For a while now, Bollywood has been cashing in on best-selling books by adapting them into mainstream cinema — 3 Idiots, 2 States and Half Girlfriend being popular examples of films made on titles by Chetan Bhagat. Amish Tripathi’s Shiva trilogy is also set to be turned into a movie. While this seems like a way for authors to widen their commercial reach, Novoneel Chakraborty has his reservations.
“I’m not against a filmmaker willing to adapt my book, I am against the attitude of some people in the Hindi film industry. Firstly, 90% of them don’t read [the book]. Secondly, they only see how many copies are sold... If you want to make a story [on my book], make it for the content,” says Novoneel, who recently released his book, Forever Is A Lie.
The author, whose romantic thriller, The Stranger Series, took him to another tangent of popularity among book lovers, has been writing for almost a decade. His other works include That Kiss In The Rain, EX ...a twisted love story, and Black Suits You.
The 30-year-old adds that writing a thriller can get taxing. “This is my bread and butter, which means that in India, where reading is a luxury, I need to churn out more books. That puts a little pressure on my creativity. It’s more so with thrillers unlike romance for which you still have personal or a friend’s experience to fall back on,” he says.
While the genre of love stories is widely read in India, romantic thriller has yet to branch out in a similar manner. Did Novoneel never think of starting out with a less complex genre? “An author doesn’t choose the story, the story chooses him. I realised my voice is in romantic thrillers,” he says.
{{/usCountry}}While the genre of love stories is widely read in India, romantic thriller has yet to branch out in a similar manner. Did Novoneel never think of starting out with a less complex genre? “An author doesn’t choose the story, the story chooses him. I realised my voice is in romantic thrillers,” he says.
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