It’s not plagiarism if you add ‘reinventing’ to ‘borrowed ideas’. Think about it, aren’t more than 90 percent of our beliefs borrowed? The world is too large a teacher and we its willing pupils.

As far as novel writing is concerned, it is wise to borrow the best of the best ideas from great authors, and reinvent them using your own unique mind. Continue Reading »

It hurts. No human could deny that. You are dreaming of seeing your novel as a book, taken up by a reputed publisher, selling millions of copies worldwide, the media hounding you, you an established writer of fame; and then one day a rejection slip drops down on you like a bomb. It hurt. As if that were not enough, more come to torture you. You go into depression, hate your book and curse your fate. It isn’t fair. Continue Reading »

Chaos is where creativity is born. Before a polished piece of fiction, there are hundreds of elusive, half-formed ghost thoughts and ideas. Welcome to a writer’s brain. It’s all confusion, writer’s block, semicolons, full stops in there out of which through sheer willpower, thinking and planning a writer moulds a creative piece that makes sense and much more than that. Continue Reading »

Here is a list of what all you will need to include in your character sketch -

• Character name, age, gender

• Appearance
(Face, hair, weight, height, structure, features, skin color)

• Physical and personal strengths and weaknesses
(Body type, hair, eyes, facial features, dress, posture, movements, mannerisms, speech) Continue Reading »

Chipping walls of a house, brick floor, narrow streets, an old rug, leaking ceiling and a bed made of hay. These six objects fill up a vacant space in the mind to bring out the picture of a poor home. A carefully chosen collection of objects is a smart way to delineate your story world. Use utensils, home decoration, structure of buildings, clothes, texture of earth, vegetation, accessibility of a place etc. to fine tune the story world in your fiction. Continue Reading »

Yossarian; David Copperfield; Stevens, the Butler; Scarlett O’Hara; Heathcliff; you remember them all. They don’t exist in real life, still you see them in your head as clearly as your neighbor. That’s queer, that’s magic. To create such magic, you need to know the tricks, the technique and then you can effortlessly pop out real beings from your fiction.  Continue Reading »

Writers have a charming life. They don’t face conflict at work because they work alone. That cuts out a lot of friction, spark and explosions. But in fiction, he knows he needs to create friction where there is none.

I. Incompatibility between characters or division within a character is a very common form of conflict in fiction writing. Some of the examples of character vs self can be found in the following books:
• Macbeth by William Shakespeare (Dichotomy within the character of Macbeth leading to the tragedy) Continue Reading »

Scenes are like bricks in a house. They are disjointed, but glued together. Scenes too need to stick together to create a structure that has beauty and system. You can say scenes are the building blocks of a novel.

Even before you write the first word of your novel, your mind is already overflowing with what to write. Sometimes, it is the characters who dominate your thoughts and sometimes the plot. As fiction writers, we can’t always trust our thoughts. Continue Reading »

Inspiration has stuck. You’ve finally got to a Great Idea that can be turned into a spectacular novel. You are excited and you want to start writing now. But when you get to the computer, all you can write are disjointed threads of your Great Idea. You deflate like a balloon and ask yourself. What’s wrong? How do I turn the Great Idea into a Super Novel?

To get to the final answer, we must answer some related questions. Continue Reading »

No writer writes to keep their baby under wraps. You’ve got a great idea and you want to share it with the world. Excellent! But wait a sec. How are you going to do that? The world is 6.60 billion people; and selling is tough job. The first step to sell your novel is to write what sells.

These are a few things you need to think about to write a bestseller: Continue Reading »

Thank God you don’t have to dig for miles to get your raw material. But you do need to dig into people. Poking your nose in other people’s affairs is a must-do for writers. And still we don’t get a bad name. How lucky!

Another civil way to do it is to get it through your eyes, ears, nose and the other two senses. Continue Reading »

Even if you aren’t an avid reader, you still must have read hundreds of books. Most read for entertainment, some for learning and very few for writing. You are one of those 0.001% of world population.

At best, reading improves your writing. And reading great writers of your genre gives you a clue to great plots, narration, similes, metaphors, style, voice etc. Let’s see some of the great lines I picked up from some great books by some great authors. Continue Reading »

Welcome to the first article of our new series, Novel Writing!

Thinking like a novelist is like any other kind of conditioning. You were born into a religion, a country and your outlook shaped itself around it (though you escape from some of it by rationalizing). You are into a profession and you adopt its characteristics. More so than anything else, it’s adaptability.

The same is true for the writing profession. If you keep at writing for years, you will undoubtedly develop a sense for it. Continue Reading »

In our new series, Novel Writing, we will discuss every possible aspect of novel writing, from the germination of ideas to the publishing of the final draft.

Here is the list:

1. Thinking like a Novelist

2. The importance of Reading

3. Collecting the Raw-Material

4. Write a novel that Sells Continue Reading »

The hot wind charged into the room from the window, stung Kesha on the cheek, then comfortably spread out like an unassuming guest.

‘Close the window!’ Rishi said from behind the newspaper.

‘With so much smoke from the parathas, we will either die of suffocation or get killed by the heat,’ she said, slapping a ball of dough on the slab.

Rishi didn’t answer. Continue Reading »