Francis Itty Cora

An ex-private from American military  (also an ardent cannibal) who lost his potency during his sex crimes in Iraq war is searching for his roots in India aided by 3 women in a posh prostitution ring called ‘The school.’ Through their investigations, the historical fact versus fiction story of a cult which originated from the mysterious 15th century Indo-Italian merchant called Francis Itty Cora gradually unfolds.

This is in the vein of an Umberto Eco. Or to quote a more mainstream example, in the vein of Dan Brown. But some times it does get boring when the writer starts indiscriminately dumping all those facts he got from the net. As some one commented, it is not Itty Cora, but Wiki Cora.

To say the least, the it is spicy and a well sold book in recent times. I don’t want to imply that the book sold well because of that. But I didn’t find anything special about this novel either in terms of language or the content except a desperate attempt to shock and impress. There is no grace about it.

Why you should follow your dream…

That creepy common sense. You know, the odds and figures… The actual probability of making it after taking this lonely road that you so desperately want to follow… The fear of being embarrassed by your own stupidity when you look back after many years…

Here is why you should still follow that dream abandoning the shade of a boring but secure choice- even if the odds of making it is one in lakhs… Top five regrets of the dying-

Kahaani

Underwhelmed and overwhelmed.

We are learning to make good thrillers. I mean the technical aspect of it.

But… we still need to make it believable. In the desperation for a killer twist, sometimes the logic is trampled upon. I am not even talking about all the nitty gritties which has  already been pointed out. I am talking about the basic plot reveal. (Major Spoiler) The IB chief of India planning a terrorist attack with a renegade agent ? Come on man. Even a thriller needs some credibility.

Deadlines and scriptwriting

Putting up deadlines and following them religiously has been one of my resolutions for this year. Yeah, I have heard all the usual suspects of an argument against deadlines in writing. ‘In art, you are compromising on the quality of your work by not making it as best as it can be,’ ‘Good art is about committing yourself to something regardless of the cost of time and opportunities’ etc. But in my experience, I am compromising on the quality of my writing when I am not conscientious about the time that I am putting into various aspects of writing.

Because otherwise I would spend three months or more into outlining when I should have finished it in a month and then another couple of months into the treatment. Then finally when I come into the first draft, I would realise that there were inherent issues in the execution of the script which would make most of the work in the previous phases invalid and useless. Often mere fatigue and irritation will force me to push many issues under the carpet.

It has been my experience that to really come up with a good script, one need to go with the intensive and extensive work hand in hand. At least for me, however hard you scrutinize and work on the first round of outlining/ treatment/ drafting, there will be crucial issues that you are only going to detect in your second or third draft. So there is some truth in the saying that ‘vomit out your first draft as fast as possible.’ If some one decides to spend two month each on outlining, treatment and drafting, I would suggest that rather than doing it in blocks, one should spend one month each on each of these stages and then go back to drawing board in the next three months. That way, I feel that your script is going to be 100% better.

Photo by justmakeit