(Image Courtesy: Readomania)
Popular publishing house, Readomania, is hosting a Crime Writing Festival which will go on for the month of May. Throughout the month, every Tuesday and Thursday, Readomania’s thriller authors will feature in live Twitter discussions at 8 PM and answer your questions on everything ‘thrilling’.
The Readomania Crime Writing Festival will also hold a contest on the best ‘original short crime fiction’, the winner of which will receive an ebook publishing deal with their digital imprint, ReadoShots. There will also be book giveaways to the best question asked twice every week. Featured authors: Anurag Anand, Archana Sarat, Ayan Pal, Deepti Menon, Maitrayee Sanyal De, Manjiri Prabhu, Tanushree Podder, Sourabh Mukherjee, Sutapa Basu.
You can learn more about the festival here: Readomania Crime Writing Festival 2019
The third session of the #ReadomaniaCrimeWritingFestival on @TwitterBooks was by author Anurag Anand (@anuraganand1978) on May 9th. Anurag Anand is the bestselling author of two crime thriller novels The Assassination of Rajat Gandy (Readomania, 2018) and To Hell and Back (Readomania, 2018), besides being a writer of several other books in the historical fiction, romance and other genres.
(Image Courtesy: Readomania)
Anurag says that one of the biggest challenges about writing a political thriller in a country like India is that almost everyone has a point of view on politics here. Also, since his book, The Assassination of Rajat Gandy, is based on the 2019 general elections, it was another big risk given the politically charged atmosphere in the country right now.
“I could’ve either gone with a fictional or a realistic setting.” he says, “I opted for the latter.”
His experience of writing a political thriller has been exciting and the story flew on its own while he was writing. However, the challenge came after the manuscript was ready. Some of his beta readers told him that some points of the story might ruffle a few feathers in the political arena. Anurag opted to be as objective and sincere with his story, as possible. He didn’t want to look like he was sympathizing with either the left or the right. He says that balancing sensitivities is of utmost importance while writing crime thrillers. Since, crime writers deal with emotions that operate in extremes, it’s important to being honest with one’s writing and creating something that’s believable.
(Images Courtesy: Readomania)
With regards to putting together a manuscript, Anurag suggests:
- First creating a broad structure of the story.
- Working on the characterization and aiming to create crisply etched characters
- Putting these characters in the setting makes the story flow naturally.
When talking about the writing process, he says that every writer has their unique way of approaching writing. As far as he is concerned, his process begins with a core thought. As soon as that is ready, he goes around breaking it into a four or five segments that define the story flow.
According to Anurag, the two most important things that a crime writer should keep in mind are:
- The pacing of the story- Since crime fiction is expected to be fast paced, it is important to not let the readers get bogged down by too many descriptions or details.
- Spending time on research– Giving readers some information that they didn’t know helps in adding value to their reading experiences. For example, in The Assassination of Rajat Gandy, Anurag has given some interesting information on technology that made the narrative even more thrilling for the readers.
As regards to the growth of Indian crime fiction with respect to its Western counterparts, Anurag says that Indian crime fiction writing in English is still evolving while the current generations of readers have grown up on a steady diet of Western Crime fiction. However, he is hopeful that as more and more readers find relatable themes around this genre in the Indian market, Indian crime writing will soar higher in the future.
You can watch the full session on Twitter from the link below:
#LiveNow #Readomania #Crimewriting Festival 2019, Session 3 with Anurag Anand, author of The Assassination of Rajat Gandy and To Hell and Back.@anuraganand1978 https://t.co/e9gLArWwyr
— Readomania (@IamReadomania) May 9, 2019
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