When I start writing a new story, it is very important for me to ‘know’ my character. I may not know what he or she will be doing later in the story, how she will enter the climactic scene where she bumps into her ex, but it’s important to know little things such as: what she likes to eat or what kind of music she listens to.

I need to know all this before I begin the story, else they never go anywhere. The story that is.

Most importantly, there are three vital questions about my character I need to have answered before our fictional journey embarks:

1) What was the first thing they thought of in the morning when they woke up

2) What did they dream of the night before

3) What is the one thing that they want most in life

If I can answer these three basic things about my character, I know her intrinsically. And once I know the core of her, the story sometimes takes its own path.

Naming of a character is another crucial aspect to that process.

The first story I ever wrote was about an old man who lived next door to me in an apartment building. The man didn’t even have a name. I just referred to him as ‘the old man.’ The story didn’t go anywhere. My former college writing teacher would have once again used that pernicious word: portentious.

I was very adamant, as a novice and naive writer, to avoid going where all Indian writers do. That is, to write about Indians in America. I didn’t want to be a Jhumpa Lahiri wanna-be.

My second short story was a love affair. I can’t remember the man’s name but the woman’s was Isabella.

The story was just not taking off. Something vital was missing. I couldn’t quite tell you what it was. I just knew it wasn’t there. I remember the diplomacy smeared, patient face of my then thesis advisor who clearly had higher hopes from me. How could I fail?

For reasons I don’t remember now, perhaps as a last resort, I changed the characters’ names to Ashok and Kavita.

All these years later, I can still feel the pin pricks of dread, horror and stupefaction that followed. Stupefaction because as soon as I put those names down on screen, I knew, deep in my gut, that this was it. This was a story about two Indians. Horror and dread because what followed perhaps changed me for ever. I knew that from then on, I would be writing about Indians. It was as simple as that—by finding the right names I found my niche.

Before you go to seminars on how to build a character, or create story arcs, just know one thing. Know who you are writing about. Dream of her. Live her. Write little notes on the subway about her which, you will later throw away. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that you get inside her.

The rest will naturally follow. Everything else will come out of a curiousity for and perhaps— from a necessity of that character.

Do not worry if you don’t have a plot. Plot is just a scaffolding to get to the heart of the matter. The matter comes through the people—humanizing them; understanding them; explaining them— to yourself and consequently to your readers.