Show & Tell: Review of the Workshop On Creating Characters & Settings In Fictional Writing with Padma Viswanathan

Published in Ceylon Today

The first event I attended at this year's FGLF was presented by the Indian/Canadian author and teacher, Padma Viswanathan, author of ' The Toss Of A Lemon' and 'The Ever After of Ashwin Rao'.

She presented the workshop over two hours to 10 aspiring creative writers, seated around a large dining table in an old heritage house in Galle, and right from the start it was clear that here was a writer who believed in inclusive teaching and interactive learning, and had no time for flashy gimmicks and flowery gestures.

The focus of our attention was a complex form of 'self-seeking': how to portray human nature - those of our characters, in their settings and contexts - without resorting to mere factual description, incorporating research and data in an integrative way - in a layered process that gave us multiple access to them, and thereby insights into our own perspectives and beliefs.

She asked each of us to introduce ourselves, and to talk about what we were currently working on as writers, and her sincere interest in us made us confident to speak about some of the stories that we had, in some cases, been writing for years. She was attentive, she was detailed, and she was focused in her responses. And there is a tension and energy created by that combination of qualities which made us see why she chose the topic she had chosen.

When I was in school at a young age, once a week we had what was called 'Show & Tell' - a time when one by one each person in the class brought a particular object in from their home, to discuss it with the class.

The choice of that object, and what was said about it in a class of peers, was totally up to each individual child to make. As they spoke, we were given insights into the lives of our schoolmates, their daily routines, and what was important to them. An object was presented, passed around and viewed from a number of different perspectives, and a story was told about it.

Creative writing teachers are always telling their students to 'Show' and NOT 'Tell', by which they mean that a skilled writer will not need to over-write, and over-describe, telling us what to think and feel and by doing so forcefully directing the reader to agree with or uphold certain points of view about a character or situation.

Rather, a skilled writer will show the scene with subtlety, with symbolism, and with a certain degree of restraint, so that the reader fills in the narrative gaps with his/her imagination, and thus connects with the character and their situation on more open and voluntary chosen ground.

To create in this complex manner we need to pay close attention. And it is interesting that the quotation 'Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity', came to my own mind several times during the workshop. Paying attention to the existence and experiences of another human being is at the heart of the writing process. Situating yourself in their life, you as the writer are first of all a real life observer of characters: you are not detached and judgmental. You feel for them, before you are entitled to speak for them. Writing is shown to be an act of empathy, generosity of heart, as well as intelligent portraiture.

Padma told us about the plot of her first novel, which had been based on stories told to her by her grandmother, who had been at school with a girl who had been widowed at a young age, and, as a widow in her social milieu, had been forced to shave her head, and was denied permission to embrace her own children. As she spoke of this character's situation of culturally imposed isolation, we could see how, in a writer's internal processing of information, facts and anecdotes are transformed by the imaginative acts of insight and empathy into a living story with its own internal realism.

Her second novel portrays a character who is dealing with the loss of his child in a plane crash disaster. The loss occurred years before, but the long term effects show what a long process grieving such a loss can be.

The workshop included a three-part creative writing exercise in which we had to think of a person whom we knew, and recall them in as much descriptive detail as we could; and then imagine them receiving some unexpected and unwelcome news - how would they react? what would they do?; and how would this news alter the shape and direction of their life?

I asked if this particular topic was designed to reveal a character's essential nature at a point of personal crisis, and Padma said yes, that was certainly part of the intention of the exercise. No story is written about a non-event! Moments of crisis occur in many forms in every person's life. When we started writing, she closely watched us filling our exercise books, and encouraged us as we discovered opinions and judgments that we did not know we carried, about our chosen characters.

This interesting creative exercise showed us the power of human observation and perception, and the way a whole picture of a person, a lively and vivid dramatic portrait, can be created in writing through the cumulative sequencing of lexical sets of images.

The habit of observation, and the discipline of recording of observation and accessing the realm where thought and feeling fuse in the act of writing, powerfully benefit from the keeping of a diary or journal. Padma spoke of this at the workshop, and has also written about this in an article on her website:

Another friend of mine who loves to write once discussed with me what she saw as the similarities between writing and deep-sea diving. The underwater realm is brilliant with colour; but if you take the living coral out of the sea and put it in your laundry in a bucket, it loses its lustre and turns the colour of concrete.

She claimed that only the best writers can bring things - subterranean, submarine truths - to the surface and there treat them in such a way that they lose nothing in the translation from one elemental realm (water and emotional significance, feeling) to another (air and objective thought, the written word).

The 'voice outside our heads' is a voice which speaks to us and through us simultaneously. As we used to do when we were children, we can pick up a shell cast up on shore and hold it to our ear and believe we can hear the sound of the sea. We can read and write imaginative truths, generated by memory and perception, that connect us to the larger life of the human story.

Dining With The Stars

There is powerful pressure operating on authors, who are essentially private people, to become public figures, and this phenomenon is nowhere more observable than at a Literary Festival.

The recently-held Fairway Galle Literary Festival provided many examples of this, and this Festival was remarkable in that most of the authors held the middle ground with forcefulness, equanimity and grace. The authors were being made available to us in several forms: via public solo performances 'Thinking Out Loud', via conversation-style public chats 'Duets', and Literary Lunches, Dinners and 'Private Affairs' (lunches for authors held at private homes in Galle, but which are available to ticket-buyers).

 While the majority of authors were witty, eloquent and enthusiastic, some were clearly jet-lagged, one or two were grumpy, grudging and ungenerous with themselves, and the schism between public and private showed too clearly at their reluctance to move around and talk to everyone, or even break out a smile, at events for which their fellow guests were paying a baseline Rs. 6,500 per plate, and had been promised a more intimate experience of them, but this was human, and ultimately understandable. The guardian angels protecting authors' rights to privacy were vigilant, ably supported by the volunteers in bright blue shirts.

It is the luck of the draw at these occasions as to where you are seated in relation to the celebrity author, so if the author just sits where they are placed all afternoon or night, getting up only to read out extracts from their books or answer questions at a podium, the majority of guests have no real access to the object of their admiration at all. It takes some brio to approach a person you don't even know to say hello, and compliment them on their award-winning work. Fortunately, empowered by the illusion of intimate access in exchange for rupees paid, and the 'get what you pay for' ethos of contemporary commercialism, the brief window of opportunity provided by these events was taken advantage of by many.

 Levels of access to the authors were graded in economic tiers, so that if you saw them in the Hall de Galle, in a big crowd, it was Rs. 1000, sitting in plastic bucket chairs, at a more intimate venue such as a Poetry Reading or a Workshop it was Rs. 2000 to 4000, and for Lunch or Dinner you pay between 6,500 and 8,000, where the chairs are far more comfortable, and a three course meal is served. If the author is creative, generous and open, the Workshops are great opportunities to see how they work, and be granted access to their creative skills and techniques and insights into literature. You have a real experience of being mentored. But it takes an exceptionally giving author to share themselves at a Literary Lunch or Dinner.

 The authors are private people, of course; but they are also professionals on a public engagement, their accommodation and travel paid for by the event organisers. So they are in a real sense expected to perform, to sing for their supper. Or, in this case, to read and think and emote out loud at our supper.

 They are serious writers, and not dilettantes. They earn their living from writing, and the public performances which showcase them at festivals like this are like actors putting on their glad rags and gorgeous gowns to attend the celebrity-studded gala events which draw attention to the actual work they do. The quality of the written work they actually produce may not suit everyone's taste. The polished (or unpolished) accents of the authors and the moderators and presenters at these events are often criticised. But they show up because it is important that creative people find their form of expression, and that other people listen, read, appreciate and feel inspired or repelled to respond to that expression, each in their own way.

Artists are often accused of pretentiousness, and posturing. The excessive use of superlatives in the introductions and biodata for the authors in this Festival was said by several people to be unnecessary: real quality of work should speak for itself. But this excess was not so much generated by the writers but those who were showcasing them, creating the buzz, the low vibrant hum that intensifies to a crescendo at every successful event.

 There seems to be a particular way of speaking about authors and arts-related events that is adopted: no low modal or understated adjective is used if a high modal one can be substituted for it. The writers are without exception described as 'brilliant' and 'renowned', their work as 'astonishing' and 'riveting'. The attendees speak of what they have witnessed as 'superb' or 'phenomenal'. All the hyperbole collides off every speaker of it, like dodgem cars, reverberating, and because it is continually reinforced it cumulatively drains the reader/listener/lunch and dinner-goer, after a while. All the breathy exclamations start to meld into a sort of one-hued vapour which sucks the oxygen out of the January air.

Several of the writers commented on the hard work they do, the meticulous research involved, the arduous labour of putting pen to paper and hand to keyboard, virtually every day. They clearly spend a lot of time alone, thinking through their plots and dialogue and settings, and above all their characters and the voices in which those characters speak. Lots and lots of alone time is required.

 But future writers, for future events, some advice: when in public, engage with the public. There is a time to be solitary, and a time to merge with the hive mind which does the effortful work of reading and thinking about what you write. It may be an ordeal, but try not to let that show, if possible, to the admiring multitudes whose admiration supports your literary life.

Feast Of Reason, Flow Of Soul

Published in the UTS Alumni publication 2017

In the second year of its revival, the Galle Literary Festival in 2017 is structured in such a way that it is fluid, focused and flowing. It feels like a bright stream of literature, conversation and joyousness, and it feels self-renewing. By this, I mean that even the non-attendance of Margaret Drabble and Dinah Jeffries did not give its expansiveness much pause. This festival's celebration of literature and creativity now has an exuberance and generates an atmosphere of goodwill which is independent  of individual 'big names' or celebrity figures, and is more inclusive of a range of interests and levels of literary engagement than ever before. 

The administrative team, with its volunteers in bright blue shirts, and its tough, courteous and patient young desk staff, has perfected the challenge of dealing with difficult customers: those wanting to change, refund or cash in their tickets, those wanting to attend events which they had only just discovered were on, those unaware of the complexities offered by the myriad options of events, and trying to sample everything, as if at a smorgasbord or a buffet, with all possibilities arrayed before them. 

The town of Galle seems somehow gentler, calmer, and more accessible this year. Perhaps it is because, knowing that there would be a great demand for accommodation during the 4-5 days of the Festival, we booked our rooms several months in advance, right in the centre of town: walking distance to all the venues. This year, the organisers had included a map of the town, with all the venues located on it, which could be easily downloaded and printed before arrival.

The events are packed. Ranging from the public events at the Hall de Galle and the Maritime Museum, to the Literary Lunches and Dinners, at various old houses which have been converted into boutique hotels, where numbers are limited, it is a perfect fusion of financial jackpot and aesthetic sweet spot: every attendee can choose to see and hear an author talk about their work and literature in general either in a big venue, solo in 'Thinking Out Loud', or in conversation with another author in a 'Duet', or in a more private setting at a Literary Dinner or lunch, where there is an opportunity to meet each author personally. All these events are priced in gradation, so for Rs. 1000 you can hear an author present their work and give insight into their ideas and working process, for around Rs. 3,500 you can attend a 2 hour Workshop where an author communicates their skills and craftsmanship to creative writers, and for Rs. 6,500 to 8,000 you can dine with them. 

Then there is the small town structure of Galle, where the venues are within walking distance of each other, and the old Dutch buildings of honeycomb-coloured stone, and tiny paved streets make it easy to venture and roam. One of the loveliest aspects of Galle is that the Festival takes place in the heart of the fortified town, amidst the everyday lives of the local citizens, who are selling jewels and hand-made lace, going to school, receiving speeding tickets, going to work, having coffee and hot snacks in convenient architectural interstices amidst the droves of literary querents and questors. Men sit at corners in plastic bucket chairs apparently with plenty of time on their hands to give directions to confused, would-be intrepid travellers. I wondered briefly if they were being sponsored by the Heritage City, or performing their service out of good will and habit. 

         My guest house has a rooftop room, reached by 5 flights of steep steps -reminiscent of Sri Pada, and best ascended shoeless. The room has tiny windows on every side, overlooking the rooftops of Pedlar Street. Opening them in the morning, you hear the birdsongs, and the Tuk Tuks, the town waking up, light airplanes droning in the sky above the sea which is just outside the realm of vision, glimpsed through the faded orange, clay-tiled sloping roofs. The araliya trees are in lustrous gold and white full bloom just two metres from the verdigris stained window handles, and their stunning fragrance rushes in, without knocking, as soon as the windows are opened, and the breezes commence their orchestrated sequences. 

The wonderful Soul Sounds choral group sang a vibrant programme last night at the Fairway Pavilion, full-voiced and bejewelled in gorgeous green sarees, and blue and white billowing silk caftans: a medley of traditional Sri Lankan folk songs, and some powerful gospel songs and popular hits. They gave opportunity to several of their members to sing solos, and take the lead in singing different songs, and were clearly enjoying themselves hugely. Their blasts of vocal joyfulness and vitality were lyrically accompanied by the artistic drawings in real time projected onto a screen by the artist Reinhard Kleist, whose rapid pen sketches projected onto a large screen on the stage reflected the themes of the songs most fluidly. 

The Chamber Music Society will perform a classical repertoire in the Dutch Reformed Church on the last night of the Festival. No need to attend any dinner after that - the music itself will fill our every need for sensory attunement, and accentuation. 

Books glossy and glorious are being bought like boxes of chocolates and sweets, and lucky winners find tokens for a free book under their chairs in the halls. The Lit Cafe has colourful lanterns hanging from the trees and comfortable sofa chairs, and there is pro bono tea provision going on all around us, adding to the carnival atmosphere. People drive fun cars - jalopies and charabancs - sports cars with removable roofs from Colombo to Galle especially for the days away from the work schedule. 

This year, there is an entire Sinhala Day programme on Saturday at The Maritime Museum, and a Children's Programme at which children can learn to love reading by meeting authors, engaging with books in a fun atmosphere, and collaborating in fun activities that will associate reading with pleasure for them from a young age. 

The Literary Festival is not only a thing, it has become THE thing with which to begin the calendar year. The setting, in the old seaside heritage town, the relaxed and cheerful atmosphere, the accessibility and the variety of events, the buzzing and squawking three wheelers, the discussion of writing and the civilised arts, focuses us on joy and created beauty in the year ahead.

It is appropriate that Fairway Holdings, the main financial underwriter of the Festival, is a building and construction company. Their business presence is far more evident this year, with prominent advertisements mounted around the central venues, highlighting their buildings and apartments, and even a scale model of their high-rise plans for Colombo located at the entrance to the Fairway Pavilion, where the winner/s of the Fairway Literary Award will be announced later today. 

Creation is at its heart a constructive activity, both in words and pictures, and in stone. The Galle Literary Festival is a celebration of that spirit of constructiveness. In 2017 it seems joyfully here to stay.

Breaking The Fourth Wall: Report Of The Literary Dinner With Fiona Shaw at the FGLF

Published in Ceylon Today

        In a television or stage set there are usually three walls in which the dramatic action takes place. What is known as 'the fourth wall' is invisible to the audience, but is the implied metaphorical 'screen' through which the audience views the characters.

   When a character directly invokes the camera, or shows that she is aware that she is being observed, and speaks directly to the audience, she is said to be 'breaking the fourth wall'. An actor's interaction with the audience is a fascinating element of dramatic performance, and also a characteristic feature of postmodern art, in which the inner workings and processes of a performance are made transparent, increasing their apparent accessibility, relatability and audience participation.

     Instead of a smooth, polished performance which is presented to us as a fait accompli, we are given insight into the person who is presenting the performance and invited to 'step into the frame'. In a series of recent immersive theatrical presentations of Shakespeare's 'Richard III' in England, for example, the actress Emily Carding puts on a one-woman show, in the round, inviting audience members to take on the roles of the other characters.

       When you step into another person's mindset, whether through empathy, compassion or, as, in this case, having their character's role accorded to you in a role play, it forces you to step out of your 'otherness' to them, your objectivity and your biases and judgment. The stereotypes you initially view them through, the tainted, smudged and smeared hearsay of indirect 'knowledge', and preconception, dissolve, as you see life's events increasingly filtered and framed through their point of view.

      This offers us a dynamic and brilliant way of understanding the complex 'villains of the piece' in dramatic literature. And the actors who can enable us to see greater and more complex qualities in the characters they present on stage are justly acclaimed for their great talent, instincts, and the training they undertake, in order to offer us insight into the complexity of our shared human condition.


Fiona Shaw is an Irish actress, most famous internationally for her portrayal of Aunt Petunia in the 'Harry Potter' films. The character she plays in that series is a complex one, conflicted about her relationship with her sister Lily, Harry's mother, with her own feelings of inadequacy and rage tightly repressed, and viciously directed towards her nephew, 'The Boy Who Lived'.

J.K. Rowling's fictionalised portrayal of Petunia is one of the most interesting aspects of the story. It was left unfinished, in both the books and the film, a study of apparently inexplicable sibling resentment. Much about Petunia is nervously hidden from the prying neighbours, and she has become distorted in her character from years of misunderstanding of herself. She is profoundly out of her depth.

With the characters of Severus Snape, and Voldemort himself, we are encouraged to consider the causes in their own characters and circumstances which have created feelings of hatred and revenge in them, and turned them to the dark side. In Petunia, living in her ultra-neat pristine home in Privet Drive, we are shown the irony of a woman filled with scalding resentment, fear and vituperative hate, determinedly and obsessively cleaning her external environment of all apparent connection to what appears 'strange' or 'abnormal' (a world which she herself at one time wished to be accepted by). It is satire, in which the cruelty and dismissive mockery of the initial presentation is tempered over time into a more compassionate and moving portrait.

The shocking way she spits out the plosive consonants and hisses the sibilants when she initially expresses her dislike of her 'precious sister Lily... And that (James) Potter', is an indication that we need to see more, to 'see what breeds about her heart', as Shakespeare's King Lear said of his daughter Regan. 'What is it in Nature that makes these hard hearts?' The caricature hints at a tragic depth below the comical surface.

Fiona Shaw is a diverse actress, and has also played Medea and Mother Courage, as well as the complex protagonist of Ibsen's 'The Doll House'. She has also played Shakespeare's Richard II, in a performance which is mesmerising, even when viewed via teleplay.

The Fairway Galle Literary Festival offered three opportunities to interact with Fiona Shaw. She read Yeats' and Eliot's poetry from memory at a poetry reading, she gave a personal historical overview of the flexibility and resonance of the spoken English language, illustrated by short and intense  performances from dramatic texts, including sections of poetry from 'The  Wasteland'. This was a wonderful public performance, readily accessible to a crowded audience at the Hall De Galle.

But she broke the fourth wall in the most interesting and interactive way in the Literary Dinner which she took part in, at The Fort Printers in Galle, on Saturday 16th January. She was due to fly back to London a few hours after the dinner finished. It had been a hot and dusty day at the FGLF. She arrived with so little fanfare that she was moving amongst us without us actually realising, at first, that she had come.

      There were several tables of paying guests, and some initial undercurrents of anxiety expressed by some that Ms. Shaw would not descend and emerge from the high table and interact with the audience. She clarified her stance on this by starting the evening with a personal and autobiographical disclosure about her life in Ireland, and her wish to become an actress, which was a radical event in her conservative family.

She explained her attitude to the suffocating narrowness and the feeling of constant intrusive surveillance in her youth, which drove her to seek a bigger sphere in which to explore herself and her aspirations, and to seek entry into the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. She took us fluently through a fascinating creative life.

The actual dinner was not the focus of the evening, although the Rs. 7,500 fee per person made a seat at the table accessible only to a minority of those attending the Literary Festival. What we digested and imbued was the intelligence, verve, fierceness and vitality of what she was able to bring to us.

     She has given several interviews which are available online, and on YouTube, and I became aware through viewing these, after the event, that she has covered this autobiographical territory many times before. Yet what she says is true, and personal, and revelatory each time, rather than repetitive or mechanical.

      She came and sat with the guests at each table, and spoke to us one to one, finding points of common contact, and gently dispelling the bursts of star-struck enthusiasm directed at her with the self-deprecating irony of an enlightened, socially intelligent human being. It was her first visit to Sri Lanka, but she had studied some aspects of the history, culture and language, which was evident in the way she linked Ireland to Sri Lanka in its experience of colonial oppression, and its rich dramatic traditions of language use, particularly in regional folklore and idiom.

     I accessed a fascinating documentary which took the viewer behind the scenes of Fiona Shaw's performance of 'Mother Courage', and saw, 'up close and personal', her complete dedication to her art: the exercise routines needed to physically bear heavy costumes through a long performance, the way an actor's body and unadorned face is their artistic vehicle and medium, the total and radical unselfconsciousness she showed as she was filmed getting ready for her role.

At the Literary Dinner, in contrast to the colourful panoply of the Mother Courage costume, or the cornucopia of bloodstained garments she wore as Medea, Fiona wore a completely plain and unadorned,straight-up-and-down black dress.

      An actor I went to university with many years ago told me, while we were laughing about the 'image' that many artists feel compelled to present of themselves today, to enhance public appreciation of their profile and identity, (the emerging writers in vintage floral dresses posed in front of a window through which we can see Tuscany, the ubiquitous hipsters with their beards and berets), that it is actually the ongoing tension between appearance and reality that matters.

When a creative artist is young, they try out many different poses and stances: the flower behind the ear, the sunglasses half slipping down the face, the cult of personality. A lot of it seems artificial, and frankly fake, to the casual observer, but it is, according to him, a necessary phase, of finding what does and does not suit them. They are hunting through thrift shops full of relics of past icons and performers, finding what personally speaks to them. They are finding their voice, what lies beneath the postures and gestures, at first vicariously, through what resonates with them, experienced in the external world.

    They have to internalise the drama, he said, and resolve it, within.

     So - if I understood the importance of this understatement correctly - I would say that Fiona Shaw put on a great performance for us at the Literary Dinner. But it was a performance into which we were personally invited, on several levels. At this stage of her mastery: of her great talent and skill and the wisdom she has, the extreme inside working knowledge of a range of dramatic prose and poetry, she can put on a simple garment, relate like an ordinary person - and simultaneously reveal the intensity and depth of the colours and life experiences that she carries on the inside.