John Baker’s Blog

There is still more to be said about character. There is always more to be said about it. In the last couple of posts we have looked briefly at some aspects of character and how these are brought about. We touched on caricature and on how some figures in a narrative are merely there to [...]

John David Pears (JD) was a writer because literature allowed him to transform the black internal chaos of his days into something crafted and worthy. Although he thought of himself as a novelist he spent an inordinate amount of time playing drums with his group, Fried (not Freud) and the Behaviourists and for the past [...]

How do you know if, instead of creating a rounded character or a personified trait, you have inadvertently created a caricature?
A caricature is someone who can have no other existence except within the special atmosphere of the story. So what you must do is take this figure and try transferring him or her out of [...]

‘Yeah, I’ve been reading those books again. I read all kinds of books. That’s one of the things I do. Everybody in the world does a few things, you know that. Or you might get some people who do lots of different things and they’re crap at all of them. Most of us, we’re good [...]