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  TELL TALE: Megha Ramaswamy

Five years ago Megha Ramaswamy, an aspiring screenplay writer, felt like an alien in Bollywood. After a masters degree in film production and a one-year screenwriting course at the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), she failed to identify with the romantic or gangster movies being made at that time.

All that has changed. Today, Bollywood offers a host of opportunities to young scriptwriters like herself, says Ramaswamy. Her own script, Girls, which she wrote during a break, was picked for a Venice workshop conducted by the Binger Lab in 2011. Based on the interpersonal lives of a group of girls in suburban Mumbai, her script is being made into a film directed by none other than Shimit Amin of Chak de! India fame.

Ramaswamy is not alone. Other young screenwriters are also getting good breaks and cashing in on the demand for fresh themes and imaginative storylines in Bollywood.

Take Sumit Arora, 27. A journalist-turned-TV writer (Kahiin to Hoga and Dill Mill Gayye), who took up film writing in 2009, got a break when director Umesh Shukla asked him to write a light-hearted comedy, All is Well. The film, which will release in July 2014, stars Abhishek Bachchan and Rishi Kapoor, among others.

Mahesh Ramachandani, yet another television writer, also made a successful transition to films when he got to script Arshad Warsi's Mr Joe B. Carvalho, which is set to release in January next year.

So what prompted the change so that more and more young scriptwriters are beginning to find space in Bollywood? Anand Gandhi, who was a television scriptwriter in his previous avatar, and got tremendous critical acclaim for his offbeat film Ship of Theseus, says, 'An infrastructure has kicked in for filmmakers like us. The audience is exposed to good films today like never before, and they are craving to see intelligent, stimulating content.' Needless to say, that has led to a growing demand for scriptwriters who want to push the boundaries of storytelling.

Gandhi, whose production house Recyclewala Labs gets lots of sample scripts every day and grooms talented screenwriters, is boldly chalking out a different path from Bollywood's 'formula' films. 'Now there's space for all of us to exist,' he says.

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  Anjum Rajabali

The size of the Indian film industry has also grown with a plethora of multiplexes, TV channels and film festivals. 'The pie has got bigger; the need for content is being driven purely by economics,' says Pubali Chaudhuri, a screenwriter with scripts of films like Rock On!! and Kai Po Che to her credit.

Anjum Rajabali, veteran screenwriter and a member of the Film Writers' Association, Mumbai, agrees. 'As the film industry gets more corporatised it becomes imperative that there is a strong and complete script,' says Rajabali, who wrote the scripts of Raajneeti and The Legend of Bhagat Singh.

The rise of young writers also coincided with the alarming rate at which the audience was rejecting traditional Bollywood fare, he adds. 'When new writers began connecting with the audiences, filmmakers became more amenable to giving such scripts a chance, ' he says.

That's a huge shift from the time when screenwriters had been reduced to the status of being the 'pen of the director'. In the 1970s and 1980s, it was not unheard of to start a production without a script in hand. Today, since scripts are ready before the director comes on board, the screenwriter's vision gets much more space in a film.

And those visions are as varied as they are offbeat. Juhi Chaturvedi, the creative director of an ad agency, tapped her experience in New Delhi's Lajpat Nagar to pen a highly successful script (Vicky Donor) about a sperm donor. Gyan Correa's film on three sets of people lost on a highway in rural Gujarat (The Good Road) got picked for India's entry to the Oscars. Ritesh Batra's unusual love story (The Lunchbox) won heaps of accolades too.

The diversity of themes is also a reflection of the diverse backgrounds of today's screenwriters. Says Amit Masurkar, another television writer, 'Screenwriters used to come from a solid Hindi or Urdu literature background. They wrote books, were part of Leftist movements. But today, they come from all kinds of backgrounds.'

Masurkar gave up his engineering education to teach himself the craft of screenplay. After spending many years in television, he made a film based on one of his own screenplays, Sulemani Keeda. He is now looking for a distributor for the film.

However, Pubali Chaudhuri believes the market is not yet ready for screenwriters to hawk their scripts to studios and producers. She says only independent financiers and not big banners back good content. 'They can do that because the cost of filmmaking has come down, thanks to digital technology,' she points out.

'Independent producers can make a film for Rs 50 lakh. I know a Gujarati film on erotica being made for just Rs 10 lakh. But for every success story there are some failures as well,' says Chaudhuri, who is currently working on the sequel to Rock On!!

Screenwriters don't make an awful lot of money yet. Of course, if you have a few successful films under your belt you can command more. 'The minimum amount fixed by the Film Writers' Association is Rs 10 lakh today,' says Sumit Arora.

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  Pubali Chaudhuri

Rajabali believes contracts with screenwriters continue to be hugely one-sided and mostly favour the producers. And, many of them, including large houses, which are well aware of international practices, continue to resist the royalties legitimately due to screenwriters, he says.

Still, most agree that it is an interesting time to be a screenwriter in Bollywood. 'There continues to be plagiarism, bad screenplays and star-driven systems. But production houses like ours are trying to change the climate and good things are happening in a few places,' says Gandhi.

For screenwriters Bollywood has certainly become the 'write' choice.

Write right

Initiatives taken for screenwriters

New York-based Asia Society's Mumbai chapter has launched the second edition of their New Voices Fellowship for Screenwriters. This offers mentor services by senior writers.

The Sundance Institute, US, is running the third edition of its Indian Script Lab in collaboration with Mumbai Mantra, a Mahindra company offshoot.

Film Writers' Association holds seminars, workshops and screenwriters conferences regularly.

Anand Gandhi's company has picked five writers from Bangalore, Hyderabad and Mumbai and is grooming them as in-house screenwriters.