Aspiring writers are being offered vital clues on writing from Agatha Christie, with a little help from artificial intelligence (AI).
The BBC and the late best-selling author’s estate have teamed up to create Agatha Christie Writing, an online course using her own words delivered by the woman herself.
Brought to life by actress Vivien Keen and visual effect artists, the course will use AI-enhanced technology, images and restored audio recordings to recreate Christie’s words and teachings to make it feel as if she is delivering them directly.
“As a lifelong fan of Agatha Christie, bringing this course to life has been a dream come true, and I am immensely proud of it,” said Michael Levine, chief executive of BBC Maestro, which runs online courses and developed Agatha Christie Writing with BBC Studios, the writer’s estate and a team of experts.
He said the course invites all Christie fans to “learn through her own words, exactly how she does it; her background, her inspirations, her craft and the lessons she learned along the way”.
The course has been created by a team of experts from Christie’s who have reconstructed her philosophy on writing, drawing her insights on story structure, cast creation, plot twists, red herrings and the art of suspense from her work and archival interviews.
The writer’s great-grandson James Prichard, the chairman and chief executive of Agatha Christie Limited, said: “The team of academics and researchers that BBC Maestro has assembled have extracted from a number of her writings an extraordinary array of her views and opinions on how to write.”
Christie’s books have sold more than 200 billion copies and include 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections. Her works also include as The Mousetrap, the world’s longest-running stage play which has run in London’s West End since 1952 with its only break coming during the Covid pandemic.
She died in 1976 aged 85 but her crime fiction continues to be produced for television and movies.
