Emotional Atyachar: x-rated track

Listen to the x-rated emosanal atyachar. It’s hilarious.

Obscenity warning: explicit language used.

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Are you different?

I’ve blogged about how Indian writers have never had it so good. So if you want to publish, now is the time.

Scared that you spend some 3-4 months writing only to see it rejected? It’s painful, I know. Go ahead and admit it. It’s only natural. I’ve been there before with screenplays. So what do you do? I’ll tell you what you can’t do. And that is stop writing.

One great way to make an impact with commissioning editors is to make your novel intriguing. Different. This applies to screenplays too. What can you come up with that will set your story apart from others? There are scores of campus novels detailing exploits of students in the IITs and IIMs. Male students.

Can you come up with a story of a female student? Can you give her another quirk which could be a source of conflict throughout the story? Maybe she is a lesbian! There conflict for you. As it is there are so few female students in these colleges. So you can imagine that when your protagonist goes looking for love, there are slim pickings.

When I was writing Kkrishnaa’s Konfessions, I went in for more than just a chick lit. I hadn’t done any great research on what was out there in terms of Indian chick lit. But I did know that there were scores of chick lit novels written by foreign authors available in the market place. So I instinctively went in for more and threw in a murder.

To be fair, even without the murder I would have got a contract. That’s because Kkrishnaa’s Konfessions is set in the intriguing world of television about which everyone is curious and knows little.

I have a feeling, Indian chick lit scene, indeed popular fiction, is getting saturated. Women (or men) planning to write chick lit and other popular fiction now would be better off coming up with imaginative and offbeat plots and whacky characters. It’s not enough to deal only with regulation weight/addiction/difficult boss/commitment-phobic boyfriend issues. Not unless you come up with a path breaking narrative, in which case that becomes the differentiator.

If you’re telling a straightforward story in a straightforward way, go for that something extra.

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