The only thing missing from this picture is one of our cats, sitting on the keyboard.
A Good Start…
It started off so well. When the half-term holiday arrived, I downed teaching tools and started writing the third novel in my Angel of the South thriller series. In a week, I wrote 14,000 words. I was well on my way. (You can read about how pleased I felt with myself here.)
But over the following two weeks, I realised something was wrong. My lack of planning had cost me. The opening didn’t fit the Angel of the South gritty urban vibe, and I knew what, or rather who, it was: the antagonist.
Real Life Got In The Way
To be fair, it wasn’t entirely my fault. Before that February half-term, I’d intended to plan out the novel from start to finish. For different stories, I take different approaches to planning. I usually have a good idea of the end destination, but in terms of planning detail, I usually have three different go-tos.
- plan a few chapters ahead every few chapters
- carefully plan through every chapter and relationship strand
- make some brief bullet point notes just before I start the next chapter.
Unfortunately, The Killing Kind needed careful, thorough planning. There are several returning characters, plot points and threads left over from Books 1 and 2. Even the equipment used needs to be carefully thought out because it was itemised in Book 2.
Knowing that, I’d set aside my January writing times (usually an hour each evening after work, and two hours each on Saturday and Sunday) for planning.
But real life got in the way. Work was busy, and tiring, leaving me with little creative juice in the battery, and all sorts of other stuff was happening. Planning the novel kept getting pushed back.
One Day I Blinked
Then one day I blinked and it was half-term. With a week off work, I knew I should delay starting the novel to hone in on the planning. But I decided to just make a start. And the writing flowed, as it does given time and headspace.
Billie, my main character, was in full, abrasive flow. I was pleased with a new character I’d introduced, and the supporting cast were slotting into position nicely. There are two antagonists, and I was happy with the first, a recurring character from Book 2, an ex- Special Forces soldier with a grudge against Billie. At that stage, she was still slightly underwritten, but I knew she would come into her own.
Globetrotting Adventures
But the second antagonist, who appeared in several early chapters, did not fit the series brand at all. And because of him, some of the Book 3 locations were more like Ian Fleming’s James Bond than my Angel of the South. James Bond went on globetrotting adventures, but Billie definitely does not. As she said in Book 2:
“The Angel of the South. As in South London.”
So I went back to the drawing board, rewriting about 10,000 of that initial 14,000 word half-term flurry.
Diamond Beach in Iceland
After that, we had a busy Easter holiday travelling around Iceland, with not a word of writing being written. Although, to be fair, I don’t regret that at all. Iceland is amazing!
Hitting My Stride
I’m almost 50,000 words into the novel, and feel like I’ve hit my stride. The characters are all aligned perfectly for the second part, and there’s already been two important set pieces. The Setting feels authentic to the series and all the characters feel like they belong. And most importantly, I’m enjoying writing it. But I still wish I’d planned it out before starting to write.
FURTHER READING
Buy No Way To Live (Angel of the South Book 1)
Blog Post: How my thriller’s antagonist became the star of the show
Blog Post: How my Thriller Series was born
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