Writing Netted – What I’d Planned and How It Worked Out by S.J. Higbee
I want to thank Sarah for inviting me to write a guest blog about my writing process. [My pleasure! Ed.] I decided rather than make it general, I’d discuss what happened during the writing of Netted, my post-apocalyptic novel set in Maine some three hundred years in the future.
For starters, Netted is not typical of my work – I generally write space opera where Earth is a long, difficult journey away and my main characters know it as a place shrouded in myth and misinformation. But I wanted to explore unintended consequences in a setting where the stakes were high but not foot-to-the-floor desperate – not at first anyway. So I decided to use a post-apocalyptic timeframe where people were struggling to put things together, rather than pulling them apart, which is always far harder to do. After years of mayhem when cannibal gangs roamed unchallenged, people are now prepared to tolerate having neural nets fitted so any lawless thoughts can be monitored and dealt with. In return for giving up their privacy and willingly offering their labour where necessary, citizens of the Community are offered protection by a standing militia, access to medical treatment, education for their children, housing and food. They are offered a future in a world where people only take what they need and anything extra goes into a communal pot to offer to those who have less. Consumerism is a dirty word, as everyone knows where that led to…
In this world, the Curlew family – Boyce, Kristen and their small son, Hardy, have survived for nearly four years out in the Blacklands, after Boyce and a pregnant Kris crash-landed their family flyer miles from Sebago, the main Community settlement in the area. They were headed for a small wilderness cabin owned by Boyce’s parents and managed to complete the journey on foot, and that’s where they’ve been living ever since, busy surviving with their three-year-old son.
I tell the story from the viewpoint of three characters. Kris Curlew, young wife and mother, who has thrived away from the confines of Sebago Hold; her mother Ginnifer Fenstrom, who bitterly regrets the final quarrel that drove her daughter to leave Sebago Hold, and takes far too many pills to dull the mental pain she endures; and Raif Curlew, father of Boyce and a rather colourful character whose trading links with the opposing regime in the area, means he is treated with suspicion by the current leadership running Sebago Hold.
I use these three characters to chart the unfolding drama that follows the discovery of the Curlew family, living safe and well in the wilderness. For their dramatic disappearance four years earlier was used by the Community leaders as an excuse to tighten security still further, so their sudden appearance is extremely inconvenient for certain powerful ambitious people.
I am a fan of unintended consequences. I studied History as my specialist subject in my teaching degree and so much of it occurs as a side-effect by accident, when those in power were aiming for something else to happen. Apart from unintended consequences, the other main theme in this book is Family. I’m always intrigued in seeing how families prevail, given it’s the most persistent human structure throughout History. How do both sets of parents cope after the loss of their children? What are their reactions on the news that their child is not only alive and well – but they now have a small grandson? Does it draw each couple closer, or drive them apart? How do other family members cope? And whatever their responses – they cannot fake how they feel, for Boyce, and particularly Kris will be able to sense their true emotions…
I really enjoyed writing this book, because while I knew exactly how it would start and the overall main plot points, I decided not to pre-plan those crucial family reactions as I knew they would unfold when I wrote the characters. While I don’t intend to write another book in this manner in the foreseeable future, it worked surprisingly well and as a result, Netted didn’t take all that long to write. I’d had another viewpoint character – Boyce. But my awesome editor, Jo Hall, felt that too much of the story was repeated and when I cut out the sections in Boyce’s viewpoint, the pacing and tension immediately improved.
Did it end up as I’d planned? No, it didn’t. Once Armstrong, the powerful Community fixer, crashed into the story and encountered Kris and Ginnifer, the story dynamic shifted into a different gear. I had intended for a tense, claustrophobic gradual unmasking of the veniality of the leadership in Sebago as the long-suffering Community citizens finally rebel. That isn’t what happened. I’m aware the cover looks quite dark and while it certainly isn’t particularly cosy – neither is it overly bleak and there are also shafts of humour throughout. In my experience, laughter and desperation go together more often people think…
I have plans to write a sequel, Netless, set in the middle of the opposing regime, which completely rejects the idea of having a neural net fitted. But right now I have at least four other books to write first. However, I definitely want to return to this world. I’d like to know what happens to my three main characters and I’d be genuinely sad if I knew for sure that I’d never again roam through this post-apocalyptic corner of Maine.
NETTED AUTHOR BIO – S.J. HIGBEE
Born the same year as the Russians launched Sputnik, Sarah confidently expected that by the time she reached adulthood, the human race would have a pioneer colony on the Moon and be heading off towards Mars. So she was at a loss to know what to do once she realised the Final Frontier wasn’t an option and rather lost her head – Sarah tried a lot of jobs she didn’t like and married a totally unsuitable man.
Now she’s finally come to terms with the fact that she’ll never leave Earth, she has a lovely time writing science fiction and fantasy novels, having recently stepped down from teaching Creative Writing at Northbrook Metropolitan College in Worthing for the past ten years. Sarah lives in Littlehampton on the English south coast with a wonderful husband and a ridiculous number of books. She can be found online chatting about books at her book review blog https://sjhigbee.wordpress.com/ and you’re very welcome to pop onto her website www.sjhigbee.com and her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/sjhigbeeauthor/.
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