February 27, 2009
 

Watching The Beatles in “A Hard Day’s Night” last night, thinking about George Martin, their genius producer who ultimately put multi-track recording to the test. The rest is history, but multi-track recording, in its way, ends up being closer to the book because all of those endless layers end up in service to a linear creation. The song starts, the song plays, the song ends. Nonetheless we have the notion of layering, of things not always seen or heard below the surface to create the overall work, is a powerful idea. And you can of course have multi-track music in the Supernovel.

Film and video editing has the same kind of layering of moving image, voice, sound effects, soundtrack, setting, set design, costumes all mixed together to achieve a whole the editor and/or director intended. (Think Walter Murch in “The Conversation.”) The art is in the selection and juxtaposition of the detail, but again the endgame is a linear work of art.

So one comes, doesn’t one, to the notion of layering but not linear. If story, story, story is still the key then the story must be told in some way, shape, or waveform. The story—distinct from the telling of the story—has to exist in some way in linear form. It might be told inside out or bassackwards, but the story per se at some level has a beginning, a middle, and an end. In my BOOK OF O’KELLS, for example, there is a simple chronology, a family history over 100 years and three (maybe four) generations, starting with grandfather Jake O’Kell and ending with Rebecca O’Kell’s children. Simple really—and really no different than any other story.

To this I have added the multiple complications of multiple forms and (ultimately) multiple media.

Multiple forms first: this part’s not too complicated. If you told the story in novelistic terms—the same long family history told as a traditional novel—it would exist quite nicely as your typical novel that started in the beginning and ends in the present, more or less. There’s nothing complicated about that. But I’ve written THE BOOK OF O’KELLS in multiple forms: novel, novella, diary, mystery, play, screenplay, oral history. That complicates things for sure, but all of these forms exist on paper as print and print conventions apply. With all this work in hand, I could tell it in linear fashion or jump around both chronologically and from form to form, just like you could a novel. In fact, you could do all of the above: present the chronological work in order, present the individual works as standalone, or put together a jambalaya that mixes everything up (an intriguing possibility.)

You could also, and this is key, present all of these possibilities to the reader and let the reader decide on the critical path. In a non-linear work using multiple forms online, this is where you end up: a reader with a flashlight who keeps looking for the passageway.

So that’s multiple forms. What about multiple media?

Heck if I know because I haven’t done it yet. The best I can do is deconstruct.

Voice. As a radio talk show host for five years I have done more than my share of talking and I have learned to use my voice. So on the most basic level I can do books on tape by recording the story as written. Nothing very exciting about that but it provides a way into the work, especially for people who don’t like to read.

Sound. Sound effects and music have a place—particularly music, if you consider how a soundtrack can bring the disparate elements of a story together into coherent themes. I’m not a musician and never will be so this will require help.

Photography. Every picture tells a story. Photographs either taken by me or taken from the family archives can be unpacked as part of the larger Supernovel. I’m not a photographer but I’m willing to learn. Worst case I can glom on to the family scrapbook and bring it into the story.

Graphical Elements. Maps, charts, scribbles, and anything graphical in digital form that conveys information has a role in the Supernovel. As with photographs, there’s no reason why these can’t be created or merely appropriated.

Video. The Holy Grail. I just realized something that might be important: video’s the problem! Voice, sound, music, photography, graphical elements are all manageable, doable, but video is the thousand-pound gorilla in this conversation. The good news is video is now cheap enough to be within almost anybody’s reach. The bad news is video is immensely complicated. I bought a Sony Handycam some months back and it’s sitting next to me on this couch all but unused. If I were a videographer or a director I might think differently, but though I’ve written many many screenplays this is a medium that’s still foreign to me. One way to approach it might be to bite off what I can chew: small pieces of video. One way might be to videotape my “performance” of the pieces I’ve already written as I’m recording them. (At least it’s a way to get started.) As I list the disparate elements of the Supernovel I now know video is daunting because it requires new skills and probably endless collaboration. I think the thing to do with video is to focus on what I can do myself as I build my skill set. I can let the gorilla in the room without letting him/her sit on my head.

This is good news: this is great news, really, because absent video I am not daunted at all by the other pieces of the puzzle. This solves nothing, of course, but at least it allows me to embrace the possible and keep the impossible at arm’s length.