Posts by Mark Baker
It depends on whether you are using the local unit of measure for information or for atmosphere. If you use modern units in an historical setting (kilometers and grams in ancient Egypt, for instanc...
A story is how long it is. The short story is a spare medium to begin with. You can't make a decently written story of X words X-500 words without taking something away from the story itself. I t...
It looks like a fish bowl had a baby with a bike helmet. Images, not adjectives, are what you need to describe something that does not look like anything conventional. You won't get close to the de...
It depends. In these matters, it always depends. It it advances or enriches the story, leave it in; if not, leave it out. There is no general rule that says such and such a thing always advances th...
In a month or two I will have a book out on how to do things like this (Structured Writing: Rhetoric and Process, from XML Press). The big question is, what are you going to use to do the selecti...
It all depends on the moral structure of the story. At the heart of every story is a choice about values. (With great power comes great responsibility, etc.) The more conventional structure would...
Two thoughts. Literature is not about the character's emotions. It is about the reader's emotions. In real life, every single TV cop and mystery series detective would be invalided out with PTSD ...
I'm not sure that you do get through this. A story is an experience. To write the story, you have to live the experience, emotionally at least. When a story does not ring true, I think that is usua...
Setting is character. Where you meet someone tells you something about them. It may tell you a lot or it may tell you a little. It may tell you the most significant thing you need to know about the...
The central issue here is not the extent of description, it is focus. Good prose allows the reader to focus on one thing at a time. When it is time to describe, it describes. When it is time to dea...
Long experience has taught many of us that when you send a busy person an email with more than one question, they only answer the first one and ignore the rest. Thus many of us have gotten into the...
The virtuous transgressor is one of the oldest and most popular figures in literature. We find them everywhere from Robin Hood to Dirty Harry. How can a transgressor be virtuous? We all have basi...
The objection I think most people of faith have to their depiction in works of literature is not so much the author's lack of respect but the sheer ignorance of many writers about what people actua...
If you could remove that plot point and the story would remain the same, then it is not a deux ex machina. It is only deus ex machina if the entire resolution of the plot depends on an intervention...
Surely it comes down to identifying what human quality your AI lacks. In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep Philip K Dick identifies that quality as empathy. He takes pains to illustrate the lack ...
Despite the sources that ScottS cites, I believe this idea that you should use a new paragraph for a new person speaking is bogus. Paragraph rules are paragraph rules. You use a new paragraph for a...
"Am I changing POVs if I'm describing what two or more characters are sensing". Not necessarily. If you are writing in what is awkwardly called "omniscient POV" then you can can tell what any numbe...
The theory is bollocks. Here's why: the reader does not need any of it. A story is an entertainment. The reader needs food and water and oxygen and shelter and love. They don't need your novel. R...
Theoretical concepts are always difficult to understand without examples. Plus, the examples can provide evidence of the soundness of the concepts and generally increase the reader's confidence bot...
Well, first, you cannot write about any politically charged issue without being read as taking sides. If you are ideologically aligned with one side, the other will throw rocks through your window....
Historical fiction based on real events is a huge part of the genre of historical fiction. In fact, the taste today seems to be for stories that are as close to historical events as possible, with ...
As has been noted before in relation to several questions on genre, a genre is a promise to the reader of a certain kind of literary pleasure. A blurb is essentially an expansion on that promise. I...
The average western reader would not know the difference if you told them that your heroes rested in the shade of a rhubarb tree or tied their horse to a gigantic parsley. Even western works that ...
First person narratives are not inherently more intimate. You can achieve intimacy or distance in any narrative mode. But in some ways first person can actually diminish intimacy. But first we hav...
A story has to be interesting all the way through. There are many cases of authors withholding information that could be given earlier in order to create a big reveal later. But it has to be done i...
