Three friends, Shubhra Rishi, Shantheri Mallaya and Vinay Kumaar are friends. While working in the same office, Shubhra came across a competition for crowdfunding a novel. She discussed with Shantheri Mallaya and Vinay Kumaar, and they agreed to write a novella together for Waterglass project.
While writers usually own their novels like a baby, Shantheri says, co-authoring was like joint parenting. They would work together for eight hours in the same office, so collaborating was easy. Shantheri says, “We would sit together to ideate, decide where the narrative of the book will flow, and then each would write in isolation. We wanted that each author should have a signature style, and so each author wrote through one character, creating three narratives, that interweave, and all the three characters meet each other at some point. We would meet to discuss critical plot points, and the direction the story would take.”
Not only support, but the three friends would also critique each other’s work. Shantheri says, “We would share the draft with each other, critique each other, and then revise our own bits. In this way, the novella was really a fruit of three minds. When someone would realise that the other has a better idea, they would take a back step, and let the idea meet fruition on its own course.”
They were inspired by multiple narratives like Akira Kurasawa’s Roshomon and David Fincher’s Fight Club. Through this process of collaborative work, the three friends completed writing the novel in a month. When asked about writing the novella in such a short time, Shantheri said, “Shubhra had found this writing competition by a crowdsourcer. So, we wanted to meet their deadline. But the process with which we worked was so smooth, that we would have completed the novella in the same time, regardless of any incentivised deadline.”
‘A Game Of Pawns’, a crime-thriller novella, with a perfect mix of politics, romance, is the result of their collaboration, was submitted to Waterglass crowdsourcing platform as an experiment. After coming in the top seven books, the book was submitted to Bloody Good Book, a crowd-sourcing platform, founded by Rashmi Bansal. Here the first three chapters were put up for the vote of the readers. The book secured a spot in the top 10. After receiving a good feedback from readers the jury, the three friends tweaked a few bits, and finally got it published by Authorspress India.
On the dilemma of reading an ebook versus a hard copy, Shantheri adds, “We are at the perfect time where as many books read online, as people who still prefer a hard copy. May be, in the future, more people will read ebooks. We are trying to soon get a Kindle version of our novella. But I think the important thing is to express your ideas, and get the message across to people. The medium is not that important.”
Shantheri says, “We all three always wanted to write a book, and to see our names in print on an actual book is an exhilarating feeling. I am really excited. While we three definitely became really close in the process of writing the book, even our families have developed strong bonds. And while I would like to co-author another book, I have also set my aspirations on writing a book solo.”
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