Posts by Mark Baker
Your story is resolved too easily because no one pays a price for the ending. People face all kinds of practical problems every day and they resolve them in practical ways without much drama. Stori...
I don't know. What this place needs is not more data but more users. Bringing over a few more months of questions from SE would give the few of us who still check in here something to chew on for a...
Notice that you don't "click" a mouse. You point to an object with the mouse point and you press the mouse button. And the mouse button makes a clicking sound. Click is not an action, it is feedbac...
The "last activity" data on posts appears to be inaccurate. I just answered a question, but while the answer count shows my answer, the last activity data still refers to the time the question was ...
"this isn't what I thought I was reading"? This is the key phrase. The reader needs some idea of what kind of book this is. But this is where genre conventions come to your rescue. Each genre ha...
This question presumes are rather economic view of redemption. If the number of good deeds exceeds the number of bad deeds,the characters is redeemed. If their assets exceed the debts, they are red...
One of the most important aspects of writing both fiction and non-fiction is managing the reader's attention. Parts of a scene are for atmosphere. They are meant to flesh out the setting so that it...
All that has been said here about doing research, and about the advantage of the author's omnipotence, is valuable. But there is a more basic answer as well. Don't show how the sausage is made. You...
This question seems to implicitly (at least) confuse behavior and diagnosis. Behavior is how the person acts, and novels are all about behavior, no matter which narrative POV is chosen. Diagnosis i...
The general principle, which would apply in this case as much as in any other is, establish the base and describe the deltas. Don't describe anything in complete detail. Rather, call up a general i...
It is worth observing that some objects have literal structural elements. Buildings, for instance, have a network of load bearing members that allow the building to stand up, as well as countless p...
I just heard about this place (thanks icanfathom). Willing to give it a try. Of course, the first thing I checked on was the code of conduct and, no surprise at all, the only item of contention in ...
Well, I think you need to start by reading Lolita -- not because it will give you a clear answer to your question, because Lolita is hugely controversial to this day -- but because it will give you...
In this answer, Amadeus makes the case for happy endings based on their far greater popularity compared to unhappy endings. This leads me to wonder, what exactly makes an ending "happy"? Before I...
Apropos of the Sequence of Categories can I suggest some standardization of the naming of categories. In particular, I would suggest renaming "Q&A" as "Questions". Yes, questions have answers, ...
You submit what their submission guidelines tell you to submit, nothing more, nothing less, nothing different. If you don't follow the guidelines, they won't even look at you. And the guidelines ...
I love critique groups. I have belonged to a number of them. I have good friends I met because of them. But if you are concerned about your storytelling, it is vital to realize what they can and ca...
I think it is a mistake to think of your story as a set of reveals. A story has a shape and the reader remains interested if they sense that the story is making progress. Tension is not created by ...
It very much depends on what you mean by "real people". You can, of course, make people from history into characters in fiction, as writers of historical novels do, and you can base characters on p...
"The purpose of the book is to convince..." That is likely the source of your problem right there. If a book is didactic or polemical in nature, it is generally only of interest to those who suppor...
Start by writing about a character into whom you have the most insight, about whom you have the most to say. Art is about vision. It is about seeing what others do not see and transforming it into ...
This rule is because it is easier to impose simple rules than to inculcate good taste. In real life, try to develop good taste by reading excellent examples with attention. In class, do what you ar...
By definition, it is not a twist if the reader sees it coming. In fact, there is nothing worse than a plot twist that you see coming. Nothing makes a story seem more contrived than when you see the...
You could think of a subplot like a side dish to a meal. It provides contrasting or complementary flavours that enhance the overall dining experience. How many side dishes are too many? When they...
This is one of the great debates in technical communication. Do you need to be a technical expert or is it enough to be an effective communicator? Different tech writers, and different employers, c...
