Non Technical Topic
Indian Writing in English
A discussion of Indian Writing in English (IWE) in all its aspects, with a view to creating some structure and organization in this body of writing.
About Me
Name: Paritosh Uttam
Location: Pune, India
View my complete profile
Links
* Site Feed * My home page
* Who's the most authentic of them all? - II * Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the most authent... * The native verus the NRI writer * Regional literature versus IWE * Dream within a dream - II * IWE: Dream within a dream? * What is IWE * What this blog is about
* October 2005 * November 2005 * December 2005
Sunday, December 04, 2005
Who's the most authentic of them all? - II
It's perfectly all right to write about people who are not the norm in the society they are placed. One of the thumbrules of good fiction writing is to make interesting things happen to interesting people. Usually, in the effort to make a character interesting, he also becomes unusual (though the real skill of the writer comes out when he makes the usual interesting).
But, but...
With the growing body of IWE writers, one would naturally expect that the subject of writing follows a normal scattered distribution. If some writers are not comfortable using typical characters and settings and rely on the uncommon, then there should be some who should be comfortable. But in actuality, statistics appear to be skewed in favour of the uncommon.
What I mean is that most books by IWE writers are about people who might be interesting as individuals, but do not strike the reader as being typical of a class of people. The character is not representative.
Or at best, he or she may be representative of a niche class. Say, books about bored or repressed housewives: about an individual who can be seen as a symbol for group of people in similar conditions. But there would be few novels dealing with, say, the masses below the poverty
A discussion of Indian Writing in English (IWE) in all its aspects, with a view to creating some structure and organization in this body of writing.
About Me
Name: Paritosh Uttam
Location: Pune, India
View my complete profile
Links
* Site Feed * My home page
* Who's the most authentic of them all? - II * Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the most authent... * The native verus the NRI writer * Regional literature versus IWE * Dream within a dream - II * IWE: Dream within a dream? * What is IWE * What this blog is about
* October 2005 * November 2005 * December 2005
Sunday, December 04, 2005
Who's the most authentic of them all? - II
It's perfectly all right to write about people who are not the norm in the society they are placed. One of the thumbrules of good fiction writing is to make interesting things happen to interesting people. Usually, in the effort to make a character interesting, he also becomes unusual (though the real skill of the writer comes out when he makes the usual interesting).
But, but...
With the growing body of IWE writers, one would naturally expect that the subject of writing follows a normal scattered distribution. If some writers are not comfortable using typical characters and settings and rely on the uncommon, then there should be some who should be comfortable. But in actuality, statistics appear to be skewed in favour of the uncommon.
What I mean is that most books by IWE writers are about people who might be interesting as individuals, but do not strike the reader as being typical of a class of people. The character is not representative.
Or at best, he or she may be representative of a niche class. Say, books about bored or repressed housewives: about an individual who can be seen as a symbol for group of people in similar conditions. But there would be few novels dealing with, say, the masses below the poverty
Links: * December 2005 Sunday, December 04, 2005 Thursday, December 01, 2005 Mirror, mirror on the wall, who 's the most authentic of them all? Sunday, November 20, 2005 The native verus the NRI writer