Writing

[R.Latha]

q, Your eye for detail, the way you flesh out every part of the canvas that you paint using words, how much research does it take?
kunal basu, For me it is a combination of imagination and research. Pure research is unable to bring to light the details that a reader wants to see. Most historical research is very dry. It will tell you that the Summer Palace has so many rooms, so much area, so on and so forth. That information doesn’t make the reader visualise the Summer Palace. So obviously, in this case there was travel involved. There’s also a deep imagination, I try to imagine myself as a character in a scene that brings in the detail. Obviously I can’t put in details that are historically inaccurate so there needs to be self-censoring in that regard, but it is a combination of both.

Another important thing about research is that foreground research is important. It has to do with people who have actually seen those things, like travel diaries, people in the 19th Century who have travelled to China, experienced those scenes, memoirs, personal observations and anecdotes that are useful to the author in trying to create those details.

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