Mira Nair on Finding Your Story

Mira Nair is an Academy Award-nominated filmmaker who's one of the most renowned translators of the Indian-immigrant experience. Born and raised in Rourkela, India, Mira began her career as a stage actor in India before moving to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she transitioned to documentary films at 20 years old. Her narrative feature debut, Salaam Bombay! (1988), won the Camera d’Or and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language film. A resourceful and determined independent filmmaker who casts unknowns alongside acclaimed actors, Mira has directed Mississippi Masala (1991), The Perez Family (1995), Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love (1996), Hysterical Blindness (2002), Vanity Fair (2004), The Namesake (2006), Amelia (2009), and The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2012). Her film Queen of Katwe, about a Ugandan girl with an aptitude for chess, stars Lupita Nyong’o and David Oyelowo. Mira’s credits also include directing the musical version of her acclaimed film Monsoon Wedding (2001) at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre, where it had an extended, sold-out run in 2017. She is the director of BBC’s adaptation of A Suitable Boy.

Finding an untold story is rare, and the best way to discover one is to engage your curiosity in the world around you. Your goal should be to find a compelling story that captures your imagination and doesn’t let go. To help discover a great story that you're excited to write, consider these five tips:

1. 1. Do your research. “Once you have an idea, do any research that needs to happen for you to really inhabit that idea.” Real life is infinitely stranger than fiction, and if you are telling a story outside your personal experience, do the research needed to inhabit that world. Explore books and works of art that come out of that culture, involve yourself in the community, and get to know your subject first-hand. Once you arm yourself with that research, you'll have the necessary background knowledge to tell a compelling and effective story.
2. 2. Focus on specificity. “As you're writing your story, do not shrink from being as specific as possible.” Mira believes that specificity is key to helping your audience relate to unfamiliar characters and places. The more specific the details are in your story, the more the principles of that story are clear. For instance, Mira chose in her film Monsoon Wedding to preserve her characters’ unique way of speaking three different languages in one sentence. Although most Western audiences were quite unfamiliar with this practice, they could still relate to the honesty and humor of the dialogue and were willing to follow along with the necessary subtitles. The story, in its particularity, connected with audiences everywhere. The more local you are, the more universal you can become.
3. 3. Look to politics for inspiration. "Oftentimes, the beginnings of my ideas for stories come out of the politics of what is going on today.” If you find a political story in the news that inspires you, know that you don't have to tell a fictionalized version of that exact story, but rather use the event to brainstorm a good story that's thematically similar. Think about different stories based on that theme until you find an angle that's particularly interesting to you and isn't a story you've seen before.
4. 4. Work with a director who shares your vision. “The writer is possibly the most important collaborator with the director.” If you’re writing a screenplay, find a director to work with who matches your own style and taste. This person will be your most important collaborator in developing your story structure and should share your sense of humor and knowledge of the subject. As you work on the script together, write each scene with a clear intention, yet also try to weave in additional layers of meaning and subtext so that each moment is doing several things at once.
5. 5. Ask for feedback and revise accordingly. “Once we have a screenplay, I distribute it to three of four people that I trust—people who are not so deeply involved in the technical nature of the game—just to read as a story.” Test your screenplay by sharing it with your inner circle of trusted friends and colleagues. Ask where they are bored, what their understanding is of the story’s world and the character’s motivations. If their understanding does not match what you intended, address those discrepancies in your next draft. Revise rigorously and repeatedly in order to create clarity for those unfamiliar with your story while still preserving what is fresh and distinctive about your approach.

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