����ý

Chitra Soundar is an author who has published over 60 children’s books. Her book series, Nikhil and Jay, has also been adapted into an animated sitcom for CBeebies - launching on Saturday 19 October.

Chitra’s stories are inspired by folktales from India, Hindu mythology, and her own experience travelling the world. The TV series will star Bridgerton star, Charithra Chandran as Nikhil and Jay's mum, Amma.

When Chitra isn’t writing, she spends her time touring the country to deliver exciting writing workshops to schools and literacy festivals.

To inspire children to write a story, we caught up with Chitra to ask her some questions for writing a 500 Words story.

Right from when I was seven, I was making up stories for my sister and my cousins. I grew up on comics and funny books too. I’m always fascinated with things around me, just like a seven-year-old might be. I love making jokes, learning about new things in nature and science and love to make up stories too. So, when I decided to write, I wanted to tell stories to children.

I grew up writing short stories – and I love this form. To write a really good short story that’s just 500 words, here are some of my favourite techniques.

• Go solo – create one solo main character. If they are afraid to go alone, just add one friend. No more. Too many heroes can spoil a story.

• Have a mission – the main character (and their friend) must want something and be prepared to do whatever necessary to get it. A lazy hero is a boring hero.

• Invite danger – your main character must have a bigger villain or a difficult danger to face. Otherwise, it’s not exciting. Crushing an ant when you’re a giant is not heroic – it’s just walking.

• Jump straight in – Start the story as close to the middle of the action as possible. Especially in short stories, there is no time to talk about your hero’s favourite nursery rhyme or cereal or a nursery rhyme about a cereal.

• Keep it fun and funny – Add what’s fun to you into the stories then it will be fun for your readers too. Add some funny lines of dialogue, a funny scene where the villain slides into a pit of slime (eek, is that fun? Only if it’s happening to the evil villain…).

I loved writing and I was and am very good at spellings. But that doesn’t mean I wrote great stories. I loved telling funny stories out aloud, but when it came to writing, I was not being funny at all. One of my favourite writing activities at school was filling in the blanks of a story to make it my own. Like this:

Once upon a ______, there was a ____________, who loved to __________. He / She decided to ____________ and set off to find _____________. The travel was hard. He/She had to cross seven ______, four __________, three _________ to get to the place. But he/she didn’t give up.

Every time you fill this up, it can turn into a different story. Why not have a go?

The way I learn to write when I was in school or even now as an author is reading a lot of the stuff I want to write. If I want to write an adventure story, I will read a lot of adventure stories. If I want to write a poem, I will read a lot of poems. The second thing that helped is getting a notebook for myself – that was not for any competition or school work and writing in it. I still keep a journal of ideas – I write down ideas for new characters, or jokes or poems in it.

My favourite thing about being an author is making up stuff. I come to work and play with words. Is there a better job in the world? I can make crocodiles go to school, dragons run a café or elephants pretend to be detectives.

The most challenging thing is also making up stuff – an idea is not a story. Stories need good characters, great beginnings, exciting middles and dramatic endings. To make them so, there is a lot of moving words around the page, writing and rewriting and writing some more. I wish I could draw like the amazing illustrators who work on my book – so I can show them what’s in my brain as I write. But because I can’t do that, I have to find the right words to convey the story.

Nikhil & Jay is about Nikhil who is 7 and Jay who is 5. Their mum is from India, like me, and speaks English and Tamil, a language from the south of India. Their dad is from England. The stories are about growing up and learning about different things – from building a bug hotel to making kites. They also learn a lot about their dual-heritage from their grandparents on both sides of the family.

When it was finally decided that it was going to become a TV series, I couldn’t believe it. I still can’t believe it sometimes, even though I’m working on the show. Words I wrote, people I created for my stories are going to be animated characters with real people lending their voices. How often do the stories in your brain come alive?

The other thing I realised is – I wrote the stories on my own, at my desk. Soofiya illustrated them again at her desk on her own. But making a TV show involves hundreds of people – their art and skills are so important to make it come alive. And it all was possible because I sat at my desk and wrote the stories about Nikhil & Jay.

Need more inspiration?