Siddharth Tripathi's Blog - Posts Tagged "book"
Writing your first novel | My article in Youth Incorporated Magazine
http://www.youthincmag.com/2013/09/01...
Article pasted here -
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Siddharth Tripathi, author of The Virgins, offers aspiring writers some handy tips for to make the journey towards that ‘final draft’ a lot smoother.
“If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.”
~ Toni Morrison
I finished the first draft of The Virgins in April 2012. TheVirgins.doc was a 600 KB file (1/6th of the size of an mp3 song). I looked at myself in the mirror – unshaven, unemployed, unpublished, unheard of…and with only this puny word file that I could call my own. But there was something about it – this book was not because of all the degrees that I had collected, it wasn’t because of all the companies I had worked for, this book wasn’t about which car I drove or whether I owned a 3BHK on Golf Course Road – that 600 KB file was all me – and no one could take that away. If you have always yearned to tell a story then knowing that you have told it the way only you can is the greatest feeling in the world.
So when do you plan to begin your first novel? Here is some stuff that I have learnt along the way that might be of help:
Only you can tell the story in your head – if you believe that you are unique, that you’re not like anyone else, then your story is going to be unique too – it might fall into broad classifications and genres but no one else has written the exact same story before. So please stop thinking that it has all been done before because you haven’t done it and that’s what matters. Don’t try to be unique for the sake of it – believe that what you’re writing is new because it is.
Make a lot of notes – get a nice diary, buy a few colored pencils, pens, sketch pens — satisfy all your stationary fetishes. You can choose to ramble or you can be organized (both approaches help) but make notes when you’re not writing or before you begin writing– draw character sketches, write chapter outlines, jot down specifics of an event, doodle, make cartoons, write dialogues that you may or may not use – just fill up your diary with all sorts of stuff that is somehow related to the book you’re writing. Everything falls into place in very strange ways – you’ll end up using a lot of what you’ve jotted down.
Read a few good books on writing – No one can teach you to write really well but there are a few books that can teach you to be competent at it and if you do write well, then they can teach you a few additional tips and tricks that can always come in handy. I can recommend three that I have read – On Writing by Stephen King, Zen and the art of writing by Ray Bradbury and The Elements of Style by Strunk and White. I have often wondered how Messrs.’ Bradbury, King, Strunk and White know exactly what’s going on in a writers head – but they do and they have excellent advice to offer.
Seek feedback, lots of it – Some writers prefer to finish the first draft before sharing it with anyone, some like to share every chapter the moment they’re done with it. I like to give the first fifty pages to a couple of good friends to gauge their reaction – they are instructed to be brutally honest which means that I want them to praise the book. However, they are good friends and they tell me the truth which is often something I don’t want to hear. One word of caution – if your friends are not writers then they will be able to tell you what’s wrong but their ideas on how to fix it may not work.
Stick to a routine – Yes, it’s a job. A routine helps. There are exceptions off course but most writers have a schedule and they like sticking to it. I like writing during the day and then editing what I’ve written at night. Editing at night channelizes my thoughts for the next day of writing – it also helps in ironing out stupid mistakes and making the job of my editor and proof reader easy.
Set goals and meet them – I have a word count target for the day and I feel good when I meet it. That doesn’t mean you should too but there should be some kind of goal you need to work for. The goal can be to finish the first draft in two months or to write the best book ever written no matter how long it takes. When a friend enquired about Ulysses, James Joyce said that he’d been working hard at it all day. “Does that mean you have written a great deal?” asked his friend. Joyce replied, “No, just two sentences but I was seeking a perfect order of words and I think I have it”
EDIT/rewrite/edit/rewrite/edit/REWRITE – Hemingway said – Write drunk, Edit sober. This is one of the toughest things to do – to be your own critic, to slash and destroy words you have written, words you are in love with – but that is THE key to writing a decent book. Stephen King calls it the 10% rule – you got to edit out at least 10% of what you’ve written – it’ll make your writing taut and just right.
Don’t force it – You can’t make it deliberately funny or violent or romantic or sexy – it doesn’t work that way and if it does then I would like to know how to do that! Please don’t try to put a joke in every page or deliberately shove a love, sex, cricket, terrorism twist inside a story that was doing fine before you decided to meddle with it. When you’re writing it, don’t think of selling it – it’s a distracting thought and doesn’t help the creative process.
Hope some of this helps you finish what you’ve started. I’ll wait to read your first book!
Article pasted here -
-------------------------------------
Siddharth Tripathi, author of The Virgins, offers aspiring writers some handy tips for to make the journey towards that ‘final draft’ a lot smoother.
“If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.”
~ Toni Morrison
I finished the first draft of The Virgins in April 2012. TheVirgins.doc was a 600 KB file (1/6th of the size of an mp3 song). I looked at myself in the mirror – unshaven, unemployed, unpublished, unheard of…and with only this puny word file that I could call my own. But there was something about it – this book was not because of all the degrees that I had collected, it wasn’t because of all the companies I had worked for, this book wasn’t about which car I drove or whether I owned a 3BHK on Golf Course Road – that 600 KB file was all me – and no one could take that away. If you have always yearned to tell a story then knowing that you have told it the way only you can is the greatest feeling in the world.
So when do you plan to begin your first novel? Here is some stuff that I have learnt along the way that might be of help:
Only you can tell the story in your head – if you believe that you are unique, that you’re not like anyone else, then your story is going to be unique too – it might fall into broad classifications and genres but no one else has written the exact same story before. So please stop thinking that it has all been done before because you haven’t done it and that’s what matters. Don’t try to be unique for the sake of it – believe that what you’re writing is new because it is.
Make a lot of notes – get a nice diary, buy a few colored pencils, pens, sketch pens — satisfy all your stationary fetishes. You can choose to ramble or you can be organized (both approaches help) but make notes when you’re not writing or before you begin writing– draw character sketches, write chapter outlines, jot down specifics of an event, doodle, make cartoons, write dialogues that you may or may not use – just fill up your diary with all sorts of stuff that is somehow related to the book you’re writing. Everything falls into place in very strange ways – you’ll end up using a lot of what you’ve jotted down.
Read a few good books on writing – No one can teach you to write really well but there are a few books that can teach you to be competent at it and if you do write well, then they can teach you a few additional tips and tricks that can always come in handy. I can recommend three that I have read – On Writing by Stephen King, Zen and the art of writing by Ray Bradbury and The Elements of Style by Strunk and White. I have often wondered how Messrs.’ Bradbury, King, Strunk and White know exactly what’s going on in a writers head – but they do and they have excellent advice to offer.
Seek feedback, lots of it – Some writers prefer to finish the first draft before sharing it with anyone, some like to share every chapter the moment they’re done with it. I like to give the first fifty pages to a couple of good friends to gauge their reaction – they are instructed to be brutally honest which means that I want them to praise the book. However, they are good friends and they tell me the truth which is often something I don’t want to hear. One word of caution – if your friends are not writers then they will be able to tell you what’s wrong but their ideas on how to fix it may not work.
Stick to a routine – Yes, it’s a job. A routine helps. There are exceptions off course but most writers have a schedule and they like sticking to it. I like writing during the day and then editing what I’ve written at night. Editing at night channelizes my thoughts for the next day of writing – it also helps in ironing out stupid mistakes and making the job of my editor and proof reader easy.
Set goals and meet them – I have a word count target for the day and I feel good when I meet it. That doesn’t mean you should too but there should be some kind of goal you need to work for. The goal can be to finish the first draft in two months or to write the best book ever written no matter how long it takes. When a friend enquired about Ulysses, James Joyce said that he’d been working hard at it all day. “Does that mean you have written a great deal?” asked his friend. Joyce replied, “No, just two sentences but I was seeking a perfect order of words and I think I have it”
EDIT/rewrite/edit/rewrite/edit/REWRITE – Hemingway said – Write drunk, Edit sober. This is one of the toughest things to do – to be your own critic, to slash and destroy words you have written, words you are in love with – but that is THE key to writing a decent book. Stephen King calls it the 10% rule – you got to edit out at least 10% of what you’ve written – it’ll make your writing taut and just right.
Don’t force it – You can’t make it deliberately funny or violent or romantic or sexy – it doesn’t work that way and if it does then I would like to know how to do that! Please don’t try to put a joke in every page or deliberately shove a love, sex, cricket, terrorism twist inside a story that was doing fine before you decided to meddle with it. When you’re writing it, don’t think of selling it – it’s a distracting thought and doesn’t help the creative process.
Hope some of this helps you finish what you’ve started. I’ll wait to read your first book!
A debut with a lot of promise - Deccan Herald's review of the Virgins
This appeared in Sunday Herald (DH's Sunday supplement) on the 17th of Nov.
-------------------------------------
A debut with a lot of promise
ARKADEV GHOSHAL, NOV 17, 2013, DHNS : AA
The Virgins
Siddharth Tripathi
Fingerprint
2013, pp 320
250
Avid readers of fiction have different ways to tell if they have liked a story. However, the commonest among them is to see if the characters of the book remain in memory long after the last page has been turned.
That's one of the successes of debutant author Siddharth Tripathi. The protagonists, antagonists and even minor characters he fleshes out in The Virgins remain in your thoughts long after the book has been read.
For a first-time writer, Tripathi's prose is lucid enough to show promise of greater things to come. There is more than a hint of style in how he develops his characters and dispenses information to his readers, and that further whets the readers' appetite. And then, there's the story itself. The way he builds it bears the hallmark of a master storyteller just beginning to come into his own.
The three people around whom the narrative revolves are Varanasi-residents Pinku, Guggi and Bhandu - their real names are rarely of use or consequence in the book. The story begins with Guggi and Bhandu abandoning a hapless Pinku in front of a girls' hostel, to be chased and beaten by a cop, after Guggi tries to attract the girls' attention by shouting at them his "introduction".
As things move forward, we learn that Pinku is one of the elder siblings of a family whose head had deserted it years ago, only to return later and mooch off his wife and son's earnings. And this wasn't even the first time he had been abandoned thus. On an earlier occasion, when Guggi had deserted him while trying to steal a flowerpot, he had taken the rap, but not without falling for the young girl of that house.
Bhandu, on the other hand, is battling to score some good marks in his board exams, especially because his mother is a professor, and despite his parents separation amid reports of his father's adultery. He also wants to score the family-abandoning American woman who frequents one of the holy city's ghats, but she doesn't even seem to know he exists.
Finally, there's Guggi, whose outrageous - and often criminally-minded - plans, each of which he chooses to describe as "sexpot" for some reason, cause him enormous glee, but spell doom for friends who dare to accompany him. The son of a corrupt IAS officer who gets cut down to size, Guggi goes to great lengths to take over the protection racket - yes, the students need protection, if not from one another, then from outside forces who take sides in quarrels.
Guggi's actions form a major theme of the story, but also notable in the narrative is the treatment of student politics and an undercurrent of violence that seems omnipresent in all walks of life in parts of Uttar Pradesh.
Also noteworthy is Tripathi's development of minor characters and his effort to showcase different aspects of human nature through them. One can't help but feel sad for the fate of the peaceful tea-stall owner, who can do precious little to stop one or more of his rich customers from leering at or harassing his teenage daughter.
All in all, The Virgins may not be the best debut novel of recent times, but is definitely jostling to climb up. One can indeed expect much bigger things from Tripathi.
- See more at: http://m.deccanherald.com/content/369...
-------------------------------------
A debut with a lot of promise
ARKADEV GHOSHAL, NOV 17, 2013, DHNS : AA
The Virgins
Siddharth Tripathi
Fingerprint
2013, pp 320
250
Avid readers of fiction have different ways to tell if they have liked a story. However, the commonest among them is to see if the characters of the book remain in memory long after the last page has been turned.
That's one of the successes of debutant author Siddharth Tripathi. The protagonists, antagonists and even minor characters he fleshes out in The Virgins remain in your thoughts long after the book has been read.
For a first-time writer, Tripathi's prose is lucid enough to show promise of greater things to come. There is more than a hint of style in how he develops his characters and dispenses information to his readers, and that further whets the readers' appetite. And then, there's the story itself. The way he builds it bears the hallmark of a master storyteller just beginning to come into his own.
The three people around whom the narrative revolves are Varanasi-residents Pinku, Guggi and Bhandu - their real names are rarely of use or consequence in the book. The story begins with Guggi and Bhandu abandoning a hapless Pinku in front of a girls' hostel, to be chased and beaten by a cop, after Guggi tries to attract the girls' attention by shouting at them his "introduction".
As things move forward, we learn that Pinku is one of the elder siblings of a family whose head had deserted it years ago, only to return later and mooch off his wife and son's earnings. And this wasn't even the first time he had been abandoned thus. On an earlier occasion, when Guggi had deserted him while trying to steal a flowerpot, he had taken the rap, but not without falling for the young girl of that house.
Bhandu, on the other hand, is battling to score some good marks in his board exams, especially because his mother is a professor, and despite his parents separation amid reports of his father's adultery. He also wants to score the family-abandoning American woman who frequents one of the holy city's ghats, but she doesn't even seem to know he exists.
Finally, there's Guggi, whose outrageous - and often criminally-minded - plans, each of which he chooses to describe as "sexpot" for some reason, cause him enormous glee, but spell doom for friends who dare to accompany him. The son of a corrupt IAS officer who gets cut down to size, Guggi goes to great lengths to take over the protection racket - yes, the students need protection, if not from one another, then from outside forces who take sides in quarrels.
Guggi's actions form a major theme of the story, but also notable in the narrative is the treatment of student politics and an undercurrent of violence that seems omnipresent in all walks of life in parts of Uttar Pradesh.
Also noteworthy is Tripathi's development of minor characters and his effort to showcase different aspects of human nature through them. One can't help but feel sad for the fate of the peaceful tea-stall owner, who can do precious little to stop one or more of his rich customers from leering at or harassing his teenage daughter.
All in all, The Virgins may not be the best debut novel of recent times, but is definitely jostling to climb up. One can indeed expect much bigger things from Tripathi.
- See more at: http://m.deccanherald.com/content/369...
MenXP reviews Blowfish
Some quotes from the review
"It's easy to relate to the protagonists; for the simple reason that the protagonists are a reflection of the reader. Through most of the scenarios that the author takes you through in Blowfish, you'll be able to find some incredibly relatable instance of your own life glaring back at you. And that's why you should read Blowfish, Because nothing will relate and connect with you better; not even the next guy who's probably going through something similar."
"...you'll find that Tripathi has a particular brand of wit that is fast, funny and hard-hitting. Tripathi paints a realistic picture of everyday scenarios and manages to craft a story that is one of every Indian guy. He isn't a Chetan Bhagat, or a Durjoy Dutta. He doesn't paint it any colour that it isn't meant to be. So, if you're looking for storylines that border on a Bollywood script, you might not find it in Blowfish. What you will find is an absence of flashy cars, posh bungalows and melodrama that is overhyped at the very least. You will find WagonRs, typical Gurgaon traffic jams and moments of happiness and joy in the little, more real instances that happen—both, in the book and in real life."
http://www.mensxp.com/culture/arts/39...
Buy it here - https://www.amazon.in/Blowfish-Siddha...
"It's easy to relate to the protagonists; for the simple reason that the protagonists are a reflection of the reader. Through most of the scenarios that the author takes you through in Blowfish, you'll be able to find some incredibly relatable instance of your own life glaring back at you. And that's why you should read Blowfish, Because nothing will relate and connect with you better; not even the next guy who's probably going through something similar."
"...you'll find that Tripathi has a particular brand of wit that is fast, funny and hard-hitting. Tripathi paints a realistic picture of everyday scenarios and manages to craft a story that is one of every Indian guy. He isn't a Chetan Bhagat, or a Durjoy Dutta. He doesn't paint it any colour that it isn't meant to be. So, if you're looking for storylines that border on a Bollywood script, you might not find it in Blowfish. What you will find is an absence of flashy cars, posh bungalows and melodrama that is overhyped at the very least. You will find WagonRs, typical Gurgaon traffic jams and moments of happiness and joy in the little, more real instances that happen—both, in the book and in real life."
http://www.mensxp.com/culture/arts/39...
Buy it here - https://www.amazon.in/Blowfish-Siddha...
