The Art of Interweaving an Idea

Dear M,

Though we claim that the best writers do not force their convictions on the reader and they let the readers decide, I believe that they subtly interweave their own opinions about each man and woman into their writing. No, I am not talking about the Show, Not Tell thing.

It's not about the author showing us what a generous, sensitive, large-hearted person the hero is, or how cunning or manipulative someone else is. It's about how they allow a certain thought or an idea to seep in almost imperceptibly into our minds. At the end of the book, that might be the only thought that remains in our mind, and we'll even convince ourselves that the idea had occurred to us, and that it was not planted in our mind by someone else.

In one novel, the author conveys to us (though we cannot recall or locate where we had read those lines) that the hero was the only person who truly understood the heroine's wild side, and actually loved her for it. This feeling keeps coming back to us every ten pages or so.

Much later, after reading the book 2-3 times, it occurred to me that it is not true, the hero did not actually understand her all that much, because if he did, he would not have done something that he did. Then I had to ask myself where in the world did I get such an idea in the first place? It was not mine. I would never have come up with the notion that he was all that understanding. He was supportive, true. But he did not quite get her as much as we believed he did. It was clear then. It was not my impression; it was the author's gentle suggestion and we had all lapped it up.

In another even more famous work, a certain speech is considered to have stirred up the emotions of the public. It did stir me when I read it first. Then as I grew older and read it again and again, it did not seem all that stirrable. But we were talking about the confused, listening mob. I could be wrong. The very fact that I was doubtful about the power of that speech told me that the initial idea was planted in my mind by the author. The author had subtly suggested that the speech was powerful enough to make the mob go crazy. The suggestion was so gentle and undetectable that we, the unsuspecting reader, believed it was true.

Love.

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Merging Plots

Dear M,

I have found the solution. It's perhaps not the best solution, but I am feeling quite adventurous today, and it's perhaps time for a little experimenting. I'm referring to the problem of the surge of stories.

A couple of seemingly brilliant story ideas had been shadowing me for a while now, and I made elaborate notes on both, unsure which one I need to work on next. (After I go back and finish the older one, of course.) The truth is that though both appeared promising, neither had enough material to last the 80k or 100k test. Without having a strong premise, it was not a good idea to plunge into it. There is a third, independent storyline that has made its appearance, to further complicate matters. If only we could finish our masterpieces at the speed of thought itself.

Anyway, today the splendid solution came up - two of those plots could be merged. It may or may not work, the 'splendidness' remains to be seen. There aren't a lot of obvious overlaps between the two, yet there are certain areas that could be reworked on so that a merger can be signed.

I hate to admit I am not overly excited about it. The result should not look as though a half-apple and a half-orange were pasted together in a desperate attempt to make a mango.

Love.

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The story should flow from one line to next

Dear M,

Why do people read some stories even though they aren't particularly curious to know what's going to happen next?

Perhaps the author is their favourite writer. Perhaps, though they know what's going to happen in the end, they want to know how it comes about. Perhaps the opening line caught them unawares and they just could not put the book down after that. Perhaps the writing followed all the best rules of writing and came out perfect. Perhaps they were bored and waiting at the doctor's, and any book would have done.

While there is a certain truth to all of these, the only real reason I can see is the ease of reading.

I have been captivated by the first line of a book, and tossed it aside after reading about five or ten pages. That's all the first line can take you to; no further. I have been bored by the first two pages of a book and just as I began considering throwing it away, it became interesting and absolutely un-putdownable.

The only reason, I repeat, is the flow of the text. The reader should tumble from one line to the next easily, as though the story were flowing, like a river. That does not mean the story should be light and funny and shallow and superficial. It can be unreadably profound and complicated writing, if you like. It could still flow.

How do we write like that so that the story tumbles from one sentence to the next? That's for each of us to find out.

Love.

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Convincing

Dear M,

One of the most challenging things about writing a story is to make it convincing. It is even more difficult when the story is (or intended to be) funny.

In one of the recent episodes of a comedy show in TV (the one with canned laughter), there were a couple of scenes which were not only irritating, but were also unbelievable. "How did they get away with it?" was the question in my mind. I felt as though the makers of the show expected all viewers to be fools to laugh at something like that. Those were deliberate (and poor and even desperate) attempts at being funny. (Apparently that show does well elsewhere.)

There is a thin line between showing something that is impossible in real life while making it appear real and possible, and showing something that is so ridiculous that you just want to run away.

The author should be able to think like a reader. Would I believe something like that?

Love.

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The Comma, the Pause

Dear M,

A long time ago - in fact I think it could have been the turning point in my writerly career - I shared one of my short stories with a friend. He must have realised that I am handing over something very precious that he had to handle with care and eventually return.

He gave my story due respect. He was an avid reader, and I do not know what he actually thought of my story - my encounters with critics had not yet begun. He told me what he liked about the story. He delicately kept from me his negative thoughts, if he had any. It must have come as a surprise to him that I wrote stories, perhaps that surprise alone made up for the drawbacks of my writing.

Anyway, none of that is important here. Something he said to me drew my attention. He said I gave the right kind of attention to the pauses in the story - that my punctuations, especially my commas, were well-placed. Now, that is the last comment I would have expected him to make. Yes, he did speak about the language I used, the plot and other things, but today this is the only thing I remember from our conversation.

Normally no one pays a lot of attention to the punctuation while reading, except a person who knows what he is talking about. A person with a keen eye. A person who knows writing. Most importantly, a person who knows reading.

We read a book in our mind, true, but we're actually reading it out aloud. Without the pauses, the commas, the semi-colons, the exclamations, the hyphens, the full-stops, we do not comprehend the text the way we should. One could write very well without many of those, there are writers who dislike the semi-colon. But each of these serve a purpose to the reader. They could be annoying when overused, but most often they give the right feel to the reader.

I have heard that reading our story out loud is very useful in fixing (polishing) the style. I am sure when we read aloud, we pause at the right places. These pauses and exclamations could get converted into punctuations which will help the reader read it exactly the way you want it to be read.

Love.

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A story can be told in many ways

Dear M,

There are several ways a story can be told. There is no best way, there is no perfect way. More than the flow or the approach or the angle in which it is told, it is more the presentation.

Imagine a painting competition for children. You give them all a topic, say, Independence Day. If there are fifty children participating, there will be fifty new pictures, none of them alike, except perhaps for the presence of the National Flag. And yet will you be able to say which picture is better or the best? (Competitions do come out with a "winner", though.) If we look at those with a creative eye, there will be something original, new, different, appealing, endearing, in each one of them.

The same goes with stories: with the same plot and characters, different people can write in different ways. A reader may choose some of them as better than others, but that is based on his or her own priorities.

The point here is that there might be different ways to tell the story we want to tell, and we could run our mind over these possibilities, as far as we know, to choose the best possible presentation. Maybe somewhere along the writing, we would find that there is a better way of narration. If we are sure that would work better, then alter it. Maybe some readers are not going to like it; maybe some will. But ultimately, the author has to be satisfied. If he/she isn't, then the chances of a reader liking is next to nil.

Love.

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Brilliant at jobs, not so at Writing?

Dear M,

Many of us have jobs outside of writing, and are very good at it too. We've been appreciated, and we know we are as close to perfection as humanly possible. We're dedicated, hard-working, talented, good learners, and, if I may say so, indispensable. If we put in our papers, our colleagues are going to be devastated.

So why is it that, we are so brilliant at our jobs, but we aren't so at our creative pursuits? Why aren't we the winners, the way we are at office? Why aren't publishers or agents racing after us, the way our Bosses do?

Because job, most of the time, is different from creativity. This is a general statement. Many people do creative work that is as demanding as writing itself. But many others do work that has a definition, a certain expectation, some sets of rules to follow. There is, in most cases, an expected outcome.

When we write a story, or a novel, we're not working on any definition. As the author, we know what we're going to write about. But we do not have a sample or template to refer, we cannot get our work reviewed by others (except for editing suggestions), we do not have input specifications, we do not have a list of expected output.

Which is why it isn't easy. Which is why, one person may say it is great, while the other would find it boring. Which is why, our writing style may appeal to some while it would put off some others.

We have to tackle and master the craft, just as we did with our jobs. And if we are determined, we could be as good.

Love.

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Back up your work

Dear M,

In the early days of my acquaintance with the computer, I used to forget to save my work. I should also say that those were the early days of computer in my neighbourhood too - which means, not many had heard of such things as UPS, and a power failure meant your unsaved work was gone. After losing my precious slowly-typed-in lines several times, I learned to do Alt+F+S.

Now we do not have that issue where power failure could cause our beloved work to be lost, however there still hangs above our heads the possibility of a hard drive crash, or something similar where we could lose our data.

Today, we have so many alternatives to keep our work safe. If you say you lost your 75,000 words of your novel because of a system crash, no one is going to be sympathetic. No one's sympathy is going to help anyway.

Software like MS Word have the option to save your data as you work. In recent versions, auto-recovery is enabled by default, and in other versions, there is an option to "auto-save" your work every few minutes. Enable it.

Use an external hard disk or a pen drive. Keep saving the entire folder of your work into it, once or twice a week. Just dump the whole thing there.

Find an online location like Dropbox, and sync your folder.

Take care that you know where the latest work is - keeping different versions in different places could lead to confusion and eventually, madness.

Love.

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Fearing the Family and Friends

Dear M,

I think one of the drawbacks of people reading our books is that they try to see us behind the stories. We, as story-tellers, try to narrate different stories from different perspectives, we try to place ourselves in the shoes of others. But when our friends read the stories, they (some of them at least) imagine that we are the protagonists. That it has to be our story. That there must be an element of truth in it. I have been asked about a couple of my stories, if such a thing has happened to me. They never actually believed it when I said it wasn't my story, that it was in no way related to me.

It is a very difficult situation, if you ask me. Imagine our story exploring forbidden topics. What conclusions are the reader-friends of ours going to arrive at? We have a major crisis arising from misunderstanding heading for our doors. I have often wondered if I can get away with an anonymously written book. (I don't fancy wasting my life explaining my stories to others.) But the problem would be marketing it. How can an anonymous author promote his/her work on the Internet? This isn't like the olden times when the publisher took care of all the sales and marketing.

We should, as they say, have a thick skin if we want to write about sensitive topics that could raise an eyebrow or so - within the family. Yeah, we can face the nation's wrath, but the family's floors we fear to tread. At some point, though, we have to decide whether the need to write would triumph over the fear of a few scowls or raised eyebrows.

I remember reading that Rushdie's educated father was annoyed at the way the protagonist's father was represented in Midnight's Children, but his mother was okay with it; everyone knew the story was loosely based on Rushdie's own life.

Love.

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Writing in the Mother tongue

Dear M,

Why is everyone reluctant to write in the mother tongue? Well - not everyone, many people do write spectacular pieces in their language. But there are some, torn between English and the mother tongue, (wasting time) wondering which one to choose. The regional language has a limited audience, I was told. Probably true to some extent. In this age of publicising books through the Internet, a global language might be a better choice.

But again, aren't we looking at the wrong thing here? I tell this person to stop thinking about the audience. What do you like to write in, which language are you confident in? Specifically, when you think about writing, or when you scribble unconsciously in your notebook, how do the words come out?

Because if you think in English and try to translate to the mother tongue, it could come out wrong. If you think in the mother tongue and try to translate to English, it could come out wrong. A lot of things depend on how it emerges at the first attempt - though we can edit and polish it, if the first output is robust enough, it is easier to work on, later.

Some people are proficient in both (or many) languages. They have the luxury of choosing the language they want to write in. All of us may not be manufactured so.

I don't know. For some, the best thoughts are presented well in the mother tongue, that's what I think. And I also don't agree with a person choosing English just for the audience, because if the writing isn't good, there will be no audience.

Love.

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Nothing Short of Perfect

Dear M,

Most of us dream of the day when we can stop working for others and be our own masters. For writers who take writing seriously enough, it more or less means becoming a full-time writer. Every time our boss seems disappointed with us, we wish we could put in our papers, wave farewell and sit at home, writing.

We dream of people asking us, What are you working on now?
Oh I am working on my dream project, something that has been on my mind for a very long time... I have been researching on this for one-hundred-and-twenty-seven years...

Then we write knowledgeable articles on how a writer can develop discipline: I think discipline is necessary for a writer. Take me, for instance. I get up at five and write for two hours, then I read the newspaper and attend to the house and my family, from nine I again write non-stop for four hours. In the afternoon I take a nap, I read for two and a half hours, and take an evening walk. The fresh air inspires me to write new twists in my story. Then I spend an hour attending to fan emails. After dinner I write again for one hour, watch TV with the family and go to bed...

That felt good, didn't it?

In the meantime, we are still pushing against the odds, looking up heavenward and seeing the dream amidst the clouds, mocking us...

Getting published is like having your appraisal (yeah, I might have said this before, I can't get that feeling out of my mind!). It is not enough that you perform well in the organization, it is also important that others don't perform as well as you - it is a silly, comparative grading system. It is not enough that you write great stuff, it is also important that none of the other new authors write anything significant, so that the publisher throws everything out and looks at your MS alone.

So our MS has to be nothing short of perfect. Our boss isn't going to think, oh s/he has put in so much effort into this, let me be kind. He is going to mercilessly sift through our work, find flaws and grade you against the better performers (and send you polite and apologetic rejection slips).

Love.

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Writing Single-Line Emails

Dear M,

One of the most difficult things for a writer to do is to write a simple, single-line email, where the content is not even important.

For instance, a couple of days ago I received a mail from a colleague: PFA the xyz document. What was important was the document that was attached. The PFA line was intended only to alert me to it.

When it was time for me to send a file to someone, came bewilderment. I could never type "PFA". If I were sending a text message, I might resort to short forms like that. I type rather fast on the keyboard, and I don't think "Please Find Attached" should take more than a few seconds to the slowest typist.

Now coming to "Please Find Attached", what kind of language is that? Highly corporate? Technical? Insensitive? Trying-to-sound-important? Too-busy-to-type? I call myself a writer, for God's sake. How can I write like that? Besides, writers generally have an aversion to the Passive Voice.

So I would not type anything as unwriterly as Please Find Attached. So what else can I say? "Attaching the document" sounds kind of okay, though the -ing form is harrowing. More importantly, where has the "I" gone? No one writes "I" any more. Hope you're doing good. Have taken care of it. Will do. Want to see how it goes. Am fine. 

The writer is writhing in agony, seated before an email with an important attachment, trying to compose a single line that the recipient is not even going to read because his interest is (rightly) in the document.

I have attached the document with this email, I finally wrote, and hit send before I could think any further.

In comparison, a novel seems so less torturous.

Love.

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The fast-food of writing

Dear M,

I should confess that I am not a huge fan of short fiction. I read them whenever I come across them, and I do find some of them very well-written and thought-provoking and profound. But somehow I am not into it. They make me feel as though we are in a hurry to get somewhere and we're quickly getting it out of the way before we leave. (Though I know every word that is written must have taken the authors hours to perfect.)

Short fiction, in my eyes, is the fast-food of writing. Not a lot of time and effort go behind the making (comparatively) and it is consumed easily and quickly. Somehow the hurry I experience when I read it, the fact that it is over before it has begun etc. take the fun out of reading it.

And by short fiction, I do not mean very short stories. A short story has a more spacious feel to it (don't compare with novels!). There could be the semblance of a story in it. A little more something goes into it. And comes out of it. That is not necessarily the case in short fiction.

It would be unfair for me to criticize it too much - after all, my likes are only my likes. It is not the universal truth or such. Maybe some day I would be tempted to venture into it.

Love.

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Repetitive Scenes

Dear M,

We don't notice the recurring themes / scenes / thoughts / words in our own writing. Especially when we have been writing for several years. In the initial phase, we would remember every word, every line, every thought that went behind our stories because we would be reading it over and over again. But as time passes, the older writing fades from mind. We end up writing something very similar, in a recent story.

I noticed recently that my stories always revolve around a certain period in the history of our country. Our generation does not have the luxury of being part of the independence struggle, or the world war, or any of those exciting times. If we wish to write about those events, we need to research and understand what it must have been like. (Some day, perhaps.) As of now, I would write about events I have known. And there are a couple of them standing apart in memory or in the stories I have heard from people around me. Events which I might have been part of, but was too young to remember much of; events that were so real, so close, that a shudder goes up my spine when I remember it.

And these events draw me to them like a magnet and in three isolated instances I noticed that I tried to include these in my story. While it could be done harmlessly, we could also mess it up for the reader, who might dare to read a second book of ours: Oh !*groan* Why does this author have to write about that event in every single novel?

We certainly don't want that, do we?

Love.

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The Soul of the Story

Dear M,

What is the soul of a story, the factor on which a story revolves, the thing that makes the story human? (Assuming we are talking about stories involving humans or living things that think and behave like humans)

Our unpredictability. We decide to go to office, and half-way through, we remember how tiresome the day is going to be, how our boss is going to hammer us out of existence, how our colleagues are going to make us feel inferior, how our work is going to extract the last ounce of happiness from us - and then we take the next U-turn on the highway, and head towards the nearest mall and watch a couple of movies and eat to our heart's content and even play a bit in the play arena with the wide-eyed kids there. When we didn't turn up at the office, our boss gets irritated (and kind of relieved that he doesn't have to make a choice any more) and decides to award the big project to the next eligible (and available) candidate. So a small detour in our routine brought in a sparkle to a few lives.

That's it with writing stories - if you go in a pre-determined route, it may sound very robotic. That's not how people behave. We have unpredictability in a good measure - and it is triggered by jealousy, laziness, tiredness, anger, disappointment, excitement and a whole host of emotions. Most of the time we are unthinking when we act, and then we scramble to set things right.

That's what makes our story endearing. He prepared well, took the test, and won. -- No fun at all.

Love.

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The title of the story

Dear M,

A single phrase can trigger a story - have you ever experienced that? You hear a forgotten proverb or a peculiar phrase used by a person and - a whole chain of events is set into motion. The entire story hinges on that phrase which you then recognise as the title of the story. No other title can be more apt.

But there are times when you do not know what the title could be: we always start with a working title, something we know isn't final, but we need it to get going. We cannot name it novel#1, of course. Not when you are constructing an entire world in earnest. So we start with something as mundane as Life's Like That or something.

And as we write, or when we look back after we write, or at some other point in time we have a revelation - and the title walks out of the darkness and into the light. Do you know what you should do when it happens? Take a pen, reach for a paper and jot it down. It is very important. The title does not make its appearance all the time. If you lose it, you may not find it. Another title may emerge in due course, but nothing will be as perfect as the one that had stepped out from the story when the time was right.

I lost a title that way, and learned a lesson.

Love.

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Write Like There's No Tomorrow

Dear M,

Frankly, what do we know about tomorrow? Does it exist for us at all? We don't know what it has in store for us. Better get our writing out there before it decides not to come.

If we postpone for tomorrow, we may never get a chance. And our masterpiece never became a masterpiece because we had left it uncreated in our mind, waiting for a day that had no intention of arriving.

Write like there is no day, no night; write like there is no one to ever read; write like it does not matter what you write or think; write like you are the best author of all times; write like you are a five year old picking at alphabets.

It is better to write like a five year old than not write at all. It is better to die writing than to die regretting the thousand words that could have been written.

If you are a writer, write to prove yourself.

Love.

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Leave Arranging for the End

Dear M,

I have been working on something for the past week - no, I am not talking about writing-work, I am talking about work-work. So this work involves a lot of research and gathering of info and arranging them. Everything is available, in different forms. I get them if I open a document or call someone up. My job was to collect all that was required and get them into some order.

I spent two days thinking about how to arrange them. It is true that I got a fair idea about it just by thinking. But when I started doing, I began to face obstacles. On the third day, I let the arrangement go - and I began to just dump what I had into a "work-area". Imagine a lot of crumbled paper lying on the floor around you.

Once I had most of them in whatever format in front of me, picking them up and arranging was (or seemed) easier.

I am sure you are clever enough to know what I am arriving at. No matter how much time you spend thinking about all the wonderful things you want to write, when you actually start writing, it is a whole new ball game. Thinking is a very good preparation indeed, but if that's all you do, how will you ever get anywhere? The best way is to just write what you have in mind as it comes out, and worry about ordering and arranging them, later.

Love.

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Why would anyone read what we write?

Dear M,

Why should anyone want to read what we write?
There should be something in it to interest them, to catch their attention. They are not keen to read our autobiography, just because we think it is exciting. The reader should be able to connect with it at some level, or find it funny or interesting or intriguing or true. There should be some amount of curiosity to see where it is headed.

If not, it will begin to look like a blog which means nothing to anyone. In defence of blogs, that's what they are meant to be. But that's not the case with books. When blogs (once known as weblogs) became famous, their promotional tag line was, "your online diary". A trifle contradictory of course, because who would want to put their diary (which they keep away from the eyes of people they know) online - where the entire world can read it? But, strange as it may seem, the fire spread. The definition of blogs changed and became ambiguous and all-inclusive.

But we aren't talking about blogs. Books are a different story. And unless that story is captivating, there are not going to be a lot of spectators. We don't need a lot of spectators for our writing; but if we are looking at publishing, then, yes, we do need some audience.

And how do we ensure our audience likes what they read? The discussion continues...

Love.

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Getting the Grammar Right

Dear M,

I am a little put off. I had been reading a bit of stuff online. Whenever I see something that is classified as 'short story', I am interested. I came across something today. Reading the introduction about the author, I was immediately enthralled. I left the rest of the intro and plunged into the story.

I admit that before I completed reading the first paragraph, I scrolled down to see how long it is, how does it look in its entirety, etc. Stupid things, but I like to get the feel of it before I read it. These facts do not alter my overall judgement, they just help me decide if I should read it now or put it for later.

And in that scroll-down, my eye settled on a couple of sentences of dialog. Then I closed the window and left the area.

Call me a grammar Nazi if you like, but if we are attempting a story in English, we should get the grammar right. At least as close to right as possible. I am not talking about small typos or errors that escape our eye. Trust me, we can make out if the writer knows English or not. And a story written in bad English is not a captivating story-in-English.

We should write in whatever language we are comfortable in. Why are you so adamant that you should write in English? If you are eager to reach a wider audience, get someone to translate it for you.

And this statement does not include general blogs, email communication, comments and a host of other things. We can excuse the mistakes in all of those, and say that it is the idea that counts. Language is after all, intended to communicate. But if you call it a story in English, the language has to be at least above average. There's no escaping it. Otherwise people are going to close it and run away - like I did.

Love.

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