That Year You Were in by yasiamthatrose

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Author bio: Born and raised in West Bengal, Kousani is primarily a writer in romance, paranormal and fantasy who started her journey on Wattpad in 2016. Although you cannot find her first published works from around 2018, it still exists in the drafts as a possibility for more stories. When she is not reading, writing, working, or studying, she loves to watch dramas, movies, and anime of various genres. Still, her regular go-to genres will always be fantasy, paranormal, horror, supernatural, and romance.

Story title: That Year You Were

Logline: When Leila starts a small talk with a cute guy on a bus, she expects a basic conversation or ignorance. But she delves into a few broken memories and uncovers her past connection with Silas.

Premise/Blurb: When Leila starts a small talk with a cute guy on a bus, she expects a basic conversation or ignorance. But their encounter turns out to be a key to revisiting the past secrets of the world.

Leila has dedicated the past few months to building her own café. Running a small business and writing her novels are the only things that keep her busy day-to-day. Amid everything else, a certain guy catches her attention with no absolute effort. She is determined to build a connection. Things don't go well when he turns out to be a ghost. At least, that's what she thinks he is. A mysterious guy on the trail and the growing curiosity may just spark a story she can only imagine in fiction.

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What inspired you to write this book?

To be honest, I just wanted to finish a story. I never do that. All of my ideas are destined to be broken and incomplete. I have been writing for probably more than 7 years, and I did write random things in my childhood as well. But every story never ends. That drove me crazy at a point and made me very much inspired to write this book. Also, I had some friends threatening me to finish a story, unlike how I treat all my incomplete works in general. That was my ultimate inspiration. I just had enough.

What was the inspiration behind the main character and their love interest?

I remember when I wrote this story, I was moving on from my own crush. Those dramatic problems in life. But being a delusional person, I was visualizing one prompt from ONC 2023 a lot. I really wanted to write a story that involved crushes, conflicting situations, and a love life that could cross any difficulties with a happy ending. Also, I kind of always bring some fantasy elements into my stories. I cannot survive without them. A ghost-like or supernatural male protagonist fulfilled everything. So Silas was made. One character would be in love with the same person again and again regardless of any conflicts. And for Leila, I gave her some of the things I would like in real life for myself. Like being a writer and owning a business. She is not me, though. We are different. But I took some characteristics as an inspiration to give her a more relatable image. So, as you can see, there's no major inspiration for any of the characters, but I just visualized them in a way for the story prompt I chose in ONC 2023, and I wrote them in a way that fits into my idea.

For the names, I wanted an Indian name for the female protagonist, but something that's easy to pronounce for everyone. In the beginning, I was thinking of Lily, which is an English name. But that gave me inspiration for "Leila" as the name. For Silas, I actually didn't think much. This is a name I wanted to use for a character for a while. I have a huge list of names to use for my characters. I chose Silas. The name seemed fitting to me for a witch. And I remembered Vampire Diaries as well. That's a TVD inspiration right there. Plus TVD's Silas was a witch and had his own true love. It stuck to my mind somehow, and I couldn't think of any other name for the love interest after that. Usually, I don't take name inspirations from another character. But for this one, I did.

Do you have any favorite romance authors on or off Wattpad that inspired you to write romance stories? Feel free to name up to three people and some of their favorite books!

Probably many people except Indians or Bengalis wouldn't be familiar with the names. I actually read more Bengali novels than English ones if I compare my reading lists. As much as I can memorize, one of the first romance novels I read out of my textbooks was written by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee. So Bengali Classics are my first romance novels. That inspired me a lot to read and write romance, I would say. And I love his writing style. Although I am not anywhere near mastering that kind of excellence in writing, he is one of my favorite authors. If I can name one of the novels I liked from his works, that would be "Durgeshnandini."

On Wattpad, I have a lot of favorites as well. Picking only a few names is very hard. But right now, I have @iyahartwrites and @CrestFallenStar in my mind. Although I have not read all of their works, I loved "Enemy Beloved" from Iya and "Drakkon" from Maham.

What were some of the most challenging elements you came across while writing the story? How did you overcome them?

To continue. I am very inconsistent with my stories. I never develop it completely. Somehow, it is because of my other life situations, or sometimes I am just not in the mood. But I needed to challenge myself and finish it. That was the most challenging part. The second challenge was to satisfy myself. To be honest, I do not feel totally satisfied with how I wrote it. It was rushed due to the way I tried to finish it quickly before my exams and obviously before ONC ended. So the story could be written in a better way. But I am proud of the fact that I finished. I can brush it up and reword/rewrite some parts anytime in the future if I edit it. I focused more on my speed than the quality. For once, that is why I could finish it in the expected time. Or else I could never be just like all my other works. For once, I did it in a different way, and that seemed to work to reach the goal and develop a full first draft of the entire idea I had.

Is there a chapter or scene that you didn't make the final cut? If so, describe those here and share with us why they weren't kept.

Yeah but it was not a chapter or scene but an idea only. I was thinking of making William a negative character. If this could be a novel instead of a novella, I was thinking of giving him more of a story as a second lead, a potential love interest who fails miserably. But it was a novella I was writing for ONC, and he didn't get much of a scene as I was rushing to the end. Also, I did not write him as a negative character but did the exact opposite. If I turn it into a novel later, I plan to add much depth to his character as well.

What is the key message you hope your readers will take away from your story?

My story was absolutely portraying a reunion of the characters after a bad past. I mean, we all have something in our lives where we are not really happy. But if you see a second chance, it's all yours. Now, it was all fictional about the reincarnation in the story. If you feel like you are stuck and cannot move on from where you are, or things are not going as you would like, it's not the end of everything. And even if it is, you deserve a good ending. Unlike the characters, you do not know if there's a reincarnation button existing somewhere. We can't start over like that. But that fact even gives us more reasons to make this one life as successful as it can be. That's not going to be easy, but we gotta do what we can do. ❤️

Do you have any advice you can share with aspiring writers of romance?

First, my general advice for writing would be - if you think you can't write a story because you are not good at it or you never did it, you are wrong. You can write. You only need the intention to do it and an idea. Now, to write well enough requires practice, time, and patience. As for romance, that requires you to understand emotions and feelings. We all have them. Just like you don't murder someone to write a murder mystery, you don't have to do the romance by yourself to write a romance story. Let the characters do the job, and let yourself go free with your imagination. I wish you all the best. 

If you had to choose your favorite romance trope, what would it be and why?

Good question. I have a lot of favorite tropes. But maybe something that's out of the ordinary, even with a familiar touch, makes me go all in for a story. Still, I have some favorites I can point out right now. I like "Enemies to Lovers" and "Office Romance" kinds of tropes. But they have to be somewhat unique, as I said already, even though they are pretty cliché kind of tropes. But cliché is cliché for a reason, haha. We end up reading some of them way too much. 

Thank you so much for your time! :)

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