Painting en plein air

Mom & Dad

Have been a  painter for the past two weeks, not writer. And had always wanted to paint en plein air, like the great Impressionists. En plein air just means painting outdoors, but it sounds sophisticated when you use the French expression.

When one does contemporary art, one's critics, generally speaking, one's near and dear, assume one can't draw realistically, which is why one resorts to abstract or impressionist art. So I proved I could, by painting a portrait or twin portrait of my parents, which took me a week to get to three-fourths completion. My father's teeth alone took me about half-an-hour!

Today I wanted to do some quick work, for a change, and asked my son, who was busy painting a surrealist self-portrait, to complete it outside on the terrace. And I painted him painting his painting. Mine is just an impression of the emotions of the moment, a breezy, timeless evening with my son. The French Impressionists were concerned with the light and its effects, but I wasn't. I just painted, with no such agenda. Only wanted to finish before dark. Here it is.

Painting the Breeze

Rewriting to make it louder and funnier

Oft when on my couch I lie, in vacant or in pensive mood, funny lines come to me just as beautiful lines came to Mr. Wordsworth. But sometimes I have to slave like a ... slave. Perspiration when there's no inspiration.

There are many kinds of humour. Ideal if one can use as many in a short story or a novel that's supposed to be funny. There's slapstick, situation comedy, puns, silly dialogue, funny speech styles, the oxymoron, exaggeration, peculiar narrative style, misquoted quotes, altered clichés, howlers, paraprosdokians and many more that I don't recollect offhand.

Take a look at this:

That was an unexpected but powerful punch. Somasundaram’s boss fell to the ground, unconscious. After a minute, Somasundaram regretted his act. He turned to his fiancée for sympathy.
“You fool! How could you?” That was what he got instead of sympathy.

Somasundaram had just punched his boss in the face 'cause the boss kissed his fiancée, and now is at a loss. Kissed Somasundaram's fiancée, not the boss's, said boss being older, balder and married.

That was an unexpected but powerful punch. This can become, with a natural cliche and an unnatural quote from Shakepeare's Julius Caesar :


Coming as it were, quite out of the blue, one might say, that was the most unkindest uppercut of them all.

Great Shakes himself, come to think of it, wasn't above employing double superlatives. Should have pointed that out to my English Miss, back in my ninth standard, when she marked my 'all the more better' with a 'double comparative,' in red ink.
By the way, we put in phrases like one might say to add strength to the narrative style, and hear the narrator's voice better. This will not elicit smiles of approval from the intelligentsia, but who cares? We don't write for them; we write to make ordinary people like us laugh.

Somasundaram’s boss fell to the ground, unconscious.
This line can benefit by some imagery. And some people find it funny when you compare a middle-aged, bald man to a cherub. And please note the unsaid simile, 'sleep like a baby.'
 The Red Man fell with a thud that rattled the glasses on the table. His eyes were closed, as if in sleep, and strangely, there was a cherubic smile on his rosy face, as though he was having sweet dreams. 

Sweet dreams is a trite expression, but seems to work here, so let's use it.  It strengthens cherubic and rosy, too.

After a minute, Somasundaram regretted his act. He turned to his fiancée for sympathy.

The trite time for more expressions. And time to stress Somasundaram's stupidity. Let's use his stupid nickname, 'Soda,' and make him look more stupid. Regret is best shown in some action, so we make him wring his hands. Sweet reminds me of sweet nothings, so let's have him mutter feeble words.

Reason returned to Soda’s thick head. He wrung his hands and muttered regretful nothings.

There! Neat! Next line please:
He turned to his fiancée for sympathy.

This is a good line and needs no improvement. And having fiancée and sympathy, it's lyrical! You can sing it! But we are in tampering mood, so let's tamper. Making sure we retain the sounds, though. Assonance, I think they call it.


He turned to his better-half-to-be for sympathy but did not get any.

He, be, sympathy and any. Good going!  Now we come to the grand finish of the scene.


“You fool! How could you?” That was what he got instead of sympathy.

Not grand at all. Not powerful enough. The funniest yeller I have ever seen in a book is Captain Haddock of Tintin fame. Do let's borrow from that feller. Get inspired, not actually copy. And let's also give him credit. That's also clever, because, with some readers, Captain Haddock means 'funny.'

This is our grand total:

Coming as it were, quite out of the blue, one might say, that was the most unkindest uppercut of them all. The Red Man fell with a thud that rattled the glasses on the table. His eyes were closed, as if in sleep, and strangely, there was a cherubic smile on his rosy face, as though he was having sweet dreams. Reason returned to Soda’s thick head. He wrung his hands and muttered regretful nothings. He turned to his better-half-to-be for sympathy but did not get any.

“You brutal barbarian! Psychotic somnambulist! Senseless sauropod!” That was what he got instead. Shakes seemed to have taken lessons from Captain Haddock.

“Rabid Punchinello! Dunderheaded Dipsomaniac!” 

Now you know much work goes into a small part of a scene.  This is from Chapter 8 of my Lemon Salt Soda. Do read when you have the time. The language may not be perfect, but it will make you laugh. The story, I mean, not the language. Click here to buy book 1.

To plot or not to plot

That is not a question asked by conductors of fiction-writing workshops. They prefer a proper system.

But not having an outline or plot is also a system. There are two basic approaches to shooting a movie: the Hitchcock and the Chaplin.  The Hitchcock method is to plan everything, including the colour and position of a matchbox on a table, before the actual shooting takes place. The Chaplin method is the spirit of impromptu.

In writing, we have the Wodehouse method, and the Asimov method. Being a fan of both writers, I tried both methods. P. G. Wodehouse first obtained an idea, then wrote the plot. After that he wrote a  scenario. He believed in the story working if the scenes worked, and he detailed those scenes in lengthy scenarios. Only after that did he write the first draft. This he wrote at top speed, not going back to make corrections.

Isaac Asimov had a rough idea of where the story had to go, and he took it there, the story forming as he wrote it, without preliminary outlining or plotting.

Gajapati Kulapati, and three short stories, I wrote a la Asimov. To read Confessions of a Ghost Writer click on title. That short story was written on a Saturday afternoon at Tulika after the rest of the Tulikans had gone home. The atmosphere at Tulika was a muse in itself. It was written in one intense hour, the experience illustrating what spiritualists call 'being completely in an activity.'

Dhavani I wrote on the back of envelopes while I sat on the bus-stop pavement waiting for my 41D. I let two buses go, since I didn't want to let my burst of inspiration go. Please click on title or here to read that one.

The flowchart for Witchsnare

Read them and you will see that they have simple storylines. That is the drawback I have following this method but the narrative flows naturally. Outlines may act like straitjackets sometimes. Anyway, it worked for Asimov.

Witchsnare, published by Puffin, is a gamebook. A choose-your-own-adventure type, with ten different possible endings. This had to be plotted carefully, for obvious reasons, and I even drew a flowchart before writing.

Ajit the Archer was plotted with care, and the plot was strictly adhered to. It's available on Kindle; you may buy it here.

Now I'm older and wiser, and I have created a personal system that suits my style. It's a mix of both methods.
1. I create a rough plot.
2. I write the first draft.
3. After 3 chapters or so, I rewrite the plot, because now I know my characters better.
4. I write the scenario, and continue writing the first draft.
5. Finally, I polish the whole thing till it shines.

This is how I did my latest, Lemon Salt Soda.


Moral of the story: Better to design a writing system that suits you than follow other people's.

Writer's Secrets: How to get a plot from anywhere

No, not out of thin air. From somewhere. 
There are no unique plots, you know. Subconsciously or consciously, writers draw motifs and themes from the stories in our collective consciousness. Let me prove it to you by doing it right here, now. Okay? I'm going absolutely impromptu now, for honesty's sake. Let's start.

Jack and the Beanstalk. That's the first story that came to my head. So let's take Jack and the Beanstalk.

Jack goes to market to sell cow. Meets weird man who gives him beans. Mom gives Jack hell and throws beans out of window. Giant beanstalk happens. Jack goes up and steals things from giant and kills him. Becomes rich and lives happily ever after.

That's the basic plot. Now let's make the setting a planet somewhere, and make the story a sci-fi one.

Maya, who lives on the moon, goes to the Alpha Centauri market-planet to sell space-bike that her father built. Sells it for sack of peanuts, peanuts being exotic food in her home planet. Father grumbles and they have peanuts for breakfast, lunch and dinner. But in that sack is a special seed, the seed of an extinct species of tree. Half the galaxy is in search of that seed...

But you get the idea, don't you? A giant beanstalk of an idea sprouted from that simple fairytale. Infuse it with different variables and see.

Mark goes to comic con to sell old comics from his grandfather's collection. He meets cosplay girl who buys him lunch and steals his comics. Mark seeks her everywhere but she is one step ahead of him. In the process, he falls in love with her...

Now it's romantic comedy. Would anyone suspect that I lifted the plot from Jack and the Beanstalk?


Manas, who works for his uncle's ad agency, loses an account to a clever rival. He is sacked but resolves to take revenge on rival and become bigger than uncle, who thinks Manas worthless. But Manas fails again and again, and goes off to the Himalayas. He returns enlightened, and smiles when his uncle, who doesn't recognise him, falls at Manas' feet...

Jack and the Beanstalk becomes a spiritual book or a comedy. That will depend upon how you treat it.

Happy writing!

Talent, luck and all that rot!

Whenever someone tells me that I have got talent, I feel insulted.
Stand outside a gym, accost someone with rippling biceps, shapely lats, six packs and all, and tell him that he has a talented body, and he will biff you one. Poor chap has probably spent a decade building those muscles, and you tell him he's got talent.

I have got talent, too. A talent for fraud. Not for drawing or writing. I feel such a cheat since I wasn't born an artist. I had to learn the hard way. I have been drawing since I was in kindergarten, and even neglected my academic education in the pursuit of art. I filled notebooks with sketches, and irritated teachers by ruining my textbooks with illustrations in pencils, ink and chalk. I have even experimented with creative media: eyebrow pencils, talcum powder and vanishing cream on brown paper.
Was I lucky? No, I was only taken to task. Books meant everything to me, and I had access to books. I don't know if that was luck. Richer friends possessed many Blytons, comics and picture books, while I borrowed them from libraries. My wise father made me a member of all the four major libraries in Chennai, then Madras: the Madras District Library, the British Council, the Connemara and the one at the American Consulate. Those were my halls of learning. Oops, I forgot the School's! The school library was a big library and had the Childcraft series of books. Almost every principle of art I know and use can be found in its 'Look and Learn' volume.
 

And how did I forget Reader's Digest? I met Dali, Picasso, Millais, Monet, Courbet and many other greats between its covers. Old issues of RD were available in second-hand bookshops for fifty paise each. So many hours I spent learning from the masters. Who needs live art teachers? Let Monet and Dali teach you Art!

Every child is an artist. Do they remain artists? That is the question. The part of your self that hasn't matured, that part is still creative, and available. Ask a child to draw, and you will get a picture. Ask the child to sing; you will get a song. The child does not think about talent or wait for luck. The child creates, with confidence and passion.

But let the child decide. Surround your children with books, toys, people or music, and let them make a choice.

I remained an artist. I continued to draw. I wasn't given gifts. I plucked them off God's Christmas tree.