STORIZENSPECIAL
35 | STORIZEN MAGAZINE JULY 2019The only rule of writing crime
fiction is that it should be
believable. Not real, but
realistic. Of course, there will
be times/situations when you
will need to deviate from the
facts and that’s okay, so long
as you ensure that it doesn’t
sound (too) implausible. While
we all know crimes don’t occur
the way we watch them in
films or how they’re narrated
in books, it is the author’s job
to assess how much reality to
suspend so that the story still
sounds credible—for that to
transpire, one of the ways is to
ensure that the readers are
adequately immersed in the
narrative, and the dialogues
sound convincing.Another known practice to
make the story sound
believable is to set it in a
location that the readers can
visualize easily. Setting a
story in larger cities like
Mumbai or Delhi or Chennai is
a no brainer for me: Mumbai is
one of the cities in India thatmost people have either
visited or seen in numerous
Bollywood films. The local
areas, landmarks and
surroundings described in
several of my books have
been seen or heard of by
most; the same logic applies
to Delhi or Chennai or any of
the larger cities. Moreover,
large metropolises have a lot
of diversity in terms of people,
food, language, architecture,
etc. to work with. That is not to
say you cannot write a story
based in Jhumri Telaiya, but
your narrative will have to
work a lot harder.Crime fiction is the easiest to
read, but it is fairly complex to
plot and pen. Most crime
stories provide a “hook” in the
beginning (murder, heist,
caper, con, fraud, malpractice,
etc.) that stimulates the
readers’ curiosity, grabs their
attention and encourages
them to read through to the
conclusion.One of the most
crucial considerations here