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I can guide them to books that will serve as role models. Largely, though, one learns to write almost like developing muscle memory, and this requires years of effort.

Akhil Sharma

I can’t have composite characters. I can’t attribute dialogue to someone based simply on my memory and not based on notes taken at the time that the words were spoken.
AKHIL SHARMA

Attribute Based Character Composite Dialogue Memories Note Simply Spoken Taken Word
If anybody reads an Indian newspaper, all these things are obvious, and so I am not breaking news. All I am doing is representing my community as it actually is.
AKHIL SHARMA

Abortion Breaking Community News Newspaper Obvious People Read
Money is part of how we move through the world, what stores and restaurants we go into, whether we take a train to the airport or a taxi. Describing characters living in the real world requires describing them engaging with money.
AKHIL SHARMA

Character Info Money Moving Part Real Restaurant World
We all become afraid. We all look at others and think these other people are more fortunate than us.
AKHIL SHARMA

Afraid Become Fortunate Other People Think
While a dramatized scene is a way of proving and guaranteeing an emotional experience for the reader, exposition assumes that the reader is sophisticated and can see the universal.
AKHIL SHARMA

Dramatixed Emotional Experience Guarantee Proving Reader Scene Sophisticated Universal Way
Also, I have to assume that readers are sophisticated enough to know that not every person in a community is the same, and so there are many people who would not force an abortion just because a fetus is female.
AKHIL SHARMA

Assume Community Female Many Person Reader Same Sophisticated
For me, a memoir is nonfiction and nonfiction has to be absolutely true.
AKHIL SHARMA

Absolute True
It is hard to create a first-person narrator that can be a child and yet is able to take in enough information for the narrative to be legible to the reader.
AKHIL SHARMA

Able Child Children Create Enough First Information Legible Narrator
There are also so many emotional aspects to money – feelings of inadequacy, feelings of security. I am not sure if there needs to be more about money in fiction, but the absence of this aspect can make a story feel somehow frictionless and unreal.
AKHIL SHARMA

Aspect Emotional Feeling Fiction How Inadequacy Money Security Unreal
I tend to think that we are all pretty much alike. We all feel despair. We all have problems with relationships.
AKHIL SHARMA

Alike Much People Pretty Thinking Unique
I need to tell the things that are important but which don’t make sense in terms of the narrative, things that would destroy symmetry or narrative pace. This is my personal belief about what it means to write nonfiction.
AKHIL SHARMA

Important Mean Narrative Need Sense Thing Writing
The little babies are missing their families from their past lives.
AKHIL SHARMA

Baby Family Life Memories Missing Past
The babies have old souls and the old souls have to shrink to become little babies.
AKHIL SHARMA

Baby Become Little Old Soul Shrink
Sandeep Jauhar gives us an insider’s look at the medical profession and also a dramatic account of the psychological challenges of early adulthood.
AKHIL SHARMA

Account Challenge Dramatic Look Medical Person Profession Psychological
As a human being living one’s life, one is more open to relief when there is rain or the expectation of rain. That readiness for hope gets manifested in my stories and that of many other Indian writers.
AKHIL SHARMA

Being Expectation Human Life Living More Open Rain relief
People often need to describe things quickly and so they use a shorthand. The problem is that after they use a label, they begin to think only in terms of the label instead of the totality of the experience a novel provides.
AKHIL SHARMA

Describe Need Often People Quick Shorthand Thinking Use

I can guide them to books that will serve as role models. Largely, though, one learns to write almost like developing muscle memory, and this requires years of effort.

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I can guide them to books that will serve as role models. Largely, though, one learns to write almost like developing muscle memory, and this requires years of effort.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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