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Posts by Mark Baker‭

1.1k posts
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Q&A How do I turn a premise into a story?

The part that is most obviously missing from what you describe is "why?" Character provides the why. But equally importantly, the why provides the character. A character is a person who would do th...

posted 7y ago by Mark Baker‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A Eliminating the Dash in Prose Writing

The em dash does not mean pause. There is no piece of punctuation that means pause. The em dash is a more emphatic substitute for the comma, colon, or parentheses and can be used to indicate omitte...

posted 5y ago by Mark Baker‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A Why do most literature magazines take so long (several weeks or months) to respond to submissions despite having only a few hundred subs per month?

In addition to what GGx and robertcday have mentioned, it is because the submissions you are talking about, the over the transom submissions, are their lowest priority. Publishing houses, agencies,...

posted 5y ago by Mark Baker‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A Can I assume readers will root for my protagonist in a man vs. beast story?

For us to be interested in your protagonist, there must be more at stake than mere survival. Survival is merely a technical problem. The physical action of an escape story is usually used to explor...

posted 6y ago by Mark Baker‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A Mentioning quickly repeated events in first person?

I knocked several times but no one answered. No more than that. Any emotional response to knocking and getting no answer has to be set up in advance. Show us that a reply was expected. Show us...

posted 6y ago by Mark Baker‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A Avoiding Slang whilst Writing

Neither your individuality or your creativity is precious, no matter what they told you in kindergarten. Your story may or may not be precious, depending on whether it is any good or not. Creating ...

posted 6y ago by Mark Baker‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A Avoiding Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy

At the heart of every story there is a moral choice -- a choice about values. The hero will be brought by some means to a point where they must choose between two things that they love. They may ch...

posted 6y ago by Mark Baker‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A How can I convey an absolute truth from the author to the reader without a mentor character?

If you want to say something to the reader, just say it. You are writing a novel, not a movie. You are narrating the whole thing and everything in it is said by you to the reader. In LOTR, Tolkie...

posted 6y ago by Mark Baker‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A How to describe 4 main characters at once without overloading the reader with information?

By rewriting the book so that the four main characters are not introduced all at once. There is a good reason that most books introduce characters one at a time or two at a time (in the form of a c...

posted 6y ago by Mark Baker‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A Software to draw plot structure charts

I think Dia, which is a general diagram editor, checks most or all of your boxes. http://dia-installer.de/

posted 6y ago by Mark Baker‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A How should I respond to a supervisor/editor who thinks my technical writing is "too conversational?"

There have been significant changes in technical communication style over the last 20 years, and particularly in the last five years as increasing volumes of evidence have shown that simple friendl...

posted 6y ago by Mark Baker‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A How to get started as a freelancer?

To make money as a freelance writer you have to have expertise in something other than writing. Anybody who tells you otherwise is blowing smoke. That can be expertise in addressing a particular a...

posted 6y ago by Mark Baker‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A Do 'text walls' scare off readers?

Almost anything will scare off some readers in some contexts. That does not make them wrong things. It just makes the things that appeal to one person more than another. No work of art or communica...

posted 7y ago by Mark Baker‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A Reasons to use "red herrings"?

I don't think you quite have the sense of what a red herring is. It really isn't a general plot device. It is more a specific technique in a puzzle kind of plot, such as a who-done-it mystery. It i...

posted 7y ago by Mark Baker‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A Is there a template for how to write a movie summarization?

By their very nature, such templates tend to be specific to individual publications. For example, the general shape of a recipe is universal and well known, but the details like whether to include ...

posted 6y ago by Mark Baker‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A How feasible is it to write a story without any worldbuilding?

If your question is, can you set a story in an imaginary place without telling the reader that you have done so, the answer is yes, but the reader will not know that you have done so. The problem i...

posted 7y ago by Mark Baker‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A How do you write a character that HATES being born into a well-off family?

We hate those things that keep us from the things we love. If a character hates being a member of a wealthy family, it is because that family, or its wealth, or its responsibilities, keep them from...

posted 7y ago by Mark Baker‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A Past tense writing troubles. Specifically the word "Now"

Here's how to fix your problem. Pick up your grammar books. Hold them over a fire. Let go. You can't write out of a grammar book. You can only write out of a fluent grasp of usage in the lan...

posted 7y ago by Mark Baker‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A Quote or Italicize Prior Dialogue

It is a quotation so it goes in quotation marks. It is not the function of punctuation to indicate when a speech was uttered. If you need to make that clear, then you must do so in the text.

posted 7y ago by Mark Baker‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A Where would I find a Critique Partner or Group?

I don't think it is wise to try to do this online. You have no idea who you is giving your the critique. Some people will just always be nice. Some will just always be nasty. You can't tell who are...

posted 7y ago by Mark Baker‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A Need recommendation re: online resume format

The sad truth is that today, resumes are read by machines. Machines don't care about aesthetics. In fact, machines can be confused by the characters you insert to achieve aesthetic effect. If human...

posted 7y ago by Mark Baker‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A Should i have four points of view for my novel?

Point of view is nothing more than it says it is. The place where the story is viewed from. In movie terms, it is the position of the camera. To have a single POV is equivalent to shooting an entir...

posted 7y ago by Mark Baker‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A Writing a character that does not share your ethnic background?

Nothing. Everything. In the end, fiction is not about what you have researched, it is about what you have lived. Of course, writers of historicals or space operas have not actually lived in those e...

posted 7y ago by Mark Baker‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A What if my story seems too similar to a particular movie?

There are no original plots left. There are no myths that have not been mined and exploited a hundred times over. And coming up with a new mythos is nigh impossible because the elements of myth are...

posted 7y ago by Mark Baker‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A How much detail is too much?

To answer this question you have to consider the purpose of detail. The purpose of detail is to refine the picture in the reader's head. Readers pull images from their own stock of experiences to b...

posted 7y ago by Mark Baker‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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