For my next project, I was trying to choose the name of my lead female character. I went with Mona until my daughter’s best friend said she doesn’t like the name. Then I changed it to Moyna (which is the Bengali pronunciation of the word Mynah, the bird). It sounds softer and somehow cuter, more innocent. But people not only hear the name in their head as they read it, they also have preferences for how a word looks!

My daughter and her friend preferred the spelling Moina rather than Moyna. This led to a survey of about 20 people of different ethnicities and backgrounds. Interestingly, people from India and Philippines overwhelmingly liked Moyna. People who grew up in America liked Moina, but didn’t dislike Moyna.

So, Moyna Sengupta, it is.

For the male lead, I toyed with the name Suraj (Sun) versus Sooraj. I thought it’s a lovely name, but my family didn’t like it much for that particular character. After going through a list, which included the common ones: Rahul, Rajat, Arjun, Raj, Amar…we settled on Sameer. (For some reason, Samir didn’t make the cut, but Sameer did).

Choosing the last name was harder. I played around with Singh, Kumar, Sharma, Basu. So, back to the survey: Singhania got the highest votes.

So, the male lead is going to be Sameer Singhania.

Which brings me to the other characters in the book: Which one do you prefer for last names?
Cantoni or Mansoni
Castillo  or Sanchez
Garrett   or Fairbanks

First name:
Evette or Yvette
Priya or Preeti
Armand or Giovanni

One of my colleagues, an aspiring screen writer, asked me how I ‘do’ dialogue in my writing, and got me thinking. When I write dialogue, I remove the redundant things (Hello, how are you? Nice to meet you. Haven’t seen you in a long time), unless they add to tension, and the speaker doesn’t really mean it.

I try to imagine how a specific person would deliver my dialogue. If it’s a teenager, I imagine my daughter speaking. If it’s a conservative middle-aged Indian woman, I imagine my childhood neighbor Gupta Auntie from Street 20. If I have a straight-talking no-nonsense personality, who may cuss under her breath, I think of my secretary. What and how would that particular person speak? A young junkie is unlikely to greet someone in a sing-song voice with a ‘How do you do.’ Just as Gupta Auntie would probably not say “Yo!” (Unless they are pretending to be someone else, which could add to humor).

People of different age-group find humor in different things. I would put in a self-deprecatory fat-joke for women readers, but middle-grade boys (and some grown-ups) would more likely laugh at fart-jokes. 

Social media is all about expressing yourself via the written word. Why are people so active on social media? Why do seemingly shy people end up sharing a lot about themsleves?

Writing gives us an outlet, a way to express concerns and opinions and doubts and anger. Creative writing gives us a different kind of outlet. We write from another person's point of view, getting inside their head, dealing with issues we give them, challenges we present to them. Writing about other peoples issues help us deal with our own. It gives us a chance to decide what would be right under difficult circumstances, to help us understand why people act the way they do. It gives us a chance to make sense of a challenging world. And most of all, it gives a place to hide from our own problems, if only for a short time. 

That's why I write. How about you?

Our own experiences give us the best insight into a character’s mind, into her thoughts and emotions. Let’s say you’re writing a scene where your heroine is experiencing a moment of fear or loneliness. Where do you access those feelings? Look deeply into your own life and find a moment where you felt the same way, even if the circumstances were different.

I was writing a scene where a young girl is feeling vulnerable because circumstances made her run away from home. I’ve never run away from home, but I have experienced feeling small, scared, and alone.

When I was five years old, my older siblings made me take the short-cut back from school every day, where we had to jump onto a narrow bridge over a canal which often flooded during monsoons. The water gushing under my feet would terrify me. One day, my class was released earlier than theirs, so I took off by the long but unfamiliar route, but soon lost my way. And for the first time in my life, I felt fear. Of course, a few minutes later my brother caught up with me and I didn’t even mind it when he scolded me for taking off like that! But I still remember the fear.

This is what I worked into the scene:

She stared at the sheer volume of the gushing water, at the vast relentless sky above, and the unfamiliar landscape behind her. And suddenly she felt small. Like an insignificant speck in the cosmos, who did not matter in the big scheme of things. If a lightning bolt were to claim her right now, there was not one person in the world who cared. A lump formed in her throat and she gulped. The universe had placed a burden on her young shoulders, but given her nothing to cope with it.

How was she going to survive?

She collapsed on the muddy bank, and sinking her face in her hands, rocked back and forth, as she mourned the end of the only life she had known, and her familiar world vanished into oblivion.

It is human nature to choose the easiest and quickest path.

When we talk, we use adjectives and adverbs to describe what we saw.

“It was awesome!”

This could describe a lovely sunset, or a suspenseful movie or a New Year’s Eve party.

“It was simply awful!”

It could be an exam you took, a horrible accident or a poorly written book.

Most of us have an extensive vocabulary, but we seldom use it to its fullest extent, preferring to use vernacular. But it doesn't have to be like that when we write. Spend a little time to find that one perfect word that describes what you're trying to explain. See the examples below:

1.       She was extremely beautiful, and people would stop and stare at her.

She was stunning.

2.       She ran really fast and crossed the cobble-stone pathway. Her throat felt dry, and her heart beat so fast she could feel it against her chest.

She sprinted across the cobble-stone pathway, her throat parched, as her heart pounded against her chest.

Sometimes a sentence is good enough, but we have a limit on the word count. We can substitute as follows, at the cost of losing some of the impact. See next:

He was obnoxious, always putting people down and boasting about his accomplishments, annoying everyone at work.

His pompous demeanor annoyed his colleagues.

But when you start writing, don’t be inhibited; write what comes easily and naturally, and then edit until you find the perfect word.