Kill the confusion!

Where there is no knowledge, there is no confusion! Confusion definitely means you are familiar with the topic.

Confusing and error prone situation might occur while writing due to various reasons e.g. two or more words having similar spelling or pronunciation, two or more words or phrase having similar meanings etc. It’s less fatal as a reader because before confusion encounters you would become familiar with the context and figure out the whole idea of the paragraph.

However, as a writer you cannot afford to write 'weak' when you intended 'week'. Remember to use spell check carefully.

• Amicable and Amiable

‘Amicable’ is used for circumstances that are agreed peacefully. ‘Amiable’ is used for friendly people.

• Convince and Persuade

‘Convince’ is used for changing once beliefs and values logically. ‘Persuade’ is used for motivating someone to act logically.

• Differ from and Differ with

‘Differ from’ is used for referring ideas. ‘Differ with’ is used for referring people.

• Disinterested and Uninterested

‘Disinterested’ means impartial. ‘Uninterested’ means not interested.

• Loose, Lose and Loss

‘Loose’ means not attached with. ‘Lose’ means Fail to win. ‘Loss’ refers to which is vanished or destroyed, this is used as noun.

• Maybe and May be

‘Maybe’ means perhaps. ‘May be’ means might, this is a helping verb.

• Quiet and Quite

‘Quiet’ means silent or still or tranquil. ‘Quite’ means entire.

• Amount and Number

‘Amount’ is used when you cannot count that is being referred. ‘Number’ is used when you can count that is being referred.

• Continuous and Continual

‘Continuous’ means repetitive without interruptions for given time period. ‘Continual’ means repetitive but permits the interruptions.

•  Feel bad and Feel badly

‘Feel bad’ refers to emotions. ‘Feel badly’ refers to physical senses.

• Between and Among

‘Between’ is used when you are referring two people or things. ‘Among’ is used when you are referring more than two people or things.

• Fewer and Less

‘Fewer’ is used when items referred can be counted. ‘Less’ is used when items referred cannot be counted.

• Good and Well

‘Good’ is used to describe a noun. ‘Well’ is used to describe a verb.

• That and Which

In all cases of adding non-essential clause ‘which’ is used and in all other cases ‘that’ is used. A comma is essential before ‘which’.

• It's and Its

‘It’s’ means It is. ‘Its’ is used for possessive however apostrophe is not required.

• Eminent and Imminent

‘Eminent’ means well known and famous. Imminent means about to happen.

• Affect and Effect

‘Affect’ is a verb and ‘Effect’ is a noun. ‘Affect’ means to have an impact on and ‘Effect’ means results.

• Acronym (<Full Form>) and Full Form (<Acronym>)

The rule is to keep the less popular inside the parenthesis.

• Licence and License

Licence is noun and License is verb.

• Power of attorney or attorney under power

Power of attorney is a document. Attorney under power is the person.

• All right or alright

Alright is not a correct word. All right should be used.

• All ready or already

All ready means prepared. Already means prior.

• Anyone or any one

Anyone is a right word. Any one are two words.

• Back door or backdoor

Back door is noun. Backdoor is adjective.

• Blond or blonde

Blond is male, Blonde is female.

• Cannot or Can not

Cannot is right word. Can not are two different words.

• Common sense or Commonsense

Common sense is noun. Commonsense is adjective.

• Dissociate or disassociate

Dissociate is correct usage. Disassociate is wrong.

• Downside or Down side

Downside is correct usage.

• Upside or Up side

Upside is correct usage.

• Extraordinary or Extra ordinary

Extraordinary is correct usage. Extra ordinary are two words.

• Goodwill or good will

Goodwill is correct usage. Good will are two words.

• Holistic or wholistic

Holistic is correct usage. Wholistic is wrong.

• Dependant or Dependent

Dependant is noun. Dependent is adjective. Independent is both noun and adjective.

• Meter or Metre

Meter is an instrument for measuring things. Metre is the unit of length.

• Ongoing or On going

Ongoing is correct usage. On going are two words.

• Overdo or Over do

Overdo is correct usage.

• Playwright or playwrite

Playwright is correct usage. Playwrite is wrong.

• Flammable or inflammable

Both are correct and both means things which are under risk of catching fire easily.

• Born or Borne

Both are past participle of to bear. Born is mainly used in context with Birth e.g. India-Born. Borne is mainly used where to bear means to carry e.g. water-borne disease.

• Like or Such as

Like means similar. Like should not be used to synonymously to such as or for example.

• Sex or Gender

Sex should be used to refer male or female persons. Gender is used to refer masculine, feminine, common and neutral genders.

• BC, AD or BCE, CE

BC means Before Christ and AD means Anno Domini i.e. In the year of the lord. This naming convention was seemingly imposing Christian beliefs in non-Christian countries so CE and BCE are termed to represent the same. CE means Common Era and BCE means before the common era.

- Amit Roop

POV

Devils and gods joined their hands for churning the ocean. It was for the ever-increasing desire of ambrosia and they decided to distribute it equally. Ambrosia did skimmed out of the ocean along with other valuable things: Goddess Laxmi, Divine elephant, Divine Horse, Divine Cow, Divine tree etc.

Devils were not interested in all these things so gods have taken them all. At the end, gods cheated devils with the help of mastermind Vishnu. They didn’t give even a drop of ambrosia to devils.

Did any of the story teller portray gods as antagonists and devils as protagonist in this story?

Devils were still evil and gods were still good so supreme law prevailed at the end - triumph of good over evil!

How had this happened? This is because of POV (Point of View). The POV through which story had been written.

There are 3 POVs:

-  Omniscient (Writer interact directly with reader and explicitly or implicitly addresses reader as ‘You’)

-  First Person (Writer portrays as if he himself is one of the character in the story and narrates the story)

- Third Person (Writer carries POV of one character at one time and narrates the story through his POV and still calls him as 'He' or 'She')

Omniscient:

Writer exposes himself as a Know-it-all person and interact reader directly without peeping through any of the existing character of the story he is narrating. 

‘Rama Nath, his father used to run a grocery shop and he had taken retirement from his business due to old age. His elder son, Aditya's brother, Rohit is very soft spoken, simple and emotional man. He had learnt the intricacy of jewelry from his uncle Uma Nath, more than 10 years younger than Rama Nath. He also had a jewelry shop in the same lane but was famous due to his proven prowess in Jyotish and abilities to exorcise the evil.

Don't expect it to be the tale mixing heterogeneous topics including 8 semesters of engineering, complexity of “Theory of Computation” and “Compiler Design”, romance immersed in the college premises, innocent brains, cute faces, maple leaves floating in the air and stupid hormones of young engineers. Rather a trip to pillory will be much more interesting.’

Writer directly tells the reader what would be interesting. There is nothing wrong since writer is the owner of his craft. This POV is mainly used in non-fiction writing were expert write about his topic.

First Person:

Where writer himself is a character, mostly protagonist. The entire story will be written from that character's POV and writer cannot tell what that character cannot see or know.

'Yesterday, I met Kechu; hell lots of wrong had happened to him. We both were neighbors but when this sewage line work was going on, we were dug out from our homes and thrown to a filthy area near a dhaba. I remained there but Kechu is little ambitious so he moved to nearby drain. He thought that he will have plenty of moisture, mud and therefore food.

But yesterday when I thought he was having mud massage, he was actually trying to alleviate himself from burns. I asked, 'what happened Kechu?' He told, 'You know I used to stay near drain. Later I moved closer to dhaba and observed it. That is a kind of dhaba where something keeps on cooking in spite of less number of customers. That is a B2B model; lots of Chow Mein vendor, Dabeli vendor and Burger vendor takes half cooked stuff from there.'

He further told, ‘that day, one Chow Mein vendor was steam bathing lots of earthworms. All those looking like firangs; they were not brownish like us. Then he carried all those in a wooden vessel to keep in his cart. The wooden vessels slipped and all those fell on the ground above me. I felt a cozy steam; I enjoyed being with them. The Chow Mein vendor collected all and put inside his cart. I willingly got mixed to enjoy more time with them. Chow Mein vendor quickly collected all as if he was afraid someone could watch him doing that.'

Most of the writers starting their career in fiction use this POV in their first novel. 

Third Person:

This is the most used and easy to handle POV. Writer carries a POV of one character and reveals everything as if he is watching everything from his eyes. Writer describes other characters' dress, character, and behavior from view point character's eyes and even calls characters' with the name view point character calls them.

It is recommended to maintain the same character's POV for one scene or at least a paragraph. Though writer knows it all but he reveals only from his POV character and will never interact reader directly.

While editing first draft this should be carefully checked for common mistakes: If the POV character (expressed as He/She) goes to some place and experiences it. Writer will write exactly what the character notices e.g. character cannot see his own eyes' color so no matter how grave the feelings need to be expressed. Consider below sentence:

‘His dark brown eyes turned red with just the thought of being jilted.’

The solution to this type of POV blunder is to replace every he/she with I with few grammatical changes and check whether every statement makes sense. The benefit of this POV is that writer reveals information slowly and is justified also to make the narration interesting.

It is not recommended to change POV every now and then and if you do it, change the chapter or give an explicit break by 3 asterisk and start a new paragraph.

 

Seeds of thoughts:

A king named Janak, ploughed the drought hit fields as a ritual to please rain god. He un-earthed a pitcher and got a baby girl crying inside it. The king has no child; he adopted her and provided her all the luxuries, best education and father’s love. The girl grew to become an epitome of beauty and brain. The king got her married in a swayamvar to most eligible bachelor of that time.

After marriage, she was expelled from the royal palace of her in-laws and forced to live in jungle along with her husband and brother in law. A daemon king kidnapped her for a revenge and later got attracted to her beauty. She was tortured in wicked king’s kingdom.

Her husband managed to rescue her there but failed to retain his marriage and expelled her for the pressure of his subject. The mistake she had committed was to survive in daemon’s den. Even fire’s flame couldn’t burn the profanity.

She was pregnant yet didn’t go to her father’s palace as she didn’t want to demonstrate feminine weakness. She was blessed with two brilliant boys in an aashram of a saint. She hand-overed them to her husband and took Samadhi by burying herself to her supreme mother earth from where she has taken birth.

Write the ordeal from her father’s POV. Poor dad who loved her so much but couldn’t rescue her. The father who before her marriage, challenged even sun to revoke its heat just seeing the seat droplets on her forehead. Clearly focus on the limitations society imposes on father that he couldn’t do the same for her married girl. 

Name the story ‘Sitayan’.

- Amit Roop

Story – All is NOT Well!

Story is life envisaged by words. Its existence is as old as life itself. Life is a set of conflicts so is story. 

The food that is tasty is seldom good for health, the one that is healthy seldom tastes good. The clothe that is comfortable to wear seldom looks fashionable, the one that looks fashionable is seldom comfortable to wear. If it is both, seldom costs reasonable. The practices that have pleasure and full of fun are seldom allowed in the society, the one allowed have no fun to crave for.

Everything that is lively and interesting is full of conflicts. The more conflict the story has the more it is near life and resembles reality. Narration devoid of conflict is not a story and that is the reason story gets completed the moment ‘Happily-ever-after’ comes. 

For instance, Ramayana is larger than life story. It is full of life, so many conflicts at every turn but it gets finished when ‘Ram-Rajya’ is established, no conflict anymore, nobody id interested, not even saint writer whose prime motto of writing was to sing the glory of his deity.

Story is ever increasing tension to the extent possible, till the extent possible and arriving at a climax to permanent comfort, solace or irony.

Seeds of thoughts:

Analyze your own life since childhood. You loved chocolates and your mom insisted on milk; you loved literature and your teacher insisted on Maths as you already had good marks in literature. When you grew up, you started liking a girl in the neighborhood but her grandfather was a retired army man. You got selected in your dream company, the most beautiful girl of your batch also got selected but she denied the offer. She decided to open a publishing house to become an entrepreneur. 

Collect the conflicts of your own life and solutions that you arrived at. Write to have a good story of your own.

- Amit Roop