Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Creative Writing

I saw a site from stumbleupon that talked about creative writing.
The exercises really appealed to me. Particularly this one:

"Write a dramatic scene between two people in which each has a secret and neither of them reveals the secret to the other OR TO THE READER."


I liked the idea so much that I decided to try it out, despite the fact that I'm not good at fiction and that this is a particularly hard exercise. So here it is:


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The entrepreneur and the beggar

Adarsh strode briskly. He didn't notice the jammed up traffic on the road beside him or the stench coming up from the dirty footpath. He was too busy worrying about making his start up profitable. It had been almost a year and his app company still hadn't secured significant cash flow. He walked past a line of beggars with fake expressions of want. But one of them was different. He wasn't trying to get the attention of passers-by. He was looking at them intently. That immediately caught the attention of Adarsh.

He walked up to him and said "You know, to get more alms from people, you need to be different from the rest of the beggars. But not by sitting there silently." The beggar looked up at him as though he was deciding where to place this guy in his mind, shrugged, and shifted his weight. Adarsh went on "You can better grab people's attention by either holding up a funny placard, or by making a compliment to each passer-by. People like to pay someone who gives them something they want"

The beggar, after some consideration, replied "How do you know that?"
Adarsh smiled and said slowly with lost eyes, "I wasn't always an entrepreneur"

He was about to walk away when the beggar called out to him. "You had deep creases on your forehead before you spoke to me. What were you worried about?"
"Oh just something. Why do you want to know? It's not like you can help"
The beggar frowned. Then he took a deep breath, and retorted "You come out of nowhere and give me unsolicited advice about my work. And when it's my turn, you don't even have the courtesy to give me a chance?"
"Alright. Don't get hyper. I was worried about how I'll make money from the app start up that I am running"
The beggar looked deep into Adarsh's eyes and replied "You're focusing on the wrong problem, my friend. You should worry about your app not bringing enough value to your customers. If it had, they'd be paying you a lot more. People like to pay someone who gives them something they want."

Adarsh, after some consideration, replied "How do you know that?"


The beggar smiled and said slowly with lost eyes, "I wasn't always a beggar"

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Tell me how you liked it !