Creating audience participation in the writing process

There's nothing better than happening upon a novel that so thoroughly absorbs you that you feel part and parcel of the world that the writer has created. Not only do you empthasise with the characters he has created but your senses work overtime as you can almost see, smell, touch, hear and even taste the environment which they inhabit.

How more involving would it be if you, as the putative reader, could have input into the lives of those characters at an earlier stage in their development; a chance to work with the writer to shape the way they act and feel. Of course, writing will always be a largely solitary process and the plot and characterisation could not become the work of a committee, but if a writer is able to involve his readers at an earlier stage then the ability to create a community for his work could become a real possibility as well as delivering a finished piece that already tapped into the interests of a reading group.

I have just pressed the button on a crowd funding project for the publication of my new novel, Micah Seven Five. The process intrigues me; not just for the obvious reason of helping to support the costs of bringing the novel to publication and, therefore, a wider audience but because, hopefully, it will make anyone who becomes involved feel they have a sense of stake in its success. But there's more to it than that. My hope is that anyone interested enough to pledge to this project could form part of a community to feed into and feedback on future projects. I don't anticipate a stage where we have "writing on demand" - where the community suggests plot ideas and I merely get on with them because as a writer there needs to be an emotional attachment to the subject if the end piece is going to be authentic. But there has to be a way of utilising this digital world to bring writer and reader closer together. 

If you would like to take a look at the crowd funding page for my new novel, click here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2051400933/micah-seven-five-a-new-novel