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Scapegoat Justice System
The modern world wants justice. We are now a world who would believe in our justice than God’s unlike a couple of centuries ago. And to render justice we have created many institutions including the court and the jail. We have the system of proving the crime and punishing the guilty. Whenever there is a murder or robbery we feel the most safe when the perpetrators are locked up. We exhale in…
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The Unaffordable Road
Leonardo DiCaprio’s name had always guaranteed a solid different story. And that’s how I ended up watching Sam Mendes directed Revolutionary Road starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet (the pair again). It was not disappointing in the least. Kate Winslet did a terrific job and so did DiCaprio. The movie set me into a reflection of the times that we live.
In the ’50s, a young man meets a…
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The Great Indian Curtain
Marriage is a strange institution. Strange because it is unnatural. None of the other animals on this planet is known to have public sanction of individual sexual activity. Not just that at its best it safeguards the interests of the male.
Most of the so called successful marriages are run by the hard labour of wives which duly goes unrecognised. On the contrary money earning male is more or…
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TENET: the Incredulous Disappointment
Let’s just begin by saying that we love Nolan. This time Nolan has come up with entropy inversion – the ability to inverse the course of an action while it is about to happen. The action couldy either be in the past or future or both. Nolan calls it pincer movement. The plot is simple, the protagonist is trying to stop the annihilation of the world. The contenting parties and the weapons chosen…
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Siddhartha: the Fascination with the East
From Emerson to Eliot the west had always been fascinated with eastern philosophy. More than anything it is Hinduism that had an enchanting appeal to creative writers. Be it the “DA-DA-DA” of Eliot or “Brahma” of Emerson, Hinduism carried the solution for them. On line with these thinkers, Herman Hesse has produced Siddhartha with a clear agenda of underscoring the superiority of Hinduism over…
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One Big Fat Metaphor - Kafka on the Shore
One Big Fat Metaphor – Kafka on the Shore
How many times in our lives have we come across men who can talk to cats, or teenagers who spend time in libraries reading books? None, right? Even if they are fictional! And that’s why all these things have to be one big fat metaphor for the greatest of metaphors of all – life. Acclaimed Japanese writer Haruki Murakami’s 2002 novel Kafka on the Shore tantalizes readers with enigmatic…
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TWO LITTLE GIRLS MAKE A GREAT TEAM
TWO LITTLE GIRLS MAKE A GREAT TEAM
November sun shone benignly over the large playground. The time must be around 11. AM. On all four sides of the playground were erected short flagpoles. On them flew satin flags of various colours. Crisscrossing the playground were triangular color paper banners reaching out from the tall flagpole at the centre. A few feet behind the flagpole, a makeshift stage was being laid by some workers.…
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The Smell of Poverty
The Smell of Poverty
Parasite is a movie of many surprises. Beginning as a comedy, as the Kims infiltrate the Park house and family it anticipates a romance of some kind. But the movie takes a 180 degree turn to become a horror. The killing and bloodshed shows us a different interpretation of its title Parasite. Who are the real parasite?
The Kim family lives in a semi basement apartment fighting hard to make both…
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Lying is Not an Individual Act
Lying is Not an Individual Act We Indians trust our caste first. In a hierarchy of grouping, caste would be the first category, followed by religion, region, and language. So how much ever a non group member excels he/she will always wait for validation.
Out of sheer depression that serious reading was causing, I chose Sudha Murthy for a light read. Honestly she did not disappoint me. The book titled Wise and Otherwisecontained incidents from her life through which she laid bare the moral fiber of our society. The second story in this collection was named “Human Foibles.” It told the story of a smart and hard working man who had led his family…
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Just began reading. As of now it reads romantic. Well, the story is set among the Paraja tribe in Odisha. The Oriya version is published in 1945 while the translation has appeared in 1987. Perhaps that's why their way of life appears romantic now. What a pathetic world we are living in now! https://www.instagram.com/p/B-UEgg6n-kU/?igshid=bqyry47hvhkn
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Love is the only Hope
“…on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.”
wrote Matthew Arnold in the year 1867. It was way before the world could even conceive such a situation even in their wildest of dreams. Yet such situation occurs in 2020 Academy Award winning movie 1917. Well, not exactly as Arnold picturizes it. In the movie it is a lone British…
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Toy Story 4 - Accept Life as It Come
Toy Story 4 – Accept Life as It Come
My strongest memory of a childhood toy is a red-eyed bunny who my mom kept in a locker. The locker never enjoyed full light. So it was always unnerving to open the locker and find the glowing red eyes of the bunny staring at you. For the most part of my childhood, I avoided the locker until my sister grew up on me to finish him off. With such a terrible memory of toys, watching Woody was an…
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When you realise that fictionalising an atrocity is as much as romanticizing it, you can only end up writing a work like The Gypsy Goddess. In this postmodern work (though thayt label is not all that reliable) Meena Kandasamy floods us with words - words that correspond with facts and is not shy to point at the perpetrator. Read The Gypsy Goddess to know about Kelvenmani for innocent blood did not spill in Jallianwala Bagh alone. If you are not worried about the events, you can 🤷🙇at the spider like spontaneity of Kandasamy's words. https://www.instagram.com/p/B8z--pJnPNb/?igshid=o41xn2aivlof
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The Most Poetic Title - "She Walks in Beauty"
The Most Poetic Title – “She Walks in Beauty”
(c) Newstead Abbey; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation
Praising female beauty is a prerogative of being a poet. Be it Shakespeare or Ilangovadikal, poets in all languages have praised women’s body. Given the hotheadedness of Lord Byron, it is only natural that he praises the physique of a woman. But the difference is, it comes out with so much dignity.
The poem in 3 stanzas – 18…
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How to write better descriptions
1. Avoid weak words
Remember my post on the word ‘take?’ ‘Take’ is a weak word, but it isn’t the only one.
Compare these:
He ate the sandwich
She walked towards the lake.
The book smelled good.
to these:
He devoured the sandwich
She strolled towards the lake.
The book smelled magical.
Which sentences are more engaging? The latter ones. Why? Because devoured and strolled are stronger words than ate and walked. They’re more specific. They give you more information. To get across the same information with ate and walked, you’d have to add more words: she walked slowly, he ate quickly.
Replacing good with magical doesn’t work quite as well as the verbs, but magical does tell us slightly more than good: it gives us a better sense of how the smell makes the character feel.
How do you spot a weak word? Weak words are vague. They’re umbrella terms. They need support from other words to really get their meaning across. If you find yourself adding adverbs and adjectives to a term, question whether or not there’s a more concise way to get your point across.
Strong word choice, however, isn’t all that’s needed for a good description:
2. Be as specific as required.
This isn’t to say you should describe everything in every scene in perfect detail, but being specific matters.
Which is more engaging?
He devoured the sandwich
The book smelled magical.
or
He devoured the sandwich, stopping only to lick up the melted cheese that seeped through his fingers and ran down his palm.
The book smelled magical, like a sunlit afternoon.
Again, the latter ones. They take you into the scene. They evoke the senses. It’s the difference between telling and showing. Devoured is a strong verb, but it doesn’t give us a clear image of what is happening. Showing the character licking away the cheese gives the reader a sense of the desperation and hunger of the action. Evoking a sunlit afternoon is evoking your reader’s memories of their own sunny afternoons.These examples are statements with evidence. They provide details.
You want to invite your reader into the scene, not give them a summary of the events.
Additionally, specifics make the world feel real. They convince readers that the world actually exists. They keep the story in your readers’ minds once they’ve finished reading.
This being said, don’t pull a GRRM and describe every meal your characters eat. Some things just aren’t that important. There are occasions when it’s okay to tell instead of show.
3. Remember the point of view.
Who is giving the description?
If you’re writing in 1st person or 3rd person limited, remember how your character feels about what you’re describing. If you’re describing a strawberry field, a person who was raised on a strawberry farm is going to see it differently than someone who is deathly allergic to strawberries, who is going to see it differently from a Beatles fanatic.
Maybe the Beatles fanatic is deathly allergic to strawberries and this field brings up a whole bucketful of conflicting emotions.
Which is all to say:
Good descriptions reveal character as well as scene.
If this description is coming from a character’s point of view: what is that point of view? What is this scene making your character feel? Don’t let your narrator slip away from the page.
This connects to my last point.
4. Remember why you’re including it.
Novel writing is persuasive writing. It’s an exercise in persuading your reader that your story is true, that your characters are real people. It’s an exercise in persuading your readers to feel what you want them to feel.
(There’s a well-known quote about this somewhere, but I can’t remember it exactly.)
Every description must add to the story. It should be doing something: working for some larger goal, advancing the plot, revealing character.
Maybe you’re describing a house because you want your reader to see why your character doesn’t want to move.
Maybe you’re describing this lovely-smelling book because you want the reader to know that it’s important to the character. That her favorite memories are of reading it in the attic of her grandmother’s house.
When you’re writing out a description, identify its purpose and make sure it fulfils it.
It’s okay if at first you don’t know how the house makes the character feel, or if she’s running or strolling towards the lake, or why the book is so important. Sometimes you just know it’s there. That something happened. Usually things become clearer as you write further and get to know the story and characters yourself.
Once you do know what you’re trying to say with your story, make sure you say it with every chapter, every description, and every word.
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Now if you think feminism or being a feminist is about being flashy, or just plainly doing whatever you like, this is a must read for you. Living in a dystopian world, we have lost out on what really are ideals. Just read her. In simple terms she makes clear how patriarchy and sexism controls our thinking. Thank you Bell Hooks for writing this easily accessible book. No jargon guys. https://www.instagram.com/p/B8WeFtqnxIj/?igshid=u6y1kxbqs342
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