(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 sixth session of the #ReadomaniaCrimeWritingFestival on @TwitterBooks was by author Ayan Pal (@ImAyanPal) on May 21st. Ayan Pal is the bestselling author of the psychological thriller, Confessions On An Island, besides being featured in several anthologies like Urban Nomads, Crossed & Knotted: India’s First Composite Novel, 21 Tales to Tell and so on.
(Image Source: Author’s Twitter Page)
In his Twitter chat, Ayan mainly talks about the importance of research in the creation of authentic work, be it a novel or a blog post or even a speech. He talks about authors such as Dan Brown, Amish Tripathi, and Neil Gaiman whose works shine because of the extensive amount of research that has gone into those. He also talks about his own psychological thriller novel, Confessions On An Island and the amount of research he’s put to make the story a believable one. He reads excerpts from his book to show how painstakingly accurate his research has been.
(Image Source: Amazon India)
Ayan also touches upon the pitfalls of poor research. He gives the example of Apu from The Simpsons and how he depicts a caricature of an Indian character thereby raising criticisms about the inappropriateness of hackneyed stereotypes. He also mentions Enid Blyton’s books where children feed their dogs things like ice-creams and chocolates. These food items aren’t good for dogs in reality and that’s why it is important to go into the depths of the source of one’s information before believing in it.
He mentions the importance of checking the authenticity of sources before sharing articles on social media. He says that Wikipedia or someone’s experiences aren’t really authentic sources and one needs to differentiate between opinions and facts before writing or speaking about a certain topic.
According to Ayan, the success of a thriller primarily depends on the amount of research that has gone into it. For creating the perfect murder, the perfect weapon, the perfect, motive, and the perfect circumstances are essential aspects. Basing one’s crime fiction novel upon real incidents is also a good idea as one can find out from news and other sources as to what exactly happened and how the murderer got away with the crime. “Sometimes facts inspire fiction and sometimes fiction inspires facts,” he says.
Ayan enjoys reading well researched psychological thrillers such as the ones that Agatha Christie used to write.
Finally, he adds a cautionary note that no matter how thorough the research, it is important to present it in smaller, judicious doses to the reader so as not to overwhelm or bore them.
You can watch the full session on Twitter from the link below:
Do check out this EXCLUSIVE video of mine where I went LIVE and talked about how research can help elevate ANY kind of writing and make it more thrilling. Do view and post comments about it if you wish me to further explain about anything. Do feel free to share it it further! https://t.co/NOD2NrSfLY
— Ayan Pal (@ImAyanPal) May 21, 2019
V i a k a t 