28-12-14.
More and more people are writing fictions/novels. It is a welcome sign. Each one of us wants to tell some kind of stories if not it is something about our experience with life.
Some of you have very good command over English you can even write thought provoking articles but when it come to writing fiction or novel you are unable to do it. You know the reason? You are not using your creativity.
People use a different method to write fiction or novel. I do not know how other people write fiction but I can tell you how I wrote ten fictions and one new religion called universal love. I will tell you how to use your creativity for writing fiction. Before start writing fiction you have to decide what sort of fiction you want to write. Once you decide genre, you need to think about a concept for the story. Concept or idea will work as a foundation for the story, based on that you can develop subplots. Without concept or idea if you start writing fiction subplots will take you far away…. At times subplots will not merge with the main story. As you keep developing subplots after subplots you will find too many loose ends like in our T.V serial, you will never be able to tie-up with the main story.
Not all the subplots are creative work of the writer! He will use real life incidents either he happens to read it on newspaper or someone who had narrated incident to him years ago. Beware! The writer will wash your dirty linen in public place!! So do not muck with writers. They will use part of your personal life or intimate life as subplots just by changing the name, time and place .some others will use their own experience with life as subplots. Never trust a writer he will tell you to lie convincingly through fiction. The success of the subplots depends on how well you can integrate into the mains story. Subplots will lend credibility to the main story and help you to fill up pages.
Story concept can be anything. It could be a simple word like love, revenge or even just one simple image! Yes, I wrote broken heart horror fiction out of an image which I had seen when I was about seven years of age. That image haunted me for very long time when I was a kid. When I thought of writing horror fiction I used the same image to write my horror fiction. We all know except Casper every ghost will take revenge. There must be a valid reason to take revenge. Every ghost will swear. I had used it for logline ‘Bastards! I will hunt down and kill everyone (perpetrators of the crime) of you…!’
Now there is a Ghost (image) so I can write about his appearance. I need to give him special characters and special powers. Ghosts are like your God, association and disassociation of molecules. He can appear or disappear out of thin air and he is immortal. But my ghost is ‘Real’! He cannot vanish into thin air nor is he immortal. His presence can be felt. His shadow image is visible and his ‘real’ image can be seen on water, mirror, glass or any other reflective surface. He will ‘come alive’ when he fight with his killer. He is real and he can get hurt or even get killed.
When I started writing broken heart I only think about the concept and planned meticulously how Ajay should kill each of the rapist cum murder of his wife. I could not decide what sort of special character or special powers are required for my ghost (Ajay). When Ajay comes to Chennai city to hunt down and kill four of them out of ten million people in the day time, at the time I (Ajay) found some of his special powers to his disadvantage! How he takes advantage of the situation and helps him to find the killer from the four corner of the city complete the story.
If you are writing fiction or novel you will come across ‘writer’s block’. Even experienced writers suffer from writer’s block. Do not get stuck with it. If you are writing fiction based on story concept you can write other chapters and come back and modify the scene and complete the story. When you make modification anywhere in the fiction make sure it will perfectly jell with rest of the story. Modified scenes should never appear like a patchwork.
There are writers who go to work and late in the night they write fictions. I wrote all my fictions when I was unemployed. Every time I write new fiction it was like falling in love for the first time. I think about the subplots round the clock. Daytime I typed my fiction at the browsing centre and at late night I continued writing rest of the story. In between time I think about subplots and scribble down on my scribbling pad. Proofreading and editing will take more time than writing fiction! That is the time I make correction or modification in my fiction. Professional writers will write more than three drafts before writing the final draft or before submitting the manuscript for publishing. Writing final draft before typing fiction is the right way to do it. Then you do not have to modify your fiction.
Writing is a lonely process. Once you start ‘living’ with fictional characters you will enjoy writing. After you finished proofreading, editing and polishing your manuscript is ready for publication. Now you want to get your fiction published. The first thing you will try with the traditional publisher. Traditional publisher publishes your fiction at their cost if only your fiction is worth publishing. I too checked with traditional publisher .one of the publisher told me that he got more than 3500 manuscripts with him and asked me to come after three years. The other publisher said he got more than 5000 manuscripts with him and asked me to come after five years! I think these guys are publishing whatever trash they get to publish. Perhaps that is the reason we Indians do not get to read quality work. I remember reading an article. Some of the leading French publishers are rejecting more than 5000 manuscripts per year!
Later you will check with any number of prints on demand (POD) publisher are available on the net. You will find a different type of schemes available for publishing your fiction. The minimum amount of publishing your fiction will cost not less than Rs 25,000/- that too without proofreading and editing. That is the lowest charge available in India to publish fiction. With proofreading and editing of you, fiction will cost not less than Rs 75,000/-almost double the charge of printing! Since most of the budding writers in India cannot afford to spend so much money for editing and proofreading, they just publish their fiction the way they wrote. Out of one point two billion people in India, only fifteen percent of them can speak fluent English rest of them are capable of speaking in broken English.
There are book promoters. They will charge not less than Rs 25,000/- per book to promote. They will promote your book through web pages. Some of the publishers are offering ‘book trailer’ service. They will use junior artists and make few scenes out of you fiction for promoting your book. It will cost not less than Rs 50,000/- .even if you spent money on all these things still there is NO guarantee that you will be able to recover the cost of book publishing. Believe me most of the people who spent money to publish their fiction though POD mode lost their money. POD mode publisher will not promote your book. They just take the money and print your fiction. You have to promote your book through your blog or social network. Since there is no other option left most of the writers gets their fictions published through POD mode.
Here I am not discouraging any of the budding writers. It is a fact. Sooner or later you are going to experience it. Keep writing fictions. If any one of your fiction became hit or even you are able to sell it for movie production house you will not only recover your money but also help you to get published you’re other fictions at the expense of publisher.
My best wishes for all those budding writers.
Friend,
Jivan.
