Posts by Mark Baker
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...
What you want in a beta reader is someone who you trust to tell you the truth in the spirit of helping you improve, without attempting either to stroke or destroy your ego. You can't trust friend...
A useful way to think about this is, every story you write is set in a world of your own invention, that sits in some relationship to the real world that we live in. The real world that we live in ...
First person narration is a gross violation of common sense. I say this simply to point out that all forms of narrative, or almost all, are a gross violation of common sense. Who is telling this st...
There are three types of conflict in fiction, man vs man, man vs nature, and man vs self. Man vs man and man vs nature are not particularly interesting in themselves without the element of man vs s...
I have no clue what he meant by designed. But I agree with him that you have not designed the documentation. Why? Because you have not created a list of user tasks. Documentation is a response t...
People skip details that they don't care about at the moment. If people are not interested in the details, it won't matter if you put them in a lump or spread the out. They still won't be intereste...
One of the things that every writer has to accept is that they pay far greater attention to every aspect of their work than any reader ever will. Sure, the writer can set up a joke on page 7 and gi...
If you are afraid of being criticized, don't be a writer. You are not writing a documentary. Your responsibility is not to correctly diagnose your characters. Your responsibility is to focus your...
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...
The question you should be asking is not how big a change this is in the world, but how big a setback it this for the protagonist and how does it impact his/her moral arc. The basic structure of st...
I think this would work great -- in a movie. But books are not movies. VR is a visual experience. It engages the sense of hearing and sound, and essentially turns everything else off. It is a world...
"And" can be used sparingly in exactly the same way that "it" and "yes" and "up" and "the" and "how" can be used sparingly. Which is not at all. There are words that are full of evocative power (pa...
None of the things you list are character flaws. They are forms of disability. A person can suffer multiple physical and psychological disabilities and still be of stirling character. A character f...
Dreaming up story ideas is like wandering through a farmer's market. Every stall is piled high with wonderful ingredients. Honey! Turnips! Croissants! Pork Chops! Limburger cheese! Brussels Sprouts...
Prove to yourself and to the world that you can write one decent book. Until then, there is not a lot of point planning a trilogy or a series. Until you can complete one book, you are not going to ...
To me, treat it like a job means two things, principally: First, set a regular work schedule and/or production target. Write from 9am to noon, or from 8pm to 11. Or else set yourself a word count ...
There are a couple of meanings for "pantsing" in writing. One is the saying that in order to write one must begin by applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair. But by far the most c...
People buy books they way they buy vacations. The are looking for a specific kind of experience. There are certain elements that must be part of the experience. There are certain elements that must...
The model on SE was moderation, not curation. Nothing was ever removed. Duplicates, were marked, but never resolved. The only way any kind of curation occurred at all was through voting, and voting...
There is almost never just one antagonist in a story. There may be a chief antagonist, a person who is directly working against the protagonist, but most stories are not actually like that, and eve...
I've never subscribed to this notion that you should just start writing. Sure, depending on your level of skill and experience, some number of things about your first draft will probably be bad. A ...
Quotation marks are for words that are actually spoken. Nothing else. If you must do this, use italics. But don't do this. Don't try to do sound effects. A novel is not a movie. You can describe ...
First of all, there is nothing inherently wrong with describing a character's psychological state and inner thoughts (thought I would suggest focussing on the emotional state rather than the psycho...
