Soch – Soch ka Sura (Draft)
Story 1 — Pride
Form: Short story / narrative prose
Tone: Quiet, authoritative, subtle social commentary
Setting: Socially influential position, silent but effective
Key Beats:
1. Character holds position of respect and trust
2. Pride manifests through small, invisible influence
3. Subtle manipulations go unnoticed
4. Interactions reinforce ego
5. End leaves a slight ripple in social perception
Keep prose observational, understated. Use pauses and small details to show silent authority.
Story 2 — Greed
Form: Short story / narrative prose
Tone: Anxious, rationalizing, socially relevant
Setting: Local resource management; peer observation
Key Beats:
1. Character handles resources and distribution
2. Small pressures arise, greed begins quietly
3. Peer notices, questioning but non-accusatory
4. Rationalizes decisions as moral duty
5. Subtle ripple in community as consequences emerge
Greed affects others, but quietly. Avoid caricature — the danger is normalization.
Story 3 — Lust
Form: Short story / narrative + bodily observation
Tone: Balanced — comic + unsettling
Setting: Backstreet / shared lodging / crowded corridors
Key Beats:
1. Proximity of bodies in confined, ordinary spaces
2. Physical awareness triggers desire
3. Social interruptions compress and intensify tension
4. Character tries to behave, fails subtly
5. Minimal crossing (look, touch, door left ajar)
6. Hook ending — anticipation loops, nothing resolves
Avoid overt sexuality. Make body, setting, and sensory perception the driver.
Story 4 — Envy
Form: Storyteller telling a fable
Tone: Playful surface → quietly poisonous underneath
Setting: Courtyard or gathering; socially accepted space
Key Beats:
1. Storyteller narrates moral fable
2. Audience and reader enjoy story superficially
3. Observational details hint at underlying resentment
4. Moral reasoning applied too precisely, cracks appear
5. Fable fails subtly; social ripple hints at quiet poison
Envy studies rather than attacks. Storyteller acts as vehicle to show subtle manipulation.
Story 5 — Gluttony
Form: Short story / descriptive prose
Tone: Warm → slightly wrong → excessive
Setting: Religious fair / festival with abundant food
Key Beats:
1. Arrival at fair; sensory pleasure and comfort
2. Initial indulgence is slow, pleasurable
3. Continued consumption without hunger or need
4. Interactions and environment fade into background
5. Accelerating excess; discomfort masked as satisfaction
6. Ending subtle — heavy, full, morally quiet wrongness
Make sensory immersion central. Slow slide from comfort → excess → quiet unease.
Story 6 — Wrath
Form: Short story + parable
Tone: Calm → righteous → obsessive
Setting: Socially conscious, verbal environment
Key Beats:
1. Grievance arises; protagonist positions morally
2. Storyteller/parable illustrates principle
3. Moral reasoning builds; obsession forms
4. Parable applied too literally, others constrained
5. Wrath grows, justified, consuming attention
6. Parable fails; protagonist isolated, still convinced
Build slowly. Make moral reasoning the weapon.
Story 7 — Sloth
Form: Short story / narrative pause
Tone: Quiet, frustrating, procrastination / avoidance
Setting: Threshold space — desk, task, doorway
Key Beats:
1. Clear intention to act
2. First delay: justified, reasonable
3. Secondary distractions occupy attention
4. Self-soothing rationalization of delay
5. Cue for action appears — nothing happens
6. Cliffhanger: task remains undone, suspended
Sloth is dangerous because it does nothing. Prepare reader for meta-fiction and 8th story.
Story 8 — Vainglory
Form: Meta-fiction / omniscient reflection
Tone: Ridicule → self-display → revelation
Setting: The character reads the book, observes it, judges it
Key Beats:
1. Character finishes 7 stories; ridicules them silently
2. Positions self as superior, imagining audience
3. Notices 7th story ends unresolved; imagines how he could “improve”
4. Rereads Sloth’s cliffhanger; anticipation builds
5. Internal realization: act of judging/completing = eighth sin
6. Ending: The book collapses inward; “I can’t explain it. Just read it.”
7. Silent implication: the story is for that one reader
Do not explain — the revelation must strike. The collapse inward is the climax.