Monthly Archives: September 2014

Novel to song

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As we’ve mentioned, there’s interplay between media and so we have novels that have been given many treatments. Just one popular method is a film adapted from the novel which then spins off into a graphic novel and inspires songs that appear on some dustbowl compilation.

Each format, though, has its own features that will ipso facto be missing from other work transferred to other entertainment forms and audience.

The world of novels, Ghost of Tom Joad notwithstanding, is not the main territory of song. Both capture snatches of reality and highlight the cosmic absurd. They build impressions the more we read/listen. Yet even the rambling song won’t cover all the elements of a dense work of fiction. Neither will the novel encapsulate so much within such a condensed form or utilise aids to convey its impressions.

The novel on Kindle is no closer to song just because it there’s a shared screen. To move between The Turtles and Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever? by Dave Eggers is a shift and not just because of subject matter or tone.

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If I ever decide to write a novel, it won’t be to illustrate the difference to song but we can pretend. Let’s call it Money Trail and outline the concept of the novel as being following the money trail on where some of our millions and billions are going. You could divide the segments into chapters or parts so we can see the weaponry and surveillance equipment and where it ends up, what the sellers do with our money after the transaction has taken place, what the consequences are in each scenario.

In the same way, you could divide up song verses to illustrate the various expenditure and you could even punctuate these with a chorus about money trails. Why is this different? In the simpler plot-driven novel there may not be that much difference. Most novels tend to dwell on inner thoughts or describe in lavish details the objects and surrounds while songs provide richness in a singular image that allows the listener to imagine further.

This distinction is complicated by an awareness that the novel is perfectly capable of containing passages that allow the reader to fill in the blanks.

III

And writing a novel from a song? I don’t see why you couldn’t. While a song may be a statement that stays where it is, a novel has to progress, even if with a introverted eyebrow raise. Whether it’s one person’s journey or the resolution of some sci-fi concept about what would happen if amphibians dominated, the novel draws the reader in and keeps them turning the page. A song doesn’t have to have that durability in the immediate because it can loop its intent. Otherwise why relisten? So this suggests that you’d either pad the tale when converting to novel or choose a song that is already rich in story.

Let’s see what could be done from this song, called “Carbon Dating”

Carbon Dating

I copy your moves as my mood improves
The solutions salves and somehow sooths
Pickaxe the outline of ancient design
Yours are the shores to mine

We’re carbon dating

Rocks rendered with open ended analysis
A sting that brings paralysis
A feel for the feelers flailing on land
Evaluating evolution just as planned

Carbon dating

The scrapes she shapes in tiny lines
Confounded in the coarse confines
Of bended bone and jagged tooth
Chiselled grooves of further proof

We’re carbon dating

The song in its place

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Having canvassed the narrative so that we have a full understanding of its importance and place in the song, it’s probably safe to peer out at how the approach to narrative differs from that employed in other media.

Let’s consider the ‘horror budget’ in general. If we were writing a mini-series and wanted it to be current and up-to-date then a good approach would be to take some of the things particular to things as they are in 2014. My pitch would include a father, Geoff, who is an assembly line worker at Holden; his wife, Sheryn, is a pragmatic climate change sceptic. She doesn’t pretend to know the science or have a reason to refute it on an empirical level but she is concerned about the rising energy costs and believed the promise that scrapping the “carbon tax” would bring down power bills and costs passed on by affected companies in a range of fields. They have a son, Marcus, who hates his boss but is worried about the six months waiting period if he quits and is aghast at the prospect of writing forty job applications a month and being thrown onto a ‘work for the dole’ scheme. There is interaction with a neighbour, Phat Lam, who was given a temporary humanitarian visa due to his involvement with the Tianemen Square protests and was allowed to stay.

Now, as you can see, apart from delineating characters who will exemplify certain key dramatic aspects of contemporary Australian life, the approach is built on the use of characters. This is because we want the audience to identify with them and be interested in following them. It means that actors will sign on, knowing that there is substance to their roles where their appearance in a more plot-driven vehicle may be more fleeting.

In a movie you would probably want more of a blend in of some story situation or development. The focus may shift to a smaller cast engaged in greater activity and less exposition.

A short story would typically want to centre on one activity or sharp burst; there could be a dramatic event at the car manufacturers, a sudden a-ha moment in the realisation that prices weren’t really going to go down, or an altercation involving Marcus. The aspects of other characters might be touched on lightly if at all.

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Can a song not take the same approach as other media in developing a narrative? It can actually. Just as plays are made into films and novels are made into musicals, it is possible to tell a story in a different medium, acknowledging and accepting the changes. The styles that spring from Springsteen prove songs can tell dramatic stories about a small cast of characters and place us in a setting. Whether you’d use this for Geoff, Sheryn and Marcus (toying with adding a daughter, Nola, who is a swotty year 12 with an enthusiasm for microbiology but concerned about what it would cost with no caps on fees) is another matter. I’d maintain that even when we’re speaking of Lightning’s Child, Farmer John, the Son of a Preacher Man, Son of Hickory Holler’s Tramp, the Eyes of Lucy Jordan… there’s a narrowing of focus in much the same way as there can be in poetry and vignettes. There are songwriters who can work a crowded room but there’s some skill involved and it does dictate the structure and possibly the genre. So songs in the same cast as a mini-series are going to be less our focus.

III

How would songs based on the horror budget more naturally evolve?

Auto manufacture

We used to make it up as we go along
Revelling in the rivetting although the hours were long
Automanufacture

We plumped the seats
Engaged in feats that the world would watch
Designing the body weilding the welding torch
Automanufacture

It was our roads that drove us on
Where we could get to and how we belong
Take the we'll always remember
Automanufacture
factoring in

Great Big New Attacks

Threats and debts of our design
The fears this year cannot confine
The hiving off of heave and ho
The skiving and the to and fro

There’s great big new attacks
great big new attacks

The lies disguise what we despise
A reckoning we can recognise
A tut tut for reverse tracks
What it was we ever lacked

What’s yours we’ll mine
You’ll get your share sure
philistine

Not while there’s great big new
Attacks

Narrative spin

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At the risk of boring the fledgling scribbler with too much distraction, there is something to note from our conclusions on narrative dictates. How did we end up privileging the content over the intent?
There is a reasonable argument to be made that, after stating that the narrative is ‘ ‘Leading conservatives forecast a short war in Iraq, now, without irony are considering returning to a battlefield they’ve withdrawn from’’, we are in no position to use words or lines – however good – that aren’t in accordance with this clause. You can produce a song that looks at the calamitously poor assessment skills of [one set of narrative characters in this definition], their inability to appreciate or recognise irony, the battlefield in their terms, the fact that they are prepared to revisit their folly. Does this mean we can’t highlight the other characters caught up in this drama? Certainly, stating the case for the Iraqi people is useful, as is lighting on the cultural misunderstandings and resultant tragedy, so perhaps the answer is to work on it until the varying narrative viewpoints can be reconciled.