Getting Into the Character’s Shoes

Once I decide to write a story based on a character, I have realised that I must see the world the way he or she sees it. I can’t see it from my viewpoint. I can���t come in the way. Otherwise, I run the risk of I and my worldview entering the character’s story.

If the character is an auto driver, I have to see the world the way he sees it. If the story is about a cook or a maid, I must see the world from her viewpoint. I once wrote a story about an underworld character who wanted to leave that world and is given a last job. I had to force myself to get into his shoes to make the story credible.

If I believed what the character believed, I would act the way the character would. I would know what the character would do. The story would unfold without any effort.

It is incredibly difficult to get into someone else’s shoes. And it is tougher to get into the shoes of a fictional character that doesn’t exist, even if you created it yourself for the story.

I have realised that some of my stories got stuck because I couldn’t get into the character’s shoes. I wanted it to do what I would do in a particular scene. I couldn���t figure out what it would do next.

I had to drop some stories as they got worse. That was mainly because I wanted to move ahead and do something which seemed to conflict with what the character would. At one point, I decided to write stories only about characters that I understood.

Understanding somebody else’s story is incredibly difficult.�� But once I get into the character’s shoes, the story flows easily from there, because all I am doing after that is to tell it as it is.

It is a fictional story, yet it is not fiction.

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