When I began writing fiction, I didn’t take any creative writing classes. There weren’t any I could find. Instead I learnt the old-fashioned way – reading, scrounging blogs of writers, emailing authors and haranguing them – till I could build that small little wisp of an idea in my head, through plot-building, characterisation, structure and somehow fit it into the shape of a novel. Learning the art of writing this way wasn’t easy. And if it wasn’t for the support from a lot of authors who responded over email and tried to help, I would have given up before I finished my first novel.
Last year, when I attended a few classes at the creative writing master’s course at Chichester University, UK, as part of my Charles Wallace India Trust fellowship, I realised how these classes could have helped me as a debut author. A formal course would have introduced me to concepts of structures, storytelling style, plot building, scenes, pace, and many other little building blocks that each author needs in order to build the magic wand of writing and shape the story in her head. Also, it would have introduced me to authors and publishers and made me understand how…
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