‘What’s jagged, heavy and makes a loud noise in the valley?’
Abu shrugs
Gul hurls a stone in the air
and screams
‘FREEDOM’
#freedom by mirat trivedi
This is one of the 250 stories that have been compiled into terribly tiny tales or ttt book brought out by Penguin Random House. Simple but powerful.
How the ttt started is a story that everyone is familiar with. We try to find out more about the book and the plans of the micro-fiction platform from their co-founders Anuj Gosalia and Chintan Ruparel. Excerpts from the interview:
How were the stories for the book selected?
Anuj: We had a rigorous thought process which went on for three-four months to arrive at the final stories. You like some stories, but when you read them again two weeks later, then you don’t enjoy them as much. One question that we asked during this process was ‘Will these tales stay with us 10 years from now?’
Will it have a sequel or more books?
Anuj: If you check the Amazon link, it’s called ‘terribly tiny tales’ volume one. So this is the first of many books hopefully. This one has classic tales — all genres in one book. But in future, our formats might be genre specific.
The stories have no titles or headings so to say...
Chintan: In 2013, when we started, we would give a word to the writers and the writers would write on it. But now anyone can write on any word or topic, or theme of their choice. But in the book, the story comes first and then the title or the hashtag. So that word is obviously like the title.
Will the stories grow more shorter than 140-word limit?
Anuj: We already do something like this — tinier tales, writing a story in 10 or 6 words. We do 140-character story, 2,000 word-open letter kind of stories and poems. So ttt is not just what you see in your hands, in the form of a book. That’s just one writing format we have. It is what we started with and hope to do many more.
Can we still call terrible tiny tales a start-up?
Chintan: We didn’t plan any of this. We just believed in good stories and things happened all by themselves, almost magically. We do have a broad plan in place, and good stories are at the heart of it. We will have some newer format; we plan to engage with newer writers, more books and also the app.
Anuj: If we do this well, then the future will take care of itself. We are a start-up. I mean, even Google calls itself ‘world’s largest start-up’. We work like a start-up, but we ensure that the business is in place.
How do you go about bringing more writers in the team?
Anuj: I think that’s the USP of the book. There are unknown writers who have written so well and have got discovered and the fact that they’ve packed in so much punch in so little.
Chintan: We do conduct workshops across the country and try and convert people into writers. And, some of them have come on board.
What about the payment model?
Chintan: We are building ourselves as a platform. And we are trying to discover people who are willing to write. On our social media page, we ensure that the best stories that meet our editorial standards are put up. So they are in a sense, free magazine, for both writers and readers. We don’t pay for the editorial content.
How do you deal with trolls?
Anuj: Most of our content is usually relatable; stories that affect the lives of 18-25-year-olds. Currently, we don’t dabble in political news. Even if we talk about issues, we try to reflect on the humane side. For instance, we did a life story on Elphinstone stampede.
Chintan: So far, most of our readers have supported us. In case there are negative comments, we communicate with the writer. If he doesn’t agree, then we block him. At the end of the day, what we write is fiction or an opinion. So we do not have misreported facts.
At the moment, we have something called ‘ttt live’. Going forward we will beef it up. There is bound to be trolling in future, from some or the other quarter. Then, we have to buck up.
Tell us something about terribly tiny talkies.
Chintan: We are experimenting with different formats right now. We are working with some distinguished filmmakers. And create some shorts, which may or may not be uploaded on our YouTube channel. But they will go on other video platforms. We are starting on the production.
Secondly, we are experimenting with low production cost but very relatable video format for non-fiction and fiction. From January onwards, we will able to see all of this on our channel.
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