Kylie asked Indu Sundaresan:

How much research is involved in your writing process? Where do you suggest people interested in historical fiction begin?

Indu Sundaresan I read a lot, all around the topic I'm interested in. For my latest novel, THE MOUNTAIN OF LIGHT, which is about the Kohinoor diamond and how it was taken from India to the Queen of England, I began reading about the diamond's history from the very beginning.

But, that goes back some four thousand years (!) and then the diamond resurfaces in the hands of an Indian king about every century from the 12th Century onwards. The more I read, the more I realized that I had to narrow the timeline, and so I ended up wrapping it over a 70 odd year time period for the novel and then consequently, focused on just a few characters and a specific time in diamond's history.

But, the spark was there--the Kohinoor diamond. If you're interested in writing historical fiction, then you must find that spark. Is it a moment in time? An incident? It could be something as simple as say, a flood, a natural disaster, a murder, a love letter that you discovered--each thing is a spark. Then, you set about finding out who these people were. Then, you read about their time, what they ate, what they wore, what happened in the world when they lived. Then, you imagine who these people were--who did they like/love/hate/loathe...everything goes into the making of the story. You may not put down everything on paper (or, in the finished novel) but you KNOW, it's there in your head. That's enough.

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