Posts by Mark Baker
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...
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...
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...
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...
Stories are inhabited by archetypes. That does not seem to be a choice. It seems to be what the human psyche craves. One has to ask, after all, why we like stories at all. We can suggest some pra...
This is another version of this question: Intentionally leaving out a part of the story, for a more interesting reveal? In other words, it is a how do I tell something given that I have chosen a n...
Everything in a story has to matter. If you write alternate history, the alternate has to matter to the story. If you put in a detail that is obviously and deliberately contrary to history (as oppo...
I think you have to look at DXM this way: the resolution of the hero's arc has to be merited. The hero can merit their solution by achieving it by their own actions. But they can also merit it by d...
"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 ...
You don't find them. They are hiding from people like you. And from people like me. You might as well announce that you have decided you want to play professional baseball and want to get the names...
This is the result of two misguided pieces of advice given to most aspiring writers today: "show, don't tell", and "jump right into the action". Taken together, these two piece of advice leave no r...
Publications don't explain why they reject things because: a. It takes time. b. If they do, people will argue with them and call them names. c. If they do, people will try to fix the piece and s...
For the sort of poor soul who can only enjoy themselves if they are rooting for one side in a fight, then I suppose that a story that does not take sides will be boring. But that is not and never...
The best place to get critiques is in a critique group or a writing class. In these settings you will get feedback from other writers, or from a writing teacher. These are people who are (to one ex...
I think your premise is a little flawed here. The convention of the novel since its inception is that the narrative is addressed by the narrator to the reader, and that the narrator is free to rela...
It is perfectly acceptable to switch tenses generally, using each as it is appropriate to the thought being expressed. One thing to note in regard to tenses is that the choice of tense has nothing...
Two thoughts: As an author, your job is not so much to show that your character is afraid, but to make the reader afraid for them. The physical expressions of fear are far more often played for c...
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...
The core of this problem may be the misconception that the reader needs to identify with a character. That is oft repeated, but simply not true. A story creates an experience. One way to enter into...
A query letter is a sales tool. The feedback you want is not from writers but from people in the business of selling books. I don't know that there is a reliable way to know if you are getting that...
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...
