tales of Suchita

Do you ever have an idea that looks perfect in your mind – or your notes – but the moment you try to write it; it crumbles into dust? You think maybe if you added some details or dialogue it’ll start to make sense but then it feels “like butter scraped over too much bread?”

Usually when I get an idea, I know roughly how many words I can write on it. Some ideas are worth 500 words and that’s fine. Others need to age like fine wine – poured, twirled, smelled and drunk in dainty sips.

But what if you’re on a deadline, the idea you have is your hail Mary and it absolutely needs to reach a word count requirement for submission?

Well.

Start with a logline. A single sentence that describes the heart of what you’re writing. That becomes your centrepiece, your guiding light, your north star – pick a metaphor you prefer. Everything must either lead to this line or expand on it. The best part: this trick works for nonfiction and fiction both.

Once you have the heart, you add tributaries. For 500 words, just the logline may be enough. For 1500 words, two and for 5000, you may need three or four.

To give you an example, if my logline is Jyoti is driving down a road, trying to escape a monster, for writing 500 words, that much is enough. But if I want to write 5000 words, I need to know more: who is Jyoti, the villain or the victim? What kind of a monster is it? Is it metaphorical, human or supernatural? What genre am I even writing?

The logline stays the same, but the tributaries give you clarity on what direction you need to expand your writing in.

Once you have your logline and tributaries, figure out the engine: where and how do you begin. For a book review, do you open with a quote or how you found the book?

The engine, in my opinion, is the make or break of your piece. I always spend extra time on my opening line. I want to use it and the first para to assure my reader that they’re in for an entertaining ride. 

This clarity will make writing easier.

There’s one more step after you finish your piece and before you edit it. Ask yourself: did I do what I set out to do?

If you sat down to write a rant post about a movie that people are praising as if it’s the second coming of Christ, do you at least feel better at the end of it? If yes, then your job is done. If no, go through your piece again to find where your thought got muddy. Here’s where editing will help. Before the language edits, make sure your thought has been conveyed.

Most of the time, words are not the problem. We’re writers – we have more words than we’ll ever need. What we’re usually missing is clarity of thought. Get that right first, and the words will follow.

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For Letter C, written as part of #BlogchatterA2Z