Ways of Working : Deepu Pradeep on Writing
Ways of Working. Issue 02.
Ideas start loose, shaped through revision and collaboration before reaching their final form. The polished version never tells the full story. It’s design-final-final-v3 for me, a bound script for him. Deepu Pradeep, known for films like Kunjiramayanam and Guruvayoor Ambalanadayil, shares how this invisible work drives his storytelling.
He writes screenplays, collaborates with other writers, developed a web-series, writes stories on his blog, and runs a tech company. Blogger, writer, traveller, biker, fountain pen enthusiast—labels that stay because he keeps moving between them.
Where Writing Met Readers
He started blogging in the late 2000s, when Malayalam newspapers were writing about how to start blogging. The blog became a place to keep stories and two-liner poems he was writing. "It was never meant for comedy. I called it Bhranthan Chinthakal (Mad Thoughts) those days."
Then came Twitter. Shorter pieces. Faster reactions. Comedy got better responses, pushing him to write more of it on the blog. He was not active on Facebook initially, but the stories he had written began getting shared there without attribution, including GlassStory, which went viral in those days. Later, he started updating to Facebook as well. For him, the Internet was never about reach. It helped him understand people, build networks, and eventually make his first short film.
From Small Moments
Much of his writing comes from small situations. Ordinary moments, awkward exchanges, things going slightly off course. He often thinks in what-ifs, and those thoughts tend to stay with him longer than the moment itself. “Once, when a snake entered my house and everyone panicked,” he says. “In between this chaos, a friend asked if this would become my next story.” He laughs. “Of course, I made it a story! (Pe, Perumambinte Pe, Arakkinnam Kuliru)” He describes it as a habit more than a method.
Once, when a snake entered my house and everyone panicked. In between this chaos, a friend asked if this would become my next story.
There are always multiple ideas at once, and focus shifts between them based on mood and energy. “I try to write, and if I can’t, I move to the next one until I find flow.” This reminds me of How to Take Smart Notes, which argues that a repository of ideas makes brainstorming unnecessary. He often writes while traveling. Buses and trains work as in-between spaces where it’s easier to move between ideas.Music plays in the background, not to block things out, but to stay in the flow. Sometimes the lyrics seep in and influence his writing. They shape the storytelling, sometimes becoming characters in his stories.
Deadlines don’t help much. Writing usually begins close to the end or takes shape along the way. This isn’t inefficiency. It’s how his work happens.
Spreadsheet for anything and everything
“I am an Enthinum Ethinum spreadsheet person”(Spreadsheet for anything and everything). Spreadsheets show up everywhere in how he works, not as dashboards pushing for more output, but as a way to look back and understand where time actually went.
One public sheet logs the short stories he reads daily. Then there are private sheets. One tracks his daily work. Every project gets a fixed hourly rate, not real money, just numbers for comparison. At the end of a month, he can see where effort went. His usual months clock around 40 hours (Attn, N.Murthi). Not because he aimed higher and fell short, but because he isn’t trying to hustle. Another sheet tracks stories and where they’ve been reused. Another tracks what he finishes and what he rewards himself with. In practice, it helped. He could write more last year.
Thinking on Paper
Tracking doesn’t stop with spreadsheets. He keeps journals and diaries alongside them. Some notebooks are for thinking and planning. Others are more specific, like a separate journal where he tracks fountain pens and inks as the collection grows. He doesn’t like annotating books while reading, so quotes and observations from what he reads end up in yet another journal.
Thinking begins on paper, even when the work will eventually be digital. For scripts, he writes extensively by hand before typing anything, often producing a long zeroth draft. These pages are messy, hard to read, and written quickly. Fountain pens and inks get used here, not just collected. He also thinks visually, sketching flowchart and adding to them as possibilities emerge.
For every project, work starts off the screen. Earlier, he used loose sheets. Then he shifted to bound notebooks after hearing about a practice from N. N. Pillai in a Siddique-Lal interview: keep everything in one book. The point wasn’t to write the script there, but to see how ideas evolve. A bound notebook makes that visible. Each project now gets its own book. Ideas, scenes, fragments, directions, discarded paths. Not a plan or a draft, but a record of thinking as it happens.
How the Writing Travels
Digital writing begins in Apple Notes. It’s where drafts start and ideas collect. He types directly and rereads as he goes, noticing small mistakes that sometimes lead to new directions. There are separate notes for scenes, partial dialogues, potential titles, character names, imaginary place names, and lines that don’t yet belong anywhere.
Over the years, he has moved between Evernote, Notion, Obsidian, and Google Keep. The movement is usually driven by friction rather than preference. Obsidian still influences how he structures his notes through internal linking, even after moving away from it. He follows the PARA method for digital files. Every project gets its own folder, growing alongside its analog notebook until they coexist.
The workflow isn’t complex, but there’s thought behind it. He thinks about the outcome and keeps the work where it belongs. If something becomes a story, it moves from Apple Notes straight to the blog. If it becomes a screenplay, it stays in Notes longer. When collaboration is needed, it moves to Google Docs. Once the structure is clearer, it shifts to Scrite, a screenwriting software built for Indian screenwriters that doesn’t force them to change how they work. For the novel-in-progress, he uses Scrivener.
Letting Others In
Collaboration works best through bouncing ideas back and forth. He avoids starting points that assume a finished script waiting to be handed over. “I don’t have any ready-to-shoot bound scripts. Those kinds of inquiries usually end in the first conversation,” he says. What matters is whether there is space to think together. “Collaboration is easy for me. I don’t mind changing or improving things.” The work doesn’t feel precious. It stays open to revision.
AI has entered his process, though not as a replacement for thinking. He uses it for basic research, locations, references, and sometimes validation. “It’s good to agree,” he says, after a pause. There is also discomfort. Once, when he shared a plot, it asked whether it was meant as a short story or a series. The question felt too informed. He doesn’t see it replacing what matters most, especially in comedy, where timing and human judgement still make the difference.
His first book says he wants to write more books than movies. Screenwriting, for him, is still a bonus. The spreadsheets, the journals, the notebooks—none of it exists to make him a productivity machine. It’s there because he enjoys the act of recording, the quiet satisfaction of looking back and seeing where time went. Nothing is fixed, and that’s intentional. He works at his own rhythm, following what interests him, without pressure to be more productive or to arrive at some final form. The work stays in motion because there’s room to breathe.
Ways of Working is about how people do what they do. Each issue grows out of a conversation with one person, around their work, habits, tools, choices, and what they care about. If you have feedback, suggestions, or ideas for who I should speak with in a future issue, I’d love to hear from you.
very inspirational. As somebody who moved away from Apple notes, and sticking to Obsidian, and also as someone who collects fountain pens and inks, I felt supremely happy to sense a similar habits person is entertaining us in a very elegant way. I would love to see such a dissection of the tools, rituals and habits of Berly Thomas as well. Hope I will come across it someday.
Best one yet!!