seed the process by making the exi...
How would this be different from having chapter one by about their birth, chapter two be about them at 10, and chapter 3 start the main adventure? This is a perfectly normal progression for many no...
Since it is my answer you are referring to, I will take a stab at this. First, I would generally avoid saying that something is "bad" in writing. It is more useful to think in terms of everything...
In a nutshell, the answer is, humanity. A more human character is more memorable. The great authors are those who seem to have the greatest insight into what it means to be human. I don't think tha...
English grammar is anything but black and white. Everything is debatable, even the definition of "word". Punctuation is not grammar. This is a punctuation question, not a grammar question. Your pu...
Copyright is what it says it is, the right to make copies of a written work. Copyright covers a finished form of expression -- book, movie, etc. It does not cover an idea. There is no protection fo...
If a character knows the people in a crowded scene, they think of them by name, which indicates to the reader that they are in familiar surroundings. If they don't know the people in a scene, then ...
IANAL, but when it comes to rights, it is generally the the right to make copies that is protected. If you own an existing copy of a book you can sell it just like you can sell a chair or a piano. ...
I think you are looking in the wrong part of the bookstore. Certainly that is not true in general fiction (by far the largest part of the fiction marketplace). There are plenty of best selling auth...
I suspect not. Certainly I have never found any proportionality between a line of an outline and so many lines of finished text. A concept or event that you sum up in one line could take ten lines ...
