Victims For Sale — The Fight of a Rookie BBC Journalist
When I was known as one of India’s youngest journalists on the features beat, I began seeking to address more critical social and economic issues. In early 2006, I stumbled upon an incident of concern involving a differently abled twenty-two-year-old woman. I delved into an investigation of my own for a newspaper story at the time. That experience would catalyze the birth of Victims for Sale, published nearly twelve years later. The incident I speak of is one of many that point to an excessive, and often detrimental, emphasis on family honour as the nucleus of a moral compass that rests solely on women, regardless of their wellbeing.
Writing Victims for Sale meant striking a balance between my focus on detail and accuracy as a journalist and my imagery and creativity as a fiction writer. Over the course of two post-graduate degrees, multiple full-time consulting, newsroom jobs and at least seven relocations, sheer perseverance and continued interest in the story drove me to complete Victims for Sale. Over the years, the novel followed me to London, the West Midlands, Edinburgh, Mumbai, Chennai, San Diego, New York, New Delhi and Washington, D.C., where I completed writing it. I was over the moon when HarperCollins acquired it . What started out as a literary project on the heels of my idealism as a teenaged journalist, evolved through the years to become the cold-blooded psychological and suspense thriller that it is now.
I have identified four stages that Victims for Sale went through before it achieved fruition.
Step 1: Letting The Story Lead
I knew that London would be the right setting for this story. I had acquired in-depth insights into the UK’s public service broadcasting model as a media student at the London School of Economics. I was also able to apply my classroom insights to real-world happenings that the BBC was effectively addressing through programmes like Panorama, Newsnight and Children in Need. These experiences grounded the novel revolving around a relatively under-reported social issue of rising importance — with a rookie Indian-origin BBC journalist as the protagonist. This stage of writing was both experimental and enjoyable because I went along with wherever my characters led me and let them grow.
Step 2: Identifying Plot Points
Now, I had an amorphous story in place with strong characters that I had grown to love and troubled ones that I once hated but later learned to empathize with. It was time to zero in on a gripping plot. I drew upon my experiences as a media professional in London to identify key plot points and lend more credence to my lead characters. It was also helpful to toy with different plots and side-plots aimed at addressing the deeper social and psychological issues that I hoped to bring out.
Step 3: On the field
I realized that elaborate research was in order if I was to do this story justice. Around this time, I was in San Diego on a sabbatical from full-time work, getting ready for graduate school at Columbia University. Before I moved to New York, I flew from Los Angeles to London, where I had arranged surveys of potential crime scenes and scheduled roughly twenty interviews over a six-week time frame.
Picking brains
The subjects I interviewed included barristers, people who had been officers at Scotland Yard, BBC producers, doctors, a Victim Support Office representative and a human rights activist.
I remember speaking with ex-Metropolitan Police Service officer, now television script consultant Jackie Malton, best known for inspiring the character DCI Jane Tennison in Lynda La Plante’s Prime Suspect drama series. Over lunch in Guildford, Jackie sketched out many realistic possibilities for my plot in the form of flowcharts. Each flowchart identified what course the story could take if I picked the scenario in question.
Ben Silverstone, a barrister at the coveted Doughty Street Chambers, explained to me step by step all the stages required to get search and arrest warrants in the context of various possibilities as potential scenes in my book.
I even sat in on a murder trial in the Old Bailey, or the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales, after the court granted me approval on extremely short notice.
Location surveys
I worked out the landscapes for various critical scenes in the book. I barreled into a popular bridge to ensure that a certain median existed, before deciding to select that spot as a point of dramatic tension in the story. I headed to northwest London’s Rayner’s Lane district, a labyrinth of sorts, and my lead character Sandy’s place of residence. Though I had lived in Rayner’s Lane at one point, I needed to refresh my memory. I combed the entire expanse of the area on foot, even going so far as ensuring that prickly bushes do exist across a TESCO outlet opposite the Rayner’s Lane station. This area survey came in handy for a chase scene, among other things. I also strolled down gardens, promenades, waterways and fairs, for good measure, reliving my years in London and picking spots for other scenes in the book.
Step 4: Winning Hearts
This was, by far, the toughest stage to conquer. I removed side plots and secondary characters that were no longer integral to the main story. It helped that I was selected to attend two prestigious publishers’ conferences in New York, where I received invaluable feedback from agents and publishers who read parts of the manuscript. I put my insights from these experiences to work before I won the hearts of one of the world’s best literary agencies, Red Ink, and, eventually, HarperCollins Publishers India.
What’s Next?
Having experienced the pain of chopping off more than 120,000 words from Victims for Sale, I would approach other stories differently. On the pipeline are three more fiction titles, one of which will be on the floor soon.
About Nish:
Nish Amarnath is a journalist and writer based in New York City. She debuted with a non-fiction business biography in 2005, receiving critical acclaim as the youngest author of her times in the genre. Her articles have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Street, India Today and The Hindu, among others. She graduated in Economics with a Distinction and holds post-graduate degrees in media communications and journalism from the London School of Economics and Columbia University, where she was a reporting fellow. You can learn more about her at www.nishamarnath.com
Victims for Sale was published in January 2018 by HarperCollins India.
Connect with Nish
Twitter: @nishamarnath
