March 4, 2009
So how to tell the story? How to get started with the so-called Supernovel? In a class at Breadloaf I once heard John Irving say the more you knew about the story before you started the better off you would be. I thought he was wrong about that when it came to the novel but he’s probably right about the Supernovel, which presumes a far greater level of complexity than the novel because of multiple media and multiple forms.
Still, if it’s all about story, I am ironically going to unveil THE BOOK OF O’KELLS by holding back on story—by withholding it withal. When I first started I thought I would simply post everything I had online, all at once, with a guide that got you into the story by character or media or timeline. Now I actually think there has to be a story about the story, story, story.
This is where the aforementioned shards come in. Like pieces of broken glass, the shards show a sliver of story in isolation from the rest (at least at first). You see the shard and wonder: “What’s this about?” You see another. “I don’t get it.” And another. Just enough to pique your interest. The story has to unfold, to be revealed, to be uncovered: the complexity has to build up over space, time, and space-time, at least in THE BOOK OF O’KELLS.
Why? Beats me. Maybe because I have not been able to figure out a better way to do it. I’m comfortable with the mystery, detective, whodunit genre and I think that particular wrapper for the Supernovel takes a very complicated idea and makes it dirt-simple. More importantly, perhaps, it also gives the reader a continuous reason to come back again and again to find out what happens next. Even in the Supernovel, you want the reader to turn the page.
The irony: in a Supernovel that is anything but linear, the reader (and writer) still needs a linear method to tell the story. At least I do this time.
But there’s more to it. Unlike the plain old novel, the Supernovel does not have to presented in its entirety all at once as a complete work of art, the way I originally envisioned it. Instead the SN can be dribbled out, dribs at of time, but that means the originator of the work is presenting something that’s still unfinished. That’s right: the SN is inherently an unfinished symphony. I suppose every last bit of it could be plotted out and pre-written, like a musical score, but I’m not sure that’s necessary or desirable. I’m also not sure that one need write the backstory before you publish online, as I’ve done. I did it that way because (a) there was no place to publish it at first; and (b) I had no idea what to do next. But you could go just start from scratch and see where it goes, the way you would with writing a novel. One difference: your unfinished symphony might be visible to the public.
Even more so than the novel there is no right way to write-create-construct a Supernovel—and there never will be. This is just one way, a way that comes with a lot of bumbling and stumbling around.