Adventures of a Writer

I have been writing books and screenplays for a while and it's been a process of learning and re-learning. In this interview with Namrata of Kitaab.org , I share my experiences with regard to writing scripts, pitching and book to screen adaptations.  Team Kitaab: Your career began as a business journalist before you transitioned to fiction writing. How has your background in journalism influenced your approach to writing screenplays and adapting books for the screen? Adite Banerjie: Journalism has shaped my career as a writer – both in non-fiction and fiction. First of all, by working on news stories, specially those with a human interest angle, I got the opportunity to observe first hand various situations and events and how they impact lives. It provided me with invaluable experience of the entire spectrum of issues that shape, impact and change people’s lives. At some subconscious level this stayed with me. So, when I started writing fiction, my journalism experie...

The Hindi movie industry is one of the most prolific film industries in the world. According to available figures on the Internet, revenue collections in 2019 stood at Rs 19000 crore. This includes revenues earned from films, television, OTT, etc. Over the last couple of years, thanks to the pandemic, movie viewing in theatres has seen a significant decline. People are preferring to watch streaming channels where there are scores of movies and web series to choose from at the press of a remote button.  2022 has seen more movies releasing in theatres but it seems like audiences are not returning as fast as the filmmakers would like them to. So much so that a string of big budget films including the much awaited Aamir Khan starrer Lal Singh Chadha has had a shockingly disastrous opening at the box office. Something that would be unthinkable for a mega star of his stature. Akshay Kumar, another mega star has had an equally tepid release in Raksha Bandhan .  It's not as if all fi...

  By Jaideep Sen        On 7th July, 2021, Dilip Kumar Saab was finally relieved from his suffering due to poor health of many years and gave lesser mortals like me to relive and rewind to the greatness of Dilip Saab.  Dignity is precisely what Dilip Saab brought not only to his performances but to the overall realm of Hindi Cinema.  A scene from Shakti My generation was brought up more on Salim Saab-Javed Saab’s Angry Young Man portrayed by Amitabh Bachchan Ji and uncannily it took the same haloed trio to introduce me to the greatness of Dilip Saab in Shakti . What a film, what crackling writing, what performances by both Dilip Saab and Amit Ji!  Dilip Saab was hitting the ball out of the park in every scene. Like a chameleon on top of its game -- because the character of Ashwini Kumar had such vast changing colours to cover. From a tough cop to loving husband to helpless father to ultimately shooting his only child dead.  Dilip Saab scored ...

  Elizabeth Gilbert is famously known for Eat, Pray, Love , a book that I frankly did not enjoy and couldn't bring myself to finish. When I picked up City of Girls , I was intrigued more by the fact that it was set in New York, a city that I had visited a couple of years ago. Watching a Broadway show was the major highlight of my trip. Given that City of Girls is also set in the world of 'showgirls', I was hooked. New York of the 1940s comes alive on the pages as we meet the rich and entitled Vivian Morris who arrives in the City to live with her slightly wild and eccentric aunt Peg. Peg runs a theatre where Vivian befriends an interesting cast of characters including a sexy showgirl, Peg's female secretary and lover and their actress friend. Vivian teams up with her showgirl friend and finds ample ways to exercise her two skills -- "sewing and sex" -- until the inevitable happens. Scandal ensues and upends Vivian's life. Vivian returns to her ...

 Sudesna Ghosh is a prolific Kolkata based romance author who shares her thoughts on Valentine's Day. Don't forget to check out her new release on Juggernaut, My First Love ... I love reading and writing romance. It wasn’t something that I planned to do when I started my writing career with short stories for children. But then I became friends with so many romance authors that I had no choice – I was talking about writing romance and reading more romance books than ever before because all my friends were writing them.  While a few people dared to comment that I was too serious and smart to write in the genre, my author friends encouraged me to try something new. I’m so glad I went ahead with it. No matter how much I tried to brush off Valentine’s Day as a commercial, superficial event, I started writing stories especially for the big day. Even if I didn’t get any Valentine’s Day cards or gifts, I started celebrating the occasion buying nice things for myself and the people I...

Photo by Maddi Bazzocco on Unsplash The new year is already a month old. It seems a little odd to talk about 'new year resolutions' when things are still kind of out of whack in the world. The long shadow of 2020 continues to chase us into the new year and one is still a bit wary of hoping that things will ultimately fall into place. After all, you don't wanna put any kind of hex on it, right? So, January passed by in a swirl of activity. Some planned, others unplanned. And still others totally unexpected.  On the planned front, I took out time to listen to the three-part Robert McKee webinar series on longform TV writing. McKee's insights into the growth of binge-TV and their evolution from the soaps and serials of yore are incisive. It's a masterclass for anyone who is interested in writing - and has many lessons for all fiction writers including novelists. My own writing has been going slow for the past couple of months; so I have spent whatever spare time I ha...

By Jaideep Sen The minute I was reminded by my wife Anjali yesterday morning that today is GURU POORNIMA the thought to do an ode to my Ultimate Guru, Salim Khan Saab, popped in my head. I have been wanting to do this piece on the Doomed Characters, Vijay from Deewar perhaps Salim Saab-Javed Saab’s greatest script ever - I say perhaps because Sholay is my personal favorite even in terms of writing - and Vicky from Naam which is unarguably Salim Saab’s greatest script as a solo writer . Today, it found a fresh burst of oxygen. Through the lockdown I have watched both Deewar and Naam a few times and that lurking sense of losing both Vijay and Vicky forever looms large on the films especially through the second half like a predator shark which is on the fringe waiting to attack. It is this feeling which makes both films emotionally so palpable. Both the characters are scarred by life: Vijay by the extreme humiliation his father has gone through, the abject p...