On A Mission: LA-based Vaishnavi Padmanathan Wants To Write Stories That Make People Seen

Mumbai (Maharashtra) [India], March 17: LA-based writer, Vaishnavi Padmanathan revealed her first experience of writing a story. Vaishnavi shared one of her earliest memories of writing where she won a storytelling competition at the age of three, which planted the seed for her passion for writing. Her child-like passion for this skill continues to date with polished skills from her academic and professional endeavours. Vaishnavi pursued her Bachelor’s in Mass Media from Mumbai University before moving to New York to graduate from Tisch School of the Arts, New York University with a Master of Fine Arts in Dramatic Writing. She has worked in both the Indian film and American TV industries, which Vaishnavi discovered led to a lot of revelations about the kind of stories she wants to write, especially the truths of many women like her.

The source of Vaishnavi’s passion for writing comes from her personal truths that she has realized over time. Vaishnavi stated, “I think being vulnerable in my work is how I connect with the audience. All the writers I look up to including Zoya Akhtar, Reema Kagti, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, and Lulu Wang have time and again shown how speaking one’s truth can be so powerful and at the same time entertaining.”

Revealing the secret behind her creative process, Vaishnavi is a stickler for outlining her stories before she starts the actual writing on her computer. Appreciating the art of finetuning her stories, Vaishnavi acknowledged that the one thing that is absolutely necessary for her is to outline the story she is writing. Be it writing a TV episode or a feature, breaking scenes down with what the protagonist wants and what she want as a writer, and checking if both are aligning is a great starting point for Vaishnavi before she embarks on a journey with her character. Her previous work has been with being credited in ‘Oh! Baby,’ a Telugu film, and her work is featured in ‘Searching for the Good’, an audio play made during COVID lockdown times about COVID.