Scriptwriting for Thrillers

Scriptwriter Sridhar Raghavan, who spoke on developing thrillers as a genre, regaled audiences with his experiences in the field, and also gave some guidelines to budding writers.

"Check your ideas thoroughly, try and innovate within existing structures, do variations of story outlines and counter criticism constructively", he said. Stressing on the importance of research, he said a writer has to think about practical aspects involved in the actual making of a serial while visualizing scenes. Tools specific to the thriller genre include timing your script well, increasing the pace to create the necessary drama, creating false drama to keep up the suspense within a scene, using hooks and teasers like dramatic opening sequences and keeping twists and turns for the ad breaks all go to make good thriller serials, he said.

Raghavan, who started out as a journalist before drifting into TV scriptwriting, said a writer needs to 'boil a scene', meaning keeping a scene at simmering point just enough to hold viewer interest by extracting the maximum dramatic potential out of a scene. Best known for scripting the gripping CID series on Sony, Raghavan said a writer ought to keep situations within practical shooting possibilities, keep his research skills sharpened all the time and try and avoid jargon at all times.