Think Different....An Ideology I Truly Believe In

I have always been fascinated by movies and especially by the stories on which the movie is based. For me storyline is the key which holds the attention of the audience be it a reader or a movie watcher.

The film stars may attract you to go watch the movie but your liking of it will completely depend on whether you enjoyed the story or not. Similarly when you pick up a book, the first thing one reads is the blurb. If the concept of the story appeals you, then only the book is picked up. Now characters, like actors are extremely important for the story. You can have a brilliant story but with poor actors, the movie will not work. Similarly your blurb can attract people but the characters who play out the story have to be likeable and strong enough for the reader to enjoy the book.

When I watch movies and nowadays the catching up is more on tv rather than cinema halls, my first instinct is to give my opinion on the storyline and then comes the acting whether if some other actor would have been better suited to the role or the ones who did it were apt. When you watch some movies, you get a feeling why did the director or producer even bother making it and wasting so much resources....few stories are just rehashed just because the original concept did well and you get a sense of deja vu. It was this instinct of being highly opinionated about stories that finally made me challenge myself to come up with themes which have to be different.

In the late 90s Apple under Steve Jobs came up with a famous line for their ad campaign which put the company in the limelight and on the path of glory from which they have never looked back.

The line was “Think Different”. This will be the basis for my story writing.

Two movies whose stories have left me in total awe have been Lago Raho Munnabhai with the Mahatma Gandhi concept and 3 idiots. I aspire to be a writer at that level.

So when I start thinking of a topic to write about, the first thing I ask myself, Is the theme different from what I have read or seen and if the answer to that question is yes then I start working on it. Many people in my social circle asked me the question whether this episode of age gap romance happened to me since many writers are inspired by real life events which they went through. Honestly it never happened to me nor to anyone whom I personally knew.

As I mentioned in my earlier blog, It Happens was the second story which I took up after completing a romantic thriller. I wanted to try different genres of story writing and thus I decided to work on a love story but wanted it to be different rather than the usual boy meets girl, followed by some complications etc etc. In the early 2000s I had developed a big crush on the hollywood actress Meg Ryan and I believe if ever there was a contest for the cutest female in the world, she would have won it hands down. Her movie You’ve Got Mail I would have seen umpteen times.

That is when it struck me. What if I ever got the opportunity to be in a long term relationship with Meg Ryan would I let go of it just because she was elder to me ? This became the crux of my story...falling in love with the elder woman….this was the easier part but taking this relationship to its logical conclusion of a marriage was the difficult part.

So the entire story when I penned it down the first time 10-12 years back, I imagined myself as the main protagonist ie Gautam and Roshni as Meg Ryan. All scenarios that Rohit, Gautam’s best friend brought up were all thought with me in the situation personally. If logically I decide not to marry the elder woman, what will be those scenarios and how would they pan out. All the points took a long time to think and debate their sensibility to the situation but it was indeed fun just to find yourself in the situation of reasoning so many doubts.

Every reader of the book has absolutely loved the character of Rohit, the witty, smart ass and suave delhi ka launda. Rohit is the character I wish I was whereas Gautam is the character who I am...strong on the outside but emotional and sensitive on the inside. I guess everyone wishes they are as funny and outspoken like Rohit and hence the fondness to that character.

The character of Gautam in terms of his physical presence as well as his work profile, I picked up from my very close school friend with the same name. He has done very well for himself and is currently a Director in Citibank Asia. He was picked up by Citibank for management training from India and has not looked back thereafter. That’s from where the Singapore part of the story was inspired. The similarities between the real Gautam and the character Gautam end there before anyone thinks whether the age gap romance involved the real Gautam.  

When you write a book, a lot of things from the real life inspire you. One has to be very observant of things around as you never know when they could be just right for your story. As a writer I feel, the power of observation is extremely important to put logical line of thinking in the stories you write. Sometimes one can get too creative and readers can think that such a thing can never happen and hence the story seems very hard to relate to.

One example of such a scenario is the movie Catch Me If You Can, directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Leonardo di Caprio. The movie was based on the life of Frank Abagnale, Jr. who became a master impersonator and made millions of dollars in the 60 and 70s before he was arrested by the FBI. If the same movie was made based on pure fiction, no audience would have believed that such a thing can happen and would not have related to the story.

More about how the story developed, how other characters formed, my style of writing and much more in subsequent blogs.

Please do share your feedback about the blog or the book It Happens. If you have any questions please feel free to ask.