How To Tell A Story

Why do we love our favorite stories? Do they really need a beginning, middle and end, and a character who changes by the conclusion? 

Six story tellers share their experiences of telling stories that have revamped the face of the age-old craft.

How To Tell A Story

The writers here are:

Chimamanda Adichie: The danger of a single story

Isabel Allende: Tales of passion

Andrew Stanton: The clues to a great story

J.J. Abrams: The mystery box

Elif Shafak: The politics of fiction

Scott McCloud on Comics

Quit Playing Games With My Life!

Mind, thoughts, memories, feelings, emotions – change, alter, fade away, disappear, reappear – make you smile, make you cry, make you think, make you contemplate, make you scared, make you confident – fill you, tear you apart, creep on you, grow on you, shake you, build you – you go into a shell, you break all rules, you make your own path, you erase your existence.

The human mind is considered the greatest creation of God – the human heart is his most complicated. Always changing, always leading, and always making the mind believe that it is the ruler but instead making all the rules. But what or rather who rules the heart? People? Emotions? Situations? Circumstances? Or does it hear the tune of a different piper – a piper whom only he recognizes and follows.

In moments of emotions it is said that one should always follow the heart. But where does the heart lead? Where does that dark road lead? Is it alright to walk that uncharted path? All great men claim to have walked that uncharted path; listened to their heart. Then how does it remain uncharted? Many before me have walked down that lane; many after me would too. It is no longer uncharted. And yet, every time my heart makes me believe that no one before me has walked that road.

Reminds me of the song ‘Quit playing games with my heart.’ I’d alter it and tell my heart ‘Quit playing games with my life.’ Stop telling me that I am the only genius who thought of this idea. You know that you are lying. You know that it would be painful for me. And yet, you want me to walk down this lane.

And I am stupid enough to fall for the trap. I walk that road, embrace that struggle and fool myself that I am a hero.

No, I am not a hero! I am no hero. I am an ordinary person who, like many others, is taking the path that sounds more romantic only because I want to feel that romantic.

I would much rather run away from the pain. But then that would make me an escapist. 

This means that either ways I am stuck. Being labelled a romantic sounds beautiful but is painful. Being labelled an escapist sounds painful and is painful. Either ways I’m headed for pain and all thanks to my heart. It just made sure that I remain confused all my life. But it also made sure that I can never follow anyone else.

When I know all these facts then why can’t I break away and tell my heart to go take a hike? Because it has left my mind numb and I am too scared to take all the responsibilities alone. It is always easier to blame someone else – in this case the heart and its charming ways.

Oh! What a charmer the heart is? Responsible for everything – good, bad and ugly – and yet never gets blamed, never faces the music and always, always receives the crown.

I Carry You In My Heart!

Memories always stay – big and small, beautiful and ugly, happy and sad, new and old – they know the art of sustaining themselves through ages and then reappear when least expected. 

What disappears is the physical form but the essence lives on in places, in words, in sounds. That chance hearing of a word that he always used, having to take a detour through a road down which I drove with him, clearing the cupboard and finding a box full of photographs that are his last memory. Can they be erased because every time they make me cry? Do I really want to erase them because they always make you cry? May be I don’t. Maybe, just maybe, I like those tears because they still connect me with him.

I do still complain that he shouldn’t have left and I’ll always crib and complain that he left. I’ll always be angry with him for leaving me all alone, not being present when I need him the most, when no one else is present and neither is he. And I’ll never forgive him for that.

But did he really leave me alone? May be I’m failing to see something, something far greater and deeper than my tangible complains and desires. He gave me the biggest gift of life. He gave me my essence and taught me who I am and who I can be. He made me my own identity. And in that identity he resides and he always will.

Love you always and forever.

Processed!

Recently, while working on a book I realized how the world of publishing had evolved, if evolution is what you would want to call it!

For starters, shockingly, the whole idea of a mock had gone out of the window. People had hardly heard of it. Everyone is so caught up with getting things done 'yesterday' that the few talking of quality and procedure are best left archived.

With the influx of e-books and iPads and Kindle, the print industry is facing a stiff competition. Undoubtedly, it is easy to carry a lot many more books around. But it hardly makes up for the pure orgasm born out of the feeling of those pages ruffling between your fingers. Call me old school, but nothing is more fragrant than the smell of the pages of a new book. What is disturbing is this almost deliberate attempt to do away with the print industry. Adobe InDesign, Pagemaker, Quark, Photoshop have been raised to the pedestals than being the tools for creating legends. 

A friend narrated an experience where a 'book designer' refused to start work on the layout until he had all the material at her desk. As they were fast approaching the deadline for production, he called me in distress, whereupon, I told him that he could most definitely start on two things. First, make the pagination (the storyboard for the book). And second, start work on the regular pages (content, title, etc.) that would not require for the team to pour in the content. After keeping down the call, I felt disgusted and sympathetic in the same breath.

It was disgusting because the education system had turned around in making everyone a clerk/labour rather than a thinking person. Sympathy seeped in when it struck me how every one was being duped and not realizing it. I am sure this designer in question is an educated man. Yet, he fails to recognize software as tools rather than the brain of the project.

In reality, software are meant to fasten up a process. Nevertheless, the process is present for a reason and has to be followed in order to reach the desired result.

Talking about the publishing industry, there is a reason that publishers continue to make pagination and print mocks before the book is put into final print. Pagination and mock form two ends of the stream. Pagination is the overview of the entire project whereas the mock is the preview. It is not until you hold a mock in your hand that you would know if you are headed in the right direction. For all you know, once the first copy comes out you realize that you have conveniently missed out the introduction of the book written by a celebrity author and now you have 500 copies already in print minus the said page. All because you never bothered to make a pagination or print a mock!

A few extra hours and pages could save you a lot more green paper and embarrassment, not to mention the possible legal implications.

It is time to step back and take a breather; time to take a look at our approaches. It is charming to say that the end justifies the means. But the end could turn out to be a mere fluke if the means are not thought out and disciplined. And no one bets on a fluke!