Build the vocab

Books most purchased and least read are dictionaries. Reason? Dictionaries fail to stimulate the interest. Moreover mere dictionary can never help one build the word power. Not all words deserved to be learnt or used!

Fancy or complicated words are fun to write but create discomfort to reader. Never write those words unless you want to prove your supremacy over reader and are hell-bent to force him refer dictionary.

e.g. “scintillate scintillate asteroid minim” looks fancy but the statement is a challenge for reader to decode whereas “twinkle twinkle little star” is a comfort for even a child.

Building word power is a marathon. Read ‘The Hindu’ daily. This is India’s English newspaper with literary flavor. Have a pencil and write down all the words you are not familiar with – in the newspaper itself. Don’t jump to dictionary; you are reading newspaper complete it; enjoy it. Now search the meaning of all words you have written and write it against it.  Most people read newspaper in the morning with a cup of tea. So keep doing the same.

Now pick the same paper in the night after dinner and copy those word meanings in your notebook. Today’s exercise is complete. Keep repeating this ritual daily and soon you will find encountering same words.

Have patience, keep reading the same newspaper for a year or two. Change the newspaper and repeat the ritual again. 

Building word power takes time and you will emerge as a winner even if you achieve this in 5 years of span. Have a dictionary handy for reference. Install in your cell phone a good dictionary: Oxford or Merriam Webster.

Do review you words’ collection before writing fiction. Use those words you feel appropriate. Once you use any of new word in your writing, you will never forget its meaning.

- Amit Roop

Dialogues – Make the characters speak

I will rescue the world from mysticism and tyranny. Dialogue spoken by Spartan’s King Leonidas. Focus on this and think who can say this? Who is capable to rescue the world? Who has confidence to be able to do this? Who will even bother to do this much? 

This could be none other than protagonist.  Write dialogue to expose characters personality. Write as if they themselves have spoken that. To give the real edge to the scene, many writers don’t hesitate even the language in which that dialogue would have been spoken. Chetan Bhagat has written transliteration in many of his books.

Observe the society, some people have habit of repeating specific words during their conversation. Some have different dialects. Some mix their native language with other language. Every story have various characters belonging to different location and socio-economic status. Decorate your story with these diversities. E.g. Many of Chowkidaars named Bahadur are Nepalese and speak ‘Sh’ for ‘S’ as in ‘Han Shab’.

Don’t just describe the character by its physical appearances, enhance him to look real by the way he speaks. Try to give every character his own unique style. Many writers write dialogues to possess their own personality rather than that of their characters’. 

Write down the complete scene and read the dialogue loud. Does it sound appropriate for the character who is supposed to speak this? The selection of words and style of speaking should match with character’s personality. A professor will not use local language cheap slangs whereas a taxi driver will certainly. A sober rich person will never waste time discussing the souring prices of vegetables; a group of chauffeur will seldom discuss Sensex. 

The writer should have a grip on human psychology. He should demonstrate the extrovert and introvert characters by the choice of words they use while speaking. Read ‘Men are from Mars and Woman are from Venus’ to understand the different viewpoints both men and women perceive things.

Imagine, what would a child say if he doesn’t want to go to school? Probably, he will pretend to feel stomach pain right in the morning and will say: I have severe stomach pain today. That means real life people don’t exactly say what they really want. Create your character to communicate in the same manner. 

There are situations when writers don’t exactly write what real people might say. Consider, you are talking over phone and you repeat many time: ‘what else?’; ‘all well?’; ‘what else?’; ‘all well?’ during the conversation. People repeat sentences while in a conversation but writers mention them only once. 

Dialogues help reader to know about the characters and hidden expositions which are needed for him in order to understand the plot and events of the story. 

Dialogues make the story memorable. Have proper research to make them perfect. Carry on research and rewrite them to sound real.  

Seeds of thoughts:

1)      Write 10 dialogues that only protagonist can speak.

2)      Write 10 dialogues that only antagonist can speak.

3)      Write 10 dialogues that only sidekick can speak.

4)      Write dialogues where your wife wants you to understand that she will not cook food for you tonight or your husband doesn’t want to take you for shopping.

- Amit Roop

Create Scene to Show the Story

After a little drizzling, the sky was clear and Sun was even shinier. I had to rush home. I was waiting at Subhash Chowk for traffic cop to signal. A JCB backhoe was digging the soil at 20 feet left of me. There is a big fly-over construction going on in Subhash Chowk.

It take more than 15-20 minutes to cross the jam daily.  Traffic from right was unstoppable. Honking vehicles were competing one another to move forward, obviously within the boundaries of disciple. 'Oh, what is this guy doing?’ I cribbed for traffic cop. 

Traffic cop signaled the cars - already midway- to move quickly and asked the next truck to stop. The truck was loaded with sand. It kept moving slowly. The cop confronted; he knocked on its bonnet. He shouted, 'I said STOP.' The truck driver accelerated. It got dangerous for the cop and he ran. People were eagerly watching the scene including the army men in an army truck beside me. Traffic cop ran backward and banged on truck's window still the truck driver didn't seem to abide the order. Army men started making fun of the cop, one said, 'these idiots!' God knows whom he addressed. 'Nikal gaya wo to', other said and they all burst into laughter. The cop tried to run faster. For a fraction of second, the cop was helpless. The construction laborers stopped the work. They started discussing among themselves. He ran even faster. This was not to escape but to stop those cars he already had asked to move before the rebel truck. He had stopped 4-5 cars ahead of the truck and jumped to open the truck window. Now was the time for punishment!

After 3-4 tight slaps, he asked the driver to take the left. While moving a bit to the clearer road, the driver again thought to run and gave race. The cop now was on full heroism. He had punched the driver to push out from the driving sheet on the road. He jumped out of the truck and caught his collar.

Soon the rebel was begging for mercy. 

The traffic was stand still for the full of energy scene that was a feel good as 'Triumph of truth' was established. The cop emerged as Hero. One of the army men said, 'This guy got the guts'.

Observe the scene. Let’s concentrate on turning points here. I am the POV character. Everything is written as my view point. So how have things turned before this scene to after? 

Few are the visible changes. Traffic is moving. Traffic cop is doing his job. I have to rush to my home and traffic cop is not giving signal. Truck driver is creating a mess around and the antagonist character for this scene has changed from traffic cop to truck driver. Many of the earlier setup has changed post the scene execution physically. Traffic from right was stopped and ours had been given a green signal. Laborers were working initially, then stopped working and then again returned to work.  This all signifies the outer turning point. After the execution of a scene, it should never remain the same.

Now focus on inner turning point. This consist of the changes pertaining to feelings of every character involved in the scene from POV’s view point. I was cribbing on the traffic cop and ended realizing him as a hero doing his duty well. Army men earlier made a fun of him ended up appreciating him. The feelings didn’t left unaltered post the scene.

Always have some visible outer turning points and inner turning points in the scenes. Show the reader what all had changed. Let him realize the impact of the incident. Many times, mere a news changes everything and characters realize that things will never be same. This news is an incident and surrounding that you can write your scene well.

Even a phone call from someone created greater impact that has remain unaltered throughout the story. Imagine, how many real life stories might have had an irreversible impact when someone had called the POV character to tell about 9/11 attack on United States.  

In case of these larger events, describe how these have changed the lives of all the characters. These may include, earth quakes, terrorists’ attacks, floods. In India, the Kumbh religious gathering had been a major plot of event for so many years in Bollywood movies. Things had never returned to be the same.

Don’t forget to write the scene in detail. Write about the place, geographies, light condition, smell, whether, air or storm, any prominent big object or small relevant object, nearby big building or small yet beautiful cottage. The idea is to make the place memorable. In the above scene, it is clear that a fly-over bridge construction is going on. These objects will be catalyzing POV character’s nostalgic senses at a later stage when you bring him to the same place as a writer.

If you have written the ambiance nicely enough to help reader visualize the place. Bring your POV character again on the same place and make him emotionally connect with something. Create the importance of something over there. You can find an old Vodka bottle lying there and force your character to think about his old friends or you can still show the same old cottage where they – your POV character and his girlfriend - had made love. Remember in Deewar, the hit Hindi movie, the protagonist returns to the Shiva temple at the end where he used to come with his mother but in different feelings altogether. Imagine the impact it had created.

Dialogue are the ways to show the story rather than telling. You make your character dynamic and lively to speak their own feelings. Dialogues are the connections through which writer creates the feelings with place as well as with other characters. But the above scene seems to have very less dialogues, you might have thought the reason by now. This is due to POV character who is standing quite far from the place the activity is going on so whatever he could heard has been mentioned. 

I will elaborate more on dialogues.

Seeds of thoughts: After 10 years of successful marriage when the protagonist goes for vacation to Shimla with his beloved wife, he gets nostalgic as he had come with his girlfriend 12 year ago. Later, he gets shattered to see his girlfriend working as a nurse in a hospital. He however had heard the news that all the passengers were killed in a bus accident 12 years ago. He tries to meet her. She refuse but later agrees. She tells him about her bus accident and she lost all her memory.

She regained her memory and started working in a hospital as she didn’t want to return to her uncle’s house, which is another nightmare. Write the impact of the bus accident. Write why returning to her uncle’s home is a nightmare for her. Write the details of Shimla, the natural beauty and its impact on protagonist’s nostalgic feelings. Write dialogue to have an impact on the feelings to make it deeper.

- Amit Roop