Writing drama and autobiographical writing

A play serves two purposes — written and performed; it needs an eye for situations and an ear for dialogue. King Lear grows from a relationship (Cordelia's honest 'Nothing, my lord'); Girish Karnad's 'A Heap of Broken Images' sets a woman against her own TV image.

A one-act play has one plot, few characters, a short time span and moves by 'What-Happens-Next'; dialogue is the lifeline, with distinct speech for each character and actions in brackets as stage directions.

Plot stages: initial situation, conflict or problem, complication, climax, suspense, and denouement or resolution. Drama means excitement — what holds an audience is a clash of interests or opinions.

Autobiography links a life with history (Nehru, Gandhi) and needs honesty and humility; examples: Kalam's 'Wings of Fire' (selling tamarind seeds, catching newspaper bundles), Helen Keller, Dhyan Chand, Bachendri Pal, Salim Ali, Bama's 'Karukku'.

Diaries (Anne Frank's 'Kitty'; Samuel Pepys on the Plague and the Great Fire), letters (Toynbee to Bertrand Russell), memoirs (Marquez, Satyajit Ray, Tagore) and travelogues (Firdaus Kanga, Vikram Seth's Kathmandu) all share an 'I' recounting events in a place and time.