This is part of Between The Lines, an interview series with writers in Singapore about the craft and creative process of writing. In the era of Instagram, we often seek refuge in the world of fantasy, finding comfort in its allure, imagining alternate realities, alternate lives in worlds very different from the one we have. There are those in our midst who possess the remarkable ability to transform this make-believe into tangible art, who have created worlds, familiar and strange, that we can escape to, to find hope and succour, love and consolation. One such individual who excels in such transformative art is O Thiam Chin. O is a Singaporean author who has crafted short stories that have been published in Granta, The Cincinnati Review, Washington Square Review, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, and elsewhere. He is also the winner of the Epigram Books Fiction Prize 2015 for his novel Now That It’s Over. We recently had the privilege of interviewing him. In the interview, O unravelled the layers of creativity, explored inspirations that fuel his literary fire and revealed secrets behind the magic that brings his stories to life. Can you walk us through your journey of creative writing? O Thiam Chin: I always knew that I wanted to do something creative in my life. When I embarked on my creative writing journey, I tried my hand at writing poetry, which was fun but daunting, and made me realise that being a poet is itself a calling, just not mine. Along the way, I faced many rejections. I started writing short stories in 2004. My earliest stories were my testing ground and frankly quite crappy as I was still finding my feet then. Yet they were the stories that pushed me to do better. Over the years, I’ve written across genres. Every type of writing demands its own style and structure, and learning all these have helped me become a better writer overall. Recently I started writing screenplays, which is something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time. Scriptwriting is an entirely different ballgame. So far it has been quite an interesting experience, and I’m learning so much as I slowly pick up the craft. Do you have any fun ways to go about worldbuilding? The impact of your story endings is notable. They evoke a lasting feeling without necessarily relying on weighty words. Do you think you prioritise impactful endings, or do you believe that beginnings also require a similar level of impact? O Thiam Chin: Every detail I put in a story is integral to the story, what the plot needs. Eventually everything has to come together. The endings don't always have to be written to create an impact; likewise for beginnings. I always like to try different approaches when I write. When you have an underdeveloped story idea where you don’t have the story laid down in front of you, what materials do you refer to? Is there a generic list? O Thiam Chin: I immerse myself into the characters I write about. I don’t follow any step or process or even a list. Things come to me organically, on the spot, when I write. I pay a lot of attention to my surroundings. I become very sensitive to the people around me, what they do, how they act or talk or respond. I absorb everything, I hoard every single detail. When an idea pops up in my head, it is there because it is the fruit of what I’ve been thinking and nursing and musing for some time, feeding on other ideas and thoughts, extracting all the nutrients from them. I’ve observed the continuity of emotions in your stories, where a feeling is seamlessly sustained without losing its grip. How do you approach maintaining such a compelling and consistent emotional thread throughout the narrative? O Thiam Chin: I think about my characters a lot. I like to delve into all aspects of their lives so they are, when rendered on the page, as full of blood and life as any living person. To me, the emotional thread that connects different parts of a story really depends a lot on character development. Emotions are never static or fixed throughout the story; they are always in a state of flux, changing and transforming as the story progresses. In what ways do you think Singapore’s culture and physical surroundings weave into your storytelling? O Thiam Chin: These aspects of place and culture and landmarks are important to me, which, because I’m Singaporean, are harder to define as I’m always in the midst of them, seeing and experiencing them as they are, comparing them to what has been in the past. They come out in my stories not just as background, but as a living backdrop against which my protagonists live and walk and change and come to terms with the place they call home and negotiate what it is to be a resident, a citizen, a Singaporean. I always find a lot of inspiration just observing my immediate surroundings. I still believe many untold stories lie untapped, waiting to be discovered at kopitiams, HDB void decks, hawker centres. When I write my characters, I want to steep them in the very place they come from, to unearth their roots and question the sense of belonging they have to their origins. Can you share the profound emotions or personal convictions that fuel your pieces on themes of homoromanticism, queer male relationships and sexual liberation? O Thiam Chin: It’s very tough, perhaps entirely impossible, to separate who I am from the writing I do. What I see, how I feel, what colours my past and my present can be filtered, in a very significant way, through my experiences as a queer man. I draw a lot of inspiration from these experiences, mine and others, and I want to write about them as truthfully, as clearly, as I can. Poets, playwrights and other creatives contribute a lot to empower the LGBTQ+ community in Singapore. I am dedicated to doing my part in capturing the diverse narratives within the community. There’s a recurring theme of sadness and grief in your stories. What draws you to explore emotions like heartache, melancholy and sorrow that builds within? O Thiam Chin: I am a sad person (laughs). I experience all emotions with deep intensity. I feel bad, I feel angry, I feel shocked, I feel a great many things. And naturally I want my readers to feel these emotions through my writing. Part of the sadness or melancholy I feel come from this deep sense of loss, that we are always losing some part of ourselves across this short span of time we call our lives. We will lose what we have; it’s just a matter of time. Perhaps we will always feel our losses so much more than our gains. It’s a part of us, and that’s okay, really.

In Cixin Liu's seminal science fiction trilogy the 'Remembrance of Earth's Past (地球往事)', an alien civilisation is governed by the chaotic orbits of three suns. In the latest multiverse blockbuster (no, not Dr. Strange), 'Everything Everywhere All at Once', a Chinese-American woman can connect with versions of herself across parallel universes to fight a powerful being bent on destroying the multiverse. So, even with a single guiding principle, wonders can occur—such is the beauty of world building. That's what the 'Flying Objects and Dairy Queens' workshop is all about. Our speakers for the workshop Meihan Boey and Jerry Hinds teases a little more: How do you go about worldbuilding when you're creating a new story? Does it come naturally as you go along the story? Or do you set rules before you even start the first scene? Meihan Boey: This hugely depends on the ‘world’ being built. Hardcore sci-fi needs to follow at least the gist of existing rules of spacetime, physics etc, so this type of worldbuilding requires set rules in place. Even if you want to break ‘real-life’ rules, you have to be aware of them to break them in a manner that makes sense! Fantasy, horror, ’superhero’ etc have a little more leeway, and it’s possible to just let things that seem to fit just ‘come about’ in the text as you go. But you do have to go over the whole creation a few times afterwards and create coherence, and establish rules of the world. E.g in Transformers, only Decepticons can fly, so if you earlier created an Autobot who’s a helicopter, that character needs to change. Jerry Hinds: I always start from the perspective of a main character. The 5 Ws of that character then literally dictate the world or ‘universe’ he or she resides in. ‘It’s all in a name’. Once I know WHO the main character(s) is, the rest flows quite nicely. What's your favourite thing when it comes to worldbuilding? Meihan Boey: The power to bend the rules of reality! Jerry Hinds: The fact that you’re kind of acting like God! You get to even dictate if whether or not a planet has gravity or prolonged periods of daylight. Do you have any fun ways to go about worldbuilding? Meihan Boey: I’m not sure there is a non-fun way to do it! It allows you to essentially fulfil your own idea of what the world might be like, should be like, or that you think would be a great adventure to be like. There is literally no dull way to do it. Jerry Hinds: I think the answer to question #1 is big fun. Getting to know a character and the cast can be almost overwhelming; the ideas may come faster than I can type. Waking in the middle of the night to make notes that just come into your head is awesome. What's one book or story that has always inspired your worldbuilding? How did it inspire and fascinate you? Meihan Boey: I don’t think there could possibly be just ‘one’! My earliest influences range massively from DC Vertigo comics to Victorian fiction, Shonen manga to space opera, Star Wars to Lord of the Rings. Every creator who has built a successful ‘world’ has something a reader can draw from and be inspired by. Jerry Hinds: I was knocked out by the worlds created by Jim Starlin back in the early days of the original Captain Marvel. It’s why to this day my hair is dyed yellow. Worldbuilding can be daunting, so what's one tip you'd give to writers? Meihan Boey: My advice would be to create way more than you actually need for the story, because that’s how you give your world structure. After that, edit down to only the information you need to keep the story moving. Save the rest for a sequel, prequel, or just a very large appendix. Jerry Hinds: Again, point #1; get to know your cast, and ideas for the world will flow; anatomies and body types, costumes, behaviours and architecture. Most plots involve quests for power of some sort and romance. It’s the WHY that can make any world worth caring about - it starts with the main character & cast for me. Join Meihan Boey and Jerry Hinds in 'Flying Objects and Dairy Queens: The Art of World Building' People think 'worldbuilding' applies primarily to speculative fiction such as science fiction, fantasy and horror. But almost every piece of fiction - and indeed, quite a lot of non-fiction - requires the author to 'build' a world, to facilitate the reader's understanding of the motivations driving the characters and plot. We explore the art of worldbuilding in all its glorious forms, from comic books to fantasy novels, anime/manga to sci-fi, with an emphasis on Singapore-based writers.

Euphoria is delicious as it is tumultuous. The series follows a group of high school students, a journey into how they figure out love and friendships amidst themselves in a world filled with social media, sex, drugs, and trauma. The lilting, entrancing cinematography frequently takes over the scene, but their friendships and relationships are just as compelling. Their loyalties shift, and their friendships change, like ocean currents that change on a dime. The way they fall in, and fall out, with each other. The way they hurt, or heal, the people around them. All of it has become fodder for not only buzzy listicles, but also conversations about how we could be doing the same things to the people around us. After all, our decisions change the people around us, too. That is the crux of our workshop, 'Friendship is The Best Romance', with Daryl Qilin Yam. We talked to Daryl a little more about how he approaches the concept of friendship in his life, and in his writing. For your stories, you seem to always hold a microscope in the little things that happen between two people. How do you write about the intricacies of a relationship, romantic or otherwise? I'm still trying to figure that part out myself, to be perfectly honest. I'm now beginning to realise, for example, that even in the closest of relationships, the things that we take for granted can also become the things that test the very bond between two people... Observation is key, but one can only observe so much if there isn't any attempt at self-insight to accompany it. But if I were to speak in strictly literary terms, I do think that Katie Kitamura's Intimacies presents a fascinating case study on the matter. It's a novel that's invested in the moments of intimacy that can enable a deeper understanding to arise between two people, an intimacy that can be at once a privilege and also a matter of exclusion, of alienation, especially if one isn't privy to this intimacy. But again, the deeper, stranger matter beneath all this is – how the hell do people connect in this manner in the first place? That I can't answer. It happens all the time, and sometimes it doesn't happen at all. After writing so many stories, what fascinates you most when it comes to relationships? That they remain first and foremost the reason why we change as people. What do you think is most often overlooked when it comes to stories with friendship at its core? That they end. How do you think the pandemic has changed the way you relate to other people, be it if you know them or not? I do think the pandemic sharpened many of our needs and wants. And I do think that survivalism imposed a new kind of sorting mechanism into the way we value our relationships: people knew where they truly stood in relation to one another, and there was no need to begrudge the other for it. But I do think I'm increasingly unable to relate to other people now, especially since the pandemic also allowed us to retreat even further into our digital selves. It's quite hard to tell what's real anymore, or what actually matters. Join Daryl Qilin Yam in 'Friendship is The Best Romance' In this workshop, we will be exploring the ways people fall in and out of friendships via a series of discussions, in-class readings and ideating exercises. The aim will be to see how the mercurial nature of friendships might be utilised to our advantage as storytellers, and as essential building blocks in our ideation of characters and storylines within our practices of fiction. ​ For a taste of what we're trying to achieve, you can read Seeing Ershadi by Nicole Krauss (contains sexually explicit content): https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/03/05/seeing-ershadi

Everything changes on a dime, never mind the pandemic or a (possible) world war. But all that shouldn't stop us from seeing the things we know from a different perspective. It might just be the time to do so, seeing how things are these days. So, we invited Dr. Ranjani Rao for Writing The City's March 2022 workshop: 'Unpacking Our Days: What Memoir Writing Can Do'. During the workshop, we'll explore how we can make sense of our lives through the stories we have, big or small. Here's a little introduction about Dr. Ranjani: A trained scientist and a self-taught writer, she has written award-winning personal essays and op-eds that appeared in several digital and print publications and anthologies. In October 2021, she published ‘Rewriting My Happily Ever After - a memoir of divorce and discovery’. Her memoir recounts how her life changed as walks out a sixteen-year marriage, how she embraces a new life despite fear, stigma, and trauma. Before the workshop, Writing The City got in touch with Dr. Ranjani to dive deeper into how she views memoir writing: How did you come to write about your life? Dr. Ranjani: As a scientist by training, I have always been curious about things. When I became a mother, I turned my gaze towards my own life - the daily delights and dilemmas, the comforts and contradictions of all the roles I played everyday. Writing became a form of meditation and an easy way to untangle my thoughts. I began by writing for myself but when my first published piece resonated with many readers, I turned to writing not just as a way of expression but also as a way of connection. What do you think people misunderstand most about memoir writing? Dr. Ranjani: There is a general tendency to consider memoir writing as either mere statement of facts (like reporting) or as a self-centered navel-gazing exercise. Among writers, there is a feeling that fiction is more demanding because it requires imagination. However, memoir writing demands introspection and more courage since you can't hide behind the veil of fiction. In a memoir, you have the story (what happened) and the writing (how you tell your story). For readers, well-written memoirs hit very close to home because these contain kernels of truth about our lives. Even if the setting and story are very different from your own, the emotions they evoke are universal. There is a sense of camaraderie that you feel with the memoir writer since the story is true. How do you continue practising memoir writing? Dr. Ranjani: I write something everyday, even if I don't publish. In addition to regular blog posts and a biweekly newsletter from my website, I submit articles and op-eds to Straits Times and other publications. In a strange way I have found that posting regularly on social media helps keep my writing muscle in shape. The key requirement is be observant at all times, faithful to detail, and disciplined about writing. Once you gather momentum with your writing ritual and practise, the book/story comes together fairly easily.