‘Crazy’ blogger to screenwriter

When he started a blog, it was just a platform to scribble down his ‘crazy thoughts’. Later, he started taking it more seriously and posing full-fledged stories. Deepu Pradeep, who slowly earned a name as a good short story writer, is now all set to don a new hat — as screenwriter of Vineeth Sreenivasan starrer Kunjiramayanam.

“It was in 2007, after my higher secondary course, that I started a blog to write down my ‘Bhranthan Chinthakal’. After becoming active in groups on twitter, I began to develop these ideas into short stories,” says Deepu, who studied mechanical engineering but gave up that line to concentrate on the creative field.

Till date, he has not published any work in book format. “I have written around 35 stories. I always write down the stories on paper instead of typing them directly onto the blog page. In blog, there is no editor, so I have the freedom to show my original work to the public,” says the 25-year-old writer, who admits that there are many disadvantages too in blogging.

“As the blog is an open space, anyone can easily copy our work and publish it under their name. I have read many of my stories published by others as theirs in social media pages. But plagiarism has also indirectly helped me. Once, one of my stories named Glass Story was shared by someone in his Facebook without giving me credit and it went viral. When some people searched with the title, it was redirected to my blog,” he says.

It was after reading the same Glass Story that Basil Joseph approached him for a screenplay. “It was through Facebook that he messaged me if I could do a screenplay for a feature film that he was planning. I had done screenplays for two short films — Athekaranathaal and Unnimoolam — but Basil’s proposal challenged the writer in me. It is during the scripting of this film that I understood the value of editing to make the final output an entertaining one,” says Deepu.