Audio and authorship, a study in tone, scene and sound design in writing.
Years ago, through school, I was introduced to a concept in writing from excellent teachers (one of which, my sixth grade English teacher, I still reach out to today), and later even from someone about to join a cult. Luckily, he did not sign his life savings over, but he did go through their process with me after his induction and exit.
He described a process designed to evoke emotion in their applicants before drawing them in to the next step and eventual glossy-eyed and absolute devotion. What he was describing was a "show" method of writing, used in their case to harm others in brainwashing. However, the phrasing, the tool, was at least useful when applied to more positive, caring endeavors, including in counseling and therapy. Creatively, the exploration of senses in memory make for a path in building a sensory scene.
I digress... My point is that sound design is, or can be, just as important in authorship, in writing, as in cinema. Some may think that it is not needed when there is no audio to play, but the same can be said for vivid imagery, descriptions of feelings or smells, tastes and action. Sound, however, I often see overlooked.
Among other things, I have been a journalistic photographer, and I am currently editing someone's Equatorial Guinea documentary with a hope to get it to Netflix before his next few stops.
When I write, I live the story. I experience it viscerally, in all senses. Building the story for another I find myself wanting to build a scene like a show or movie would, and that includes sound design.
Take this first-draft writing exercise below where I wrote out a simple, awkward scene, including sound (or explicit declaration of minimal sound) and running with it as the starting point.
... room for any impropriety, even when innocent.”
“Still,” Captain Landin continues and takes the bag from Kyndra, gesturing her forward “I will provide my account info and a contact. Provide me a proper and approved destination later, and I will send compensation.”
Kyndra removes a pen from her pocket and clicks it. Arax waves a medical staff member over while staring at her.
“That would be appropriate.” Arax steps away, his shiny leather belt creaking in unison with the clack of his wood-sole shoes..
Kyndra writes a long message on the med staff clipboard in staggered, printed characters. The process is slow and awkward for all as they hear the scratching pen. The clipboard acts as a sounding board, increasing the effect to the point that Landin can almost guess the contact fraction of the paper’s surface by the pen’s tone alone and not the thin, rough look of cheap paper.
He thinks fondly of a game he was shown by a crewmember. The game involved racing a ball across a changing, gritty surface. She had talked at length about the development and the math behind ball contact with surfaces and the optimized math used. He doesn’t know the math well enough to solve it, but he sees the actions intuitively in his mind now. He watches the small, imaginary steel ball of the pen run through imagined paper peaks and valleys while he listens.
The paper is fine without being glossy.
The lack of other movement from people, the lack of joy, lack of music, of other sounds and even eye contact has everyone simply waiting and watching for this long, handwritten message to end. Seconds seem like minutes. Scratch, drag, the swirl of a looping character, a '0' or an '8' and the whoosh of the small metal ball across the pits of rough paper whirls through the room, echoing off the hard walls. A suppressed cough accents her writing and breaks Captain Landin's concentration.
Kyndra eventually leaves the CMO and stands at Landin’s side again.
Arax turns brusquely and gestures for everyone to move faster through the airlock.
... ... ...
“That was nice.” Kyndra says with a smile.
“I’m sure it wanted to be.” The Captain unbuckles his belt and lets out a long sigh. “Any problems up here?”
The remaining crew in the hall relax. The pressure in the ears, the nerves holding bodies firm give way to relaxed postures, the shuffle and breathing that hides the slip of shoe on floor or odd sniffle.
“They didn’t want to give up the samples.” She untucks his shirt from the confines of the pressed white pants, teasing him a bit about the poor fit. “I convinced them.” She shares a sly look with the armor-clad Siven. “No one left the area.”
Does it need work? Yes, but I try not to let "absolute polish" get in the way of a first draft. This little practice was a push toward sound design for the mind of the reader, directing a small movie.
There are those with aphantasia, who can't see images in their mind. Those with no internal monologue, those with pictures but no sound, grayscale etc... To pretend that sound can be ignored because "it's a book" misses that books also have imagery and other senses within.
I may provide practices for other steps of "image" versus "sound" versus "taste" and "touch" etc... even going so far as proprioception and the other numerous senses someone or some *thing* can experience and combining them.
For some of my writing, some scenes, I actually see them playing out as a scene from Better Call Saul, with its opening of a two minute musical number accompanying ants swarming a dropped ice cream, or buckets of deep fry batter packaging and shipping... only tentatively attached by explicit connection to the story but thematically resonant otherwise. In some scenes I seek the literary equivalent, in others I need the fast back and forth talking of a tense scene. The example above is an awkward scene where I imagine the gain turned up on the boom mic, letting the audience hear awkward shuffling and off-scene coughing over dead-silence of a carefully engineered soundstage.
Next I'll explore the "orange exercise/test" I send to friends for characterization and voice.