I’ve been working on KEMBERTON this morning – my new and original serialised novel that’s exclusively available to mailing list subscribers (click here for more information). The chapter I wrote earlier today is pivotal and sets the direction for the remainder of the book. I thought this would be an opportune moment to look back at how my experiment has gone so far.
It occurred to me this week that the book should have a cover, so I spent a little time tinkering around and mocking one up. I’m no designer (as I’m sure you can tell!), so if anyone wants to have a go at improving my attempt – surely not difficult – then please feel free.
Here’s a reminder of the synopsis of the book, then some thoughts on the writing process so far.
Kemberton is a lovely lad, but he’s misunderstood. He’s nine years old, and those nine years haven’t been easy. He’s had to deal with more than his fair share of grief, and it has taken its toll. Life moves on, but Kemberton’s struggling to keep up. The gulf between him and everyone else is widening. He’s in danger of falling through the gap.
Aiden – Kemberton’s step-dad – is playing with fire. He’s involved in things he really has no business messing with. It’ll all probably work out fine, but if things do go wrong, they’re going to really go wrong. Aiden can’t afford for there to be any complications, and Kemberton’s unpredictability is proving to be a concern.
The connections in this family are being stretched to breaking point, and it’s only a matter of time before someone does something really stupid. Who will it be? What will be the cost? And how far will they have to go to put things right again?
I’m a compulsive plotter – I like to have a fairly robust outline before I start writing a novel, despite finding time and time again that much of my planning gets discarded as I write. It’s weird. It always seems to happen about a third of the way in when I realise I’ve stopped following the plan so closely and am now virtually winging it. The same thing has happened with KEMBERTON, and this time it’s quite frightening because I’m writing without a safety net.
When I write, I tend to have three documents open – the manuscript itself, a dramatis personae (ie a cast list with some basic character details for easy reference), and a third document which is usually titled something like “things that need to be sorted out in the next draft”. Pretty self-explanatory, I think. With this novel, though, the fact I’m publishing it in chunks means I can’t generally go back and revise the chapters I’ve already posted. This hasn’t caused me much of a problem so far, but I’m not completely out of the woods. I’m sufficiently pleased with KEMBERTON to be planning a rewrite and a ‘proper’ publication in due course. With previous books, some of the best plot decisions have come between drafts, so I’m interested to see how things change next time around.
I find that characters in particular are typically fleshed out between drafts. It sounds pretentious, but I only get to know people once I’ve been writing about them for a while, and the knowledge about the characters I pick up along the way allows me to flesh them out and foreshadow some of the actions they take further down the line. Obviously I’ve not had the benefit this time around, but I think I know Aiden, Sarah, Kemberton and most of the others well enough to have a good sense of what they would and wouldn’t do.
I hope you’ve been enjoying the story. Feedback from folks has been positive so far. As I’ve posted chapters, though, I’ve begun to think about how I’d do things differently if I repeat the experiment (and I do have another story I’d like to try and tell this way). Apart from the basic schoolboy error of not having a cover and, therefore, not giving the novel much of an identity, I’m also conscious that I’ve given little thought to the three chapter chunks I’ve been posting. I made an early decision not to aim for frequent cliffhangers (it’s a horror novel, not EASTENDERS), but the traumatic chapters I’ve recently been writing have made me reconsider. As a result, at the beginning of May you’ll get four chapters, not three, and the point at which I’ve chosen to leave the book until June will definitely have you cursing me!
In summary: I’ve had a great time writing KEMBERTON and sharing it as I go. I’m about halfway, so the poor lad’s story should be done and dusted before the end of the year. I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on this approach and the story so far.
