By Anant Mathur (March 07, 2012)
Perhaps
the two most important ingredients of writing are extensive research
and a great Imagination. I have spoken about the importance of research
in the past, so this post will be about our limitless imagination.
For a
writer imagination is the key to telling a great story, if you've read the
works of Jules Verne, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Ruskin Bond, Lewis
Carroll, Mark Twain, Ian Fleming, R.K. Narayan, Rudyard Kipling, Sarat Chandra
Chattopadhyay, J. R. R. Tolkien, William Shakespeare, Agatha Christie, Harivansh Rai
Bachchan, H.G. Wells, The Brothers Grimm, J. K. Rowling, etc. - you will agree how
imaginative these writers are. They not only know their subject,
they researched it well and understood it to such a degree that you could easily believe what they were saying.
If we
take a look at French writer Jules Verne's novel From The Earth To The Moon
the story is not just full of imagination but has calculations which
show how brilliant the writer is. A lot of the calculations which Jules
Verne made came pretty close to what actually is - but he wrote about
them more than a century before man ever set foot on the moon. Verne wrote
about space, air and underwater travel before air travel and practical
submarines were invented, and before practical means of space travel had
been devised. Verne was not only a great writer but perhaps one of the greatest minds of his time.
Similarly, J. R. R. Tolkien whose work most of you are probably familiar with if you've read The Lord of the Rings series of books or watched the films by Peter Jackson. Tolkien not only wrote mythological adventure stories with great imagination but was also able to construct several languages unique to his stories.
Like Jules Verne, H.G. Wells
also used scientific facts and figures in his writings, but what made
his writings a little different than those of Verne were that he used
psychology as well. He gets inside the head of his characters and helps
the reader understand why the character is behaving the way he is and
what's causing him to do the things he does - this can be easily
understood if you've read his stories like The Invisible Man, The War of the Worlds, The Island of Doctor Moreau and The Time Machine.
Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay, India to British parents, though he would live in many places throughout his life, he returned to India many times. Several of his stories and poems (The Jungle Book, Kim, Gunga Din, The Second Jungle Book, etc.) took place in India.
As fantastically imaginative as J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter stories are it's doubtful that she would've written a single word without
doing the proper research on wizards and magic. Most writers are
inspired by what is happening in their life at the time they're writing a
particular work - in the case of Rowling, she used a lot of what she
was going through at the time to write situations and characters for
Harry Potter.
Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay is one of the most popular Indian writers. His Devdas is easily one of the most recognized characters in Indian literature. Several of his stories have been turned into feature films in many Indian languages - Devdas, in particular, has been made 8 times in Hindi, Bengali and Telugu. Born into poverty in the late 1800s, Sarat Chandra wrote stories which took place in his present time and which were about the common man of that era - their struggles and triumphs - most of his stories were based on his experiences in Bhagalpur where he spent 20 years of his life. His lack of financial stability drastically effected his writings.
Today,
most of the shows on Indian television are either reality-based or have
writers who lack the imagination of the above mentioned geniuses of
our time. I for one ignore reality TV, give me a dose of good
imagination any day over these useless reality dramatizations which not
only lack imagination but also become repetitive quite fast. Bollywood films are no better, although filmmakers are trying new genre they just don't have the creative abilities to tell a good story in simple terms - they lack imagination.
There have been very few novelists in India who can stir our imagination. Most Indian novelists today can't write sci-fi the way H.G. Wells or Jules Verne could. The few who are writing are not doing anything which one would consider creative. Once in a long while we get a great book or novel from an Indian writer, but how long must we wait before we have another classic at the same level as Devdas or The Guide? Today a novelist might be able to write a story that gets on the best sellers list, but unlike Devdas and The Guide, they're soon forgotten.
There's
more to writing than plot points and characters - Imagination is key.
But a great writer is not only someone who has great imagination, it is
also someone who has the ability to write a story that can convince the reader that what he has written is believable. Again if
we look at Verne, his "From The Earth To The Moon" is a complete
departure from "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" which again is a different
from "Around The World In Eighty Days", but the one thing all his story have in common is that they are believable and enjoyable for the reader. It's difficult to put down a Jules Verne novel.
It's
critical for a writer to experience life. Jules Verne was French but he
could write about America, India, China, Europe or any place his heart
desired - and it is believable because he combined his great imagination
with research and the experiences of his life - great writers have an
uncanny ability to do that. If you only have one job, live in one city
and have the same friends your entire life your life is quite boring and
it's doubtful you've had too many experiences which would fire-up your
imagination to the same level as some who has moved around a lot and experienced different parts of the world. If only for a day or a few hours every writer should: work at a gas station or a
pizza place or newspaper, ride a horse, take the train, listen to music you normally wouldn't (perhaps even in other languages) travel,
discover other cultures, etc. - but while you're doing all this - learn
as much as you can, as a writer these experience will grow your
imagination.
Ian Fleming is best known for his series of James Bond novels and short stories. But few may know that he also wrote the children's story Chitty Chitty Bang Bang which was later turned into a films starring Dick Van Dyke.
Although most novelists pick one genre and continue to write in that
direction, a screenwriter must have the ability to write different
genres if only to survive in a very competitive industry.
Perhaps the best example of a writer who could easily switch genres is William Shakespeare.
It is widely accepted that Shakespeare has covered all the possible
plots in his many years of writing. A playwright and a poet, Shakespeare
has written 38 plays, 154 sonnets, 2 long narrative poems and several
other poems. Shakespeare could write a tragedy, followed by a comedy
followed by an adventure story better than anyone. It comes as no surprise then that most of his plays have been adapted into films. He understood his
audience perfectly and in many ways was well ahead of his time.
You know when I started writing this post I thought it
would purely be about imagination, but as it turned out a part of it
ended up being about how important research is for a writer's
imagination. As you can see, research is not only
essential for telling a good story but it plays a big part in
stimulating the imagination of a writer.
The one thing to take away from this post is that it
is
extremely important to grow as a screenwriter. A screenwriter who is only
able to
write a single genre such as Romance, Drama or Mystery has not grown and
soon will run out of ideas (there are only so many romantic scenes one
screenwriter can write before he gets repetitive - this is why most
Indian director have a hard time after their first two films - look at
the struggling Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Karan Johar, Ashutosh Gowariker, etc.). Getting your mind away from a genre for a little while will also help you the next time you attempt it. If you've written
a Drama, try your hand at Science Fiction next and then do a Comedy or
Murder Mystery or combine a couple of genres (the results could surprise
you). But always remember to research your subjects, your brain will
thank you by taking your imagination to new heights...
© Anant Mathur. All Rights Reserved.
The Hollywood film "Mirror Mirror" adapted from the classic Fairy Tale "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" is releasing this Friday, it stars Julia Roberts as The Queen and Lily Collins (daughter of british musician Phil Collins) as Snow White.
