Getting Started.. GET SET GO.

Getting Started  

Three paragraphs. When you go to  restaurant or bar, jot down your observations in a notebook. In one paragraph, describe a loner’s looks and behaviour. In  another, a couple’s looks and interaction. In the third paragraph, describe how a waiter or bartender communicates with the customers.  Observations such as these are handy when you need to augment a scene in a story. You could do this exercise almost anywhere: in a doctor’s waiting room, in a grocery store, at an airport.

Objective: Using your observations of the world to kick start your story.

Check: Have you found something intriguing in your notes?  Something that raises questions that beg to be answered? Suggests a story?

Two-three pages. Write down your first three memories. It could also be about your first day somewhere: at school, in a new neighbourhood/ city.  Or your first meeting with someone… Can you make a story out of them? If the details are unclear, imagine them. Expand and rewrite in the third person ( forget it’s you).

Objective: To use strong first impressions as story triggers.

Check: While using childhood memories, have you  hooked your imagination to a child’s way of looking at things, childhood logic? If your draft sounds grave and psychological, go back to it and lighten it by inserting  funny insights. Remember that this is not a children’s story but a story about childhood.

One page: Recall a verbal or physical fight, and construct it as one scene

Objective:  Energising a  story by introducing conflict into  it.

Check: Is the writing dynamic? Are the words quick and strong? Remove excess adjectives, adverbs, long words. Use short, crisp words.

Two-three pages. Write  My mother never… at the top of the page, then complete the sentence and keep going.  Read  the draft only after you’ve written the requisite number of pages. As you write, begin to fictionalize.  Construct scenes. Take out sentimentality. Forget the subject is your real mother. Forget yourself, too.  Graft new attributes, attitudes, habits, experiences on the character .  Give her a dream or a secret.

Objective: To prove your background beyond the usual limits.

Check:   Is there something surprising, even outrageous in what you’ve written. If not, maybe you haven’t loosened  up  enough.

Two-three pages . Take  your favourite story from the Mahabharat, Ramayan, Panchtantra.  Rewrite its opening line in your words. Give it a different ending.  Now re write the story in simple dynamic language.

Objective: To learn how to play with variations on a theme.

Check: Do the characters in your story come alive? Have you given some details about the setting? Does the ending work well with the rest of the story?

One page Write an autobiographical fragment in which you use alternating objective and personal sentences. One sentence should set down relatively objective factual details, without bias or interpretation. The next sentence should be a personal opinion; it should reveal a feeling – deep or shallow; it should respond to the factual sentence but not directly. Alternate like this. Write a total of 10 sentences: 5 objective, 5 personal.

Objective: To practice sentence rhythm

Check: Are you exploiting the jagged and irregular relationships between two paired sentences. Does it bring out tangential connections rather than point-counterpoint?

Example

Sentence 1: I was born in a gutter

Sentence 2: The geometry and engineering of urban sewage systems  has always fascinated me.