EP 186: Interview with author Tejaswinee Roychowdhury

Fortunus Games: The nuts and bolts of writing.

Fortunus Games: Season Two a podcast where we talk about literature, the ins and outs of writing, and how to actually start writing.

Fortunus Games: Hi, everyone.

Fortunus Games: Today we have a guest, Tejasweene Rajalduri, who was one of our contributors to issue three of our literary zine, The Unconventional Courier.

Fortunus Games: She submitted the thought provoking short story where does the River Go?

Fortunus Games: Which is linked below.

Fortunus Games: Tejas Sweeney is a writer, poet and artist from West Bengal, India.

Fortunus Games: Her fiction and poetry have been nominated for the Pushcarte Prize 2013.

Fortunus Games: Her work has been, or is scheduled to be widely published, such as in Dryke Magazine News, India Paddler Press, Amity Havocal, 2022, the unconventional Courier, Wafayana, Taco Bell Quarterly, Kitab and more.

Fortunus Games: She is also the founder of the Holy Review.

Fortunus Games: Tejas Sweeney is also a lawyer and can be found tweeting at tejas Sweeney RC on Twitter.

Fortunus Games: Hi, Tejas Sweeney, thank you for coming on.

Fortunus Games: How are you?

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Hi, Amelia.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: I'm good.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Thank you for having me.

Fortunus Games: Thank you so much for being our first The Unconventional Courier guest.

Fortunus Games: You are the first writer who is from Rzene that we are interviewing on this podcast.

Fortunus Games: So it is very exciting.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: That's exciting for me, too.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: I did not know this.

Fortunus Games: So, first question, what were you inspired by when you wrote your story for The Unconventional Courier?

Fortunus Games: Where does the river go?

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Well, thing is, when I wrote the story, I saw this submission call from this magazine, Pirate to Del Sol, and they had a special feature issue, and it was titled Water.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Like, the theme had to be water.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And I think in the story, I used this sort of I don't remember exactly what I wrote, but I used this idea that life is like a river and you have to let it flow like the river.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And this is something which I believe in.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: So while that theme did prompt me to start thinking about a story on the theme of water and the flow of life, the way I see it, I wrote that story, and while it got rejected there and when a story does get rejected, you get to like, it got rejected after eight months, right?

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: So after eight months, when I looked at the story again, I was like, okay, I can make a few more edits here.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And so I did that and I sent it to two magazines, actually, but you guys responded within 12 hours.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And I was like, okay.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And I think it's also driven by the idea of fate in general, because not just the flow of light like water, like a river, I mean, also the idea of fate, because I think I've come to believe in this.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Like, I used to be very skeptical about a lot of things, but as life goes by, I think you kind of ease up to the idea that, you know what?

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: I don't need to be so skeptical about every single thing.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And I think I have come to believe in faith in a way that it's okay, it's fine.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And I think faith, which is why it's one of the driving forces in the story, as far as I would look at it.

Fortunus Games: Yeah, definitely.

Fortunus Games: Because what happens at the end of the story, no one really expected it, but in a way it had to happen.

Fortunus Games: Unfortunately.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Yeah.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Unfortunately.

Fortunus Games: Yeah, definitely.

Fortunus Games: So, number two, what books and themes inspired you the most as a writer?

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: This is such a wide question, if I'm being honest.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Even when you were asking me over email, I told you that it's very difficult to pick something out because first things first.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: I think the first book which I read, which led me to believe that one day I can write and one day I will write, is when I read Harry Potter and the Flowers of a Stone for the first time.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: When I read that, I was like, you know what, I think I was some nine or ten years old back then.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: So I thought that I can write something, like, from the very first page.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: I thought, I can write someday.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: But the idea of stories has always like, my mom got me into stories.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And even like the other day, I had posted an interview author interviews my mom, where I was requested to do that.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: So even then I was just recalling in that interview the way my mom just got me into, like, it was never about literature or culture or all those things.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: It's just stories were a way of life.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: I'm refusing to eat.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Okay?

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: So if I keep narrating the other day's, Road Runner show or Tom and Jerry show, like the episode that I saw, if I narrate that, then I'll focus on narrating instead of eating, and I'll also eat right.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: So my mom just got me into stories in that manner.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And if I had to pinpoint my love for stories, I think the focal point would be her, because I don't think I can really pinpoint anything else.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: But growing up, I was influenced by a lot of writers.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: For instance, I think one of the first poems that when I first read this poem, I think I was in here in our educational system, we call it class Seven, the Seven Standard.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: So I think I was about twelve years old back then.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: So there was this poem by Robert Frost, right?

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And right now I'm forgetting the name of the poem, but it was The Road Not Taken.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: I got it.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: The road not taken.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And that was the first poem that influenced me as a person and the reason I'm going into this.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And I've read a bunch of poems like that.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Like the Inch Cape Rock by Robert Salvia.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Edwin and then there were a few stories and novels which we had to read back in school, and they were by, for instance, Rabbinattagor or Abundantgor and then there were Sarah Kansas chattabadha.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: I'm talking about the regional Bengali writers as well.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: So, yeah, a lot of writers did influence me as a person growing up.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And I think that's important because when we write, I think what I do I cannot speak for other writers, but what I do is I pour myself into the writing.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: So everything I have ever read has stayed with me.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: I think some of the more impactful stories that had led me to directly be like, I'm going to maybe go there.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Like, for example, I think I told you the other day, there's a story called Love Across the Salt Desert by Kiki and Darwala.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And this story, it's one of my favorite short stories, right, because it's about love transcends all boundaries.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And I really believe in love, not just romantic love.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: I believe in all kinds of love.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: So when I read that story, it set in the run of kutch and so in India, Pakistan border area.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: So when I read that story, I really wanted to visit the runoff kutch.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Like, I did not think about stories or anything.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: I wanted to visit there.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And when I did visit there, and the stuff that I heard from the local people there about how the moon shines on the salt desert and everything, that gave both to a story.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: So, yeah, I think we are influenced by everything we read, whether it's a newspaper article or whether it's a poem or a novel or anything like that.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Or I also talked about my novel with you.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: That's the Book of Fate.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: One of my favorite novels.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: The Book of Fate by Parano Shiny.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And it was translated to it's an Iranian novel.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And it's actually quite like it talks about the history of Iran, the transition period which led to the Islamic revolution.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: While I also learned a lot from that novel, like, things you don't know, right, from a very personal perspective.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And also well, it's called the Book of Fate.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And my story, like, I think I am driven by faith in a lot of things that I write, not just the story I wrote for you guys.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: I have done this in other stories as well.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: So, yeah, you get influenced by everything, even if it's a tweet.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: I mean, one of my short stories was actually influenced by a picture that I saw on Twitter.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: It was of a jacket and a tree.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: So I saw that picture and I thought, okay, a story came out of it.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: So, yeah, I think you let everything around you, the writer, you're always writing as a 24/7 job.

Fortunus Games: Yes, I agree.

Fortunus Games: I think a lot of things can influence me too.

Fortunus Games: And I think being a writer just means kind of delving into your thoughtscape, which was influenced by all your experiences and the people around you and all the other stuff you've read.

Fortunus Games: So that makes a lot of sense.

Fortunus Games: And I feel the same way as well.

Fortunus Games: Number three, you're a lawyer, and I am too.

Fortunus Games: Has your legal practice and studies influenced your approach to writing?

Fortunus Games: If so, how?

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Well, in a way not in a way.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: I think studying law influenced me as a person, and that influenced my writing in turn.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Because here's the thing.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Like, growing up, and I never really planned on studying more.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: I wanted to study geography, and I was there.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: I wanted to be a traveler.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And somehow I thought that if I study geography, I could travel around the world.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: It was a misplaced thought, but I thought that for a very long time.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And so it did not work out.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: The geography line did not work out, and my mom actually pushed me into studying law.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Go and study law.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: So I thought, okay, fine, I'll study law then.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And I think the reason she said it and she later told me that there's a reason I asked you to study law is that in my home, like, it's just me, my mom, and my dad.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: So thing is, my mom and dad, they fight a lot, right?

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And growing up, they were always fighting.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: So I think from the time that I can remember, what I was always doing is you know what?

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Enough is enough.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: You to sit down.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: You tell me what's wrong.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: You tell me what's wrong.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Let's sort this out once and for all.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: You were meeting.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Yeah, so I was doing this always.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And no one taught me how to do this.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: I was always doing this.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And my mom decided at some point that, you know what?

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: It's best if you just go into law.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Because I think you might not have ended up finally solving our marital problems, but you will be able to help other people.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And so I think, well, my mom influenced me to write stories.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: She went to law, so she really has a lot of influence on me there.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: But, yeah, when I started studying law, I think initially I didn't really get it, get the subject, because I remember I struggled with contract law.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: It was there in the first year.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Family law was signed with me, but contract law was really like so I went with the slow for a long time because that was the time when I was not writing.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: I wrote till my school years and then law school.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: We had five years of law school and then two more years of master's degree.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: So during that time, I did not dive into the creative process at all.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Instead, I think I just let myself evolve as a person, which at the time, I didn't know what I was doing, but it eventually helped me.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Right.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: So I think I understood the importance of fairness just in life.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And I'm not talking about equality.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: I'm talking about fairness because equality is certainly one aspect, which is, I think the world focuses on it a lot equality.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Like everyone should be equal for the they talk about everyone should be equal.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: But when we lawyers talk about it, I think we talk about equality before the eyes of law.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: We talk about it a little differently.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: I think anyone who has studied law will do that.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: So I think a lot about second chances and redemption.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: This is not the end.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: I think we live currently because the political sociopolitical atmosphere also affects us.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: So I think we are living in and I don't mean this to offend anyone, obviously, but also I feel like we are living in a very unforgiving time where we just don't want to forgive anything.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: The littlest of the mistake can just set people off and it's like, this is it.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: This is over.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And I think about it a lot because this is not how I perceived the world when I studied law.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Like, this is not why I studied law, right?

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Because it cannot like, we are human beings.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: We are going to make mistakes.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: We are going to be broad characters and in our stories, our characters are going to be great characters.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: You better not hope for purely black and white characters because that's just boring, right?

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: That's the thing.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Redemption arc is a good character.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And if I think about the way law has influenced my writing, I first have to think about, like I said, the way it influenced me as a person.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And so, yeah, I think about a lot of things.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: For example, another thing that really bugs me is right now there's a lot of let's just call it media investigation or whatever you want to call it, media, the way media operates.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: So a lot of the times what we see around us is that there is no audio alternative importance.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And you know what I'm talking about.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Like, excuse me, here the other side.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Doesn't matter what the statistics are saying or what you think it should be or what you have assumed it to be.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Learn to hear the other side.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Learn to process it, maybe just what you might be wrong.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Learn to believe that, you know what, I accept that I was wrong about this.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: I made the judgment called too fast, too soon.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: I came to a conclusion too soon.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: So yeah, these things do influence my writing because at the end of the day, these are the things I believe in.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Like, I believe in conflict resolution.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: I believe in, you know, fearing out the other side.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: I believe in that compassion basic.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Like I think these things are not just led by principles of law, but also compassion in general.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And I try to bring that level of compassion in my writing where, let's say I can not every plot, if I'm writing a really short, like flash fiction or something, and maybe the plot doesn't call for it, but I think when the plot does call for it, I try to not consciously.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: I don't even do it consciously.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: I think it's just a part of me that reflects in the writing.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And to answer your question, I think that's how Law has influenced me as a writer.

Fortunus Games: That makes sense.

Fortunus Games: Yes.

Fortunus Games: Because writing a lot of the times is basically looking at human psychology.

Fortunus Games: Right.

Fortunus Games: So this is really important.

Fortunus Games: And I totally agree with you about the whole fairness thing, especially on social media.

Fortunus Games: I think a lot of the times people are trapped in their own echo chambers, people with specific political views.

Fortunus Games: They do not want to hear what the other side says.

Fortunus Games: And they only follow or like posts by people who have the exact same views.

Fortunus Games: And if they come across anyone who has a slightly different view, sometimes there's a lot of arguments and a lot of drama.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Yeah.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Twitter is the place you go if you want to have that drama in life.

Fortunus Games: Exactly.

Fortunus Games: Okay, fourth question.

Fortunus Games: What kind of stories do you plan to write in the future?

Fortunus Games: Will you be publishing any books?

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Well, I do plan to write stories in the sense look, I think I want to venture into a lot of Sci-Fi and horror speculative fiction.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: If I'm talking about just also venturing into the commercial side of writing and not just literary fiction.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And I'm not saying that I'm making a difference here because I do believe in character driven plots and I always focus on my characters more.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And maybe I need to learn a little more about plot development.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And I try to always bother my mom about it because she has been writing a lot more than me.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And I'm like, tell me, how do you focus on plots and everything?

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: But primarily I do focus on my characters.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And I think when fully I know who the character is in my mind, then I can go somewhere with that character.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: I can move forward with the plot and everything.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: So even though I wish to sort of venture into this Sci-Fi and just basically speculative fiction as a whole, while keeping the literary element of character driven stories, I think, for the next phase of my writing, if I may call it.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Yeah, that's the route I want to go.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And as for novels, I have a few ideas, but I am going back and forth on actually writing them at the moment because I think I need to mature a bit more as a writer.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: I don't think I'm there yet.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And you can there's a right time to tell a story and there's a wrong time to tell a story.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: You should know whether you're ready to tell the story that you're trying to tell.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Right.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Because you also want to do justice to the story short.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Yeah.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: So I want to focus a lot more at the moment on short stories.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: I think I have been keeping my stories traditionally under 2500 words.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And I would like to go into 5000, 6000, that racket and write engaging stories and so, yeah, I don't think I'm working on any novels anytime soon.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: But, yeah, I do have some ideas and yeah, I'll work on them.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Eventually I'll work on them.

Fortunus Games: Yeah, definitely.

Fortunus Games: Novels are really hard to write.

Fortunus Games: I mostly focus on short stories, too, because they're easier to structure.

Fortunus Games: And also you don't have to have a continuous flow of inspiration for one specific group of characters.

Fortunus Games: Right.

Fortunus Games: For short stories, you can always change the setting.

Fortunus Games: Once you're done one story, you can move on to another theme you want to explore.

Fortunus Games: Before a novel, you have to be dedicated to a specific theme or set of characters and write thousands or tens of thousands of words about them.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Oh, yeah, definitely.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: I mean, and you have to be prepared that I might lose the plot at any time.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: This, like, six months of work, one year of work might go down the drain.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And then, of course, you send it out to literary agents.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: You typically want to have a traditional publisher pick it up.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: I don't think that you would right away go down the self publishing route so you would try out that route.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And I think it's easier for us to you can't climb the mountain by just jumping on top of it.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Right?

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: I mean, you have to take the course and however long that takes.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: I mean, I have respect for people who have written a novel at 21 years old, but I'm not that person.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: So I think it's important to just, you know, walk at your own pace.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: This is very important.

Fortunus Games: Is your mom a novelist or I think she is, right?

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: For what you said.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Yeah, she is.

Fortunus Games: Did she start with short stories or from the beginning was she's starting with novels?

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: She started with short stories.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: She told me that you should start with short stories, like practice practice the art of telling a story.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And then you can go to novels because you have to do justice to the novel.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Just the last day when I was I told you about the interview earlier, right, about me and my mom.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: So she was telling me something about I don't think it made to the interview, but yeah, no, it did.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: It did make it to the sorry, my bed.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: So she was talking about I asked her, when you write whether it's a short story or a longer story, whatever, whom are you writing it for?

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Like, are you writing it to impress the editor or you're writing it to impress the jury committee of an award or whatever?

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: She's like, no, I'm writing it for the reader.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And anybody can be a reader.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Like, it can be an editor, it can be the common reader, it can be any interest anyone.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: It can be a filmmaker, whoever it might be.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And that's the thing, you have to at the end of the day, I think while I am getting my starts through literary magazines as well.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Obviously, like, with short stories, you do that.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: That's the first way to go through it.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: But at the same time, I do think that oftentimes when I'm looking at the submit page of a literary magazine, subconsciously or very consciously, I'm thinking that, okay, in order to get in here, I have to impress the editor, and that's all I'm thinking about.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And as a writer, I think that until now, like, my mom actually got me into this thought process that you have to think about the readers at large, not just one person or a couple of people who might read.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And to be very honest, the literary magazines do essentially circle around the literary community.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: It does not reach the readers outside the community, so to speak.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: It generally does not.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Like if you have friends and all who are also readers but are not writers, they might read your work, but that's because they know you.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Sometimes they're reading it because they know you.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And that's not really like, organic readers, if you will.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: So, yeah, I think about that all the time, just the way you improve as a writer.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And I think it's all about the emotions of character or a set of characters can elicit out of a person.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And the reason I'm saying this, I was thinking about it earlier that last year, back in 2022, in the month of May, I had gone to the theaters to watch Top Gun Mazali, right?

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And so when Top Gun, the first one came out, I wasn't even born, but I watched it on TV, and I liked it, and I thought, okay, the way that movie ended, what are they going to do in the second part of his own?

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Like, what are they going to do?

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: So I think I went out of sheer curiosity, if not anything else.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And while, yeah, sure, you can say that the plot had scientific flaws, if anyone has seen the movie, if you have seen the movie when Tom Cruise character was going at a very high speed and he crashed, how did he survive that?

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: He shouldn't have survived that.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: That's scientific inaccuracy.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And it was a very simple plot as well.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: But the characters were so relatable.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: They were so real.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And I think that's the kind of stories that stay with us.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And even when we watch a lot of commercial movies and well, and for the people who love franchise movies, let's say, like Marvel movies or DC movies, we all know that some of these things are not real.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Some of these things will never happen.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Some of these things are like, okay, come on.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: That was a plot flaw right there.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: But it's the characters that stay with us.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: I don't think Marvel cinematic universe would have been so huge if Robert Downey Jr.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Stony Stark did not stay with us.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: I don't think that would have happened, like, because superhero movies have been made before, but the way this franchise took off, it's because of the fact that we could relate to those characters as fellow human beings.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And I think until that is possible and the way to really create renal real characters is whether you are developed as a person.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Because I think that unless and until you yourself are in a position where, okay, fine, I don't agree with you, but I see your point of view.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Okay, there's a difference of opinion, but I understand your perspective.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: I understand why you're angry or it's okay, it's fine.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Unless and until you have that flow within yourself and you are willing to understand the different people around you, I don't think you can create well rounded characters.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Not really.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Because in a story, like, maybe a short story will be based on one character.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: But even then, even in a short story, you are dealing with at least two or three characters, right?

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Because unless and until the whole thing is completely internalized the narrative, you are dealing with at least one or two more characters who are different from your main character.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And in a novel, you have to create some well rounded characters and they better not be mirrored images of each other because otherwise that doesn't happen in real life.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: People are not the same.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: So, yeah, I think our understanding of the human psychology helps a lot.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Like, you also mentioned this earlier.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And characters, characters are the most important thing.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Like, you create memorable characters.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: You know what, people will forget the plot flaws for the moment and they will stay with the characters because that's what you want, right?

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And even when we are watching these on Netflix or whatever, these series, it's the characters that stay with us.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: We remember the characters whether we are angry with the plot or whatever the plot, the way the plot functions.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: It's not the plot driven stories that touches the character driven stories.

Fortunus Games: I agree, definitely.

Fortunus Games: Especially for literary fiction, but even, as you said, for commercial stuff like Marvel, especially the plots are very complex, especially as the movie's progress.

Fortunus Games: There's so many of them, but then we don't really remember them, but we just think about the people we like, like Bucky or Steve Rogers, Spiderman, and we just think about their traits that are really endearing and remind us of ourselves or people we know.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Exactly.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And I think that's the part I want to go for as a writer.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And also, I think we always have to be working as people, as writers.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And that's just given not just in writing.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: In writing, I think in any field, I think really where you have to use your mind a lot, you have to use your head a lot.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Like, you know, you evolve and you are a lot more gentle with yourself than others.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: I think who you are as a person will influence your writing a lot because we essentially are like even when I'm sorry.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Even when we are making a lot of different characters, we are the ones that are creating them, and we are the ones that are giving them shades and dialogues and redemption arcs or other character arcs and whatever.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: We're giving them a story.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: We are essentially playing God when we are writing and listen until we understand different human beings and there may be different cultures, the different way people live, I don't think that's really possible.

Fortunus Games: Exactly.

Fortunus Games: Yes.

Fortunus Games: Thank you so much for coming onto our podcast.

Fortunus Games: This was a very enlightening discussion, and I can't wait to have you back on.

Fortunus Games: If you want to come back on, we have so much more to discuss.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Definitely.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: I would love that.

Fortunus Games: I love to talk I love talking with you.

Fortunus Games: It was amazing.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: This was amazing.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: Like, thank you for having me.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury: And I can't wait for the podcast to go live.

Fortunus Games: You will later today.

Fortunus Games: I am posting this so you will be able to listen to it very soon.

Fortunus Games: Well, thank you so much again, guys.

Fortunus Games: Listen to our next podcast, our next author interview next week.

Fortunus Games: Thank you so much.