Writers are
Writers are magicians; and inventors of time machines, and a lot of other stuff too.
Writers are magicians; and inventors of time machines, and a lot of other stuff too. Writers are gods, notice the small ‘g’. Writers are gods, creators of their own worlds; own universes. We are not bound by space or time for that matter. We are also liars, great liars. We turn believers into non-believers and vice-versa.
I was reading an interview of Mr. Quentin Tarantino a few days back wherein he talked about “bringing literature back to film-making”. I was impressed.
I was reading this book by Carol S. Dweck: ‘Mindsets’; my friend who had lent me this one had a lot of these self-help books. I am not that big a fan. So, yeah I was reading this book and you know out of the blue I realised something. This market, the self help books market that is, is a pretty big one; and even though they are all talking about different things they all seem to make sense. It was then that I came up with a postulate explaining the phenomenon. It goes like this: they take a fact, a simple basic true fact, then they build their whole theory upon this one simple basic fact; this one truth. Now since we know that what we began with is inherently true, we concur that whatever is being built upon that is also true. And that’s why the book you’re reading always seems to make sense. Confused? Take a deep breath and read it again.
This is also how great fiction writers operate I believe, creating great characters, and vivid scenarios. That brings me to the other stuff I wanted to talk about. We are all so different and yet so same, so damn same!
The last chapter of the book, ‘The road less traveled‘, deals with this subject. Something about a collective conscience of the human race. It says something amazing. It says each generation adds to this thing, this collective conscience and we all draw from it. Not as efficiently as desired, but still. As an example consider a normal response to any threatening situation. How do we know how to react to the said situation? How do we know we have to get of the way of a raging bull or truck or car or elephant or well you get the zest, don’t you? We do so by drawing from this collective conscious, we move because after getting thrashed enough number of times, some one at some time must have dove out-of-the-way and that reaction would have been registered in the consciousness.
This is how characters connect on some level when we are reading a work, I think. Or maybe not. Its your pick really. We are what we choose to believe after all!
Oh and lastly, writers are assholes. Most of them atleast. Break one’s heart and you’ll know! Or have a fight with one and don’t forget to check the creativity with which you’ll be killed off on the next novel!