Posts by Mark Baker
Most writing contests have a fee to enter because they need the fees to pay for the prizes. In fact, a lot of small magazines need fees from their writing contests just to stay in business. A few ...
I can't see why, at time of writing, you would ever include a detail that did not seem apt and necessary at the time. Nor can I see why you would ever omit a detail that did seem apt and necessary....
The accepted answer is reasonable, but I would add this angle. Don't write a synopsis of the plot, write a synopsis of the conflict. There can be a lot of business in a plot and it you try to summa...
The Web is an open book. If you make a connection between two personas it is there for people to find. How likely are they to find it? That is very hard to say. But if you don't acknowledge the rel...
The starting point here has to be to ask yourself whether you are writing a novel or a polemic. If your story is just an excuse to make an argument against some form of discrimination, then you are...
To me, the phrase Show don't Tell can have only one clear meaning, and it comes down to what it means to show. Show means to describe what the reader would see for themselves if they were present i...
I am asking this question because I think we need a precise definition of what Show Don't Tell means if we are to decide if it is good advice or bad, or if it is a valid suggestion for certain pass...
I think the most important reason may be that it is one small step into faery. There is always something of faery about every story. Stories take place in a neater, stronger, brighter world than ou...
I think this is very much a matter of the overall narrative style of the work. Some narrative styles will give you great liberty to do this, some will make it very difficult or forced. The question...
Stories are made up of incidents. Each incident is a distinct unit of storytelling. Incidents lead the protagonist closer to or further from their goal. Each incident has a structure of its own, it...
The best possible sources are the writers you admire. The best possible way to improve as a writer is to read with attention. Good writers read differently, constantly paying attention to the techn...
I think there are good arguments to be made that rhythm and clarity are closely connected. We tend to have a very puritanical view of prose preached to us today. It is all spare and bleached and sq...
Design is the stage. Story is the play. Story is built around desire and the frustration of desire. The stage exists as a place for that desire to be born, to be frustrated, and to be ultimately ac...
Having your own domain does not force you to have only one blog. You can very easily set up two blogs on one domain. It is likely that you have essentially three audiences: People who like tech ...
The first thing that determines how a character acts in a story is not their personality, but their motivation. In short, what do they want. If your characters all want the same thing, they will t...
Look at it this way: artistic license is granted by the reader. You are not entitled to it in any blanket way. Some readers will grant you more; some will grant you less. Generally, they will grant...
You tell it. Show vs tell has become a monster that is twisting fiction out of any recognizable shape. While it is often good advice for particular passages, telling is a fundamental part of the no...
I really don't think there is a reliable way to do this visually in the text simply because whatever visual cues announced to the reader that they have started Part II have long been forgotten befo...
Millions of people bought tickets to see Titanic even though they knew in a advance that the ship sinks. They went back to see it again and again even though after the first time they knew exactly ...
Heed Coleridge's admonition to Wordsworth: "it is impossible to imitate truly a dull and garrulous discourse, without repeating the effects of dullness and garrulity." So this may be one of those t...
Is it possible to make a living as a novelist? Yes, a few people do. Is it sensible to plan on making a living as a novelist, the way you might plan on making a living as a dentist or an accountan...
Places where you can find technical writers: Society for Technical Communication - http://stc.org Your local STC chapter. Technical Writer Mailing List (TechWhirl) - http://techwhirl.com/ Write ...
To be honest, I couldn't even follow it in the question. I wonder if you may just be trying too hard not to have a narrator. I realize everyone wants to do first person narration these days, but th...
Stories are the way human being make sense of life. They are an attempt to impose order on the chaotic stream of events that we experience day to day. History is the interpretation of the stream ...
I think chapter titles are one of the elements that contributes to the sense of a strong narrative voice -- that is, the sense that there is a narrator telling the story. This style is somewhat unf...
