Some time back, I had been selected to write a novel by a publisher! Shortly after that,
I had received a mail stating that I would better be sending them the base sketch of my novel, details on the characters, the chapter wise details of what my characters shall be doing in each of the chapters and the works!

That had left me wondering as to how can you convert the art of spontaneous writing into the statistics of measurements and demarcations?

Writing is an art; at least that is what I believe! What my characters shall be doing in the 31st chapter of their lives shall strictly be left to their business and not mine

I can only give birth to the main characters, the side characters, the mild characters and the evil characters…how can I control their activities even before their life starts? Don’t they need to live, commit mistakes and then learn to get on with their lives! Elementary my dear, with or without Watson!

Suppose in their fancy of taking up the world, if my heroin run away with a Turkish guy to Nepal or would like to go for bungee jumping from Australia or would like to baby-sit and earn pittance in exchange for her patience, how can I refuse her? On the other hand, if my Hero wants to join in the US Army or get adventurous in Sahara Desert in the mid summer or would like to become a cowboy in the out backs of Australia, how can I stop him either?

Don’t they have any say in their life and living or what? Don’t they all have their own destiny to fulfill or not?

Of course, I may mildly rebuke my hero, may even pull him, mildly of course, by his ears, and drag him towards the holy ways of living or may even shout at him to see the beautiful future that is awaiting him in the Himalayan Huts…

Still if he wants to take up fighting with the Aliens against the Earthlings, do I have a say on his actions? Will I need to justify myself, as the creator of my characters, as to what he is doing is right or otherwise?

Coming back to the action plan of my novel requested by the publisher, I was thinking on the whole day, the next day, the next day after the next day, and the days and weeks following the next day…suffice to say that I haven’t written anything for them! They must have a found a writer who was ruthless or cruel to his creations and had forced them into doing whatever he had wanted them to do! How sad!

I respect my characters…I let them live and learn, give them a lot of rope to learn their life in baby steps…there is no hurry for my characters to take on the world or to get introduced to the life of drinks, drugs and that of blogging!

I let my characters be as happy as they want to be and won’t force them to kill themselves or sacrifice their lives in order to make my readers to cry, weep and pay more money to read more on them!

Oh no, I wont let my characters go thro life in the north pole, so that I can show the readers the beautiful pictures of the dazzling bluish white of the ice or allow my characters to get wounded in the world war II, so that I can show the readers the pictures from the past! Weep, weep…Cry more and pay me more! Oh no, no way!

I won’t even allow my hero to loose his girl; I would feel traumatized by the sorrow he would go through because of that! Nor would I allow my heroin to loose her boy to get married to another boy, rich by any standards, working with the leaders of the software industry!!! I won’t be able to torture my characters so that I may earn more and more!

You see, that’s precisely why I haven’t written any novels so far!