Storyboarding
DEFINING AND VISUALISING DISTINCT VOICES
As always, I begin by mapping out a macro view of the story before I get too immersed in nuance and tone within the telling. I am trying at this stage to work out the interplay between the different points of view. When does context need to be established? How much repetition of the central Sexton quote is necessary? How can I give enough information to keep the reader engaged but still build suspense through some sense of ambiguity?
Once roughly mapped, I move on to my frame and my content; the words on the page. Where do these small spark points between voices occur? Where does it make sense? Where does it have maximum impact? Where does the type need to be soft and where does it need to bellow? How will repetition create both an underlying structure, and the appropriate emotional undertow?
At this early stage, I was aware of my role as orchestrator as well as author and designer. Designing this book was about my handling (defining, intertwining, and then clarifying) different points of view. I approached them as actual voices - as characters and performers on the stage of the book. What was pivotal was how I handled the shift in voices - at first a subtle shift - and then a radical shift halfway through when the ground on which the reader thought the story was built suddenly cracks. This book is a play within a play in the Shakespearean sense; in the vein of Calvino, Greenaway, Stoppard, and Beckett.
ANNE SEXTON QUOTE
I have chosen letterpress to convey the voice of the Anne Sexton quote. I want these words and letters to have a very physical presence on the page - a sense of how they were made still visible. This will interplay well with computer-generated type and the type from actual police documents.
ELIZABETH SHORT MURDER
In considering ways of visualising different levels of voice/point of view - the most obvious and maybe best solution was to go to the source. This line of narration is about providing real world context, a glimpse into the language, visual look and evidence of 1947 Los Angeles. This is one of many LAPD documents about the investigation of the murder of Elizabeth Short. Such documents were used as both as historical reference and at times as texture that obstructed and also revealed other voices in the book. My approach with the use of this 'voice' was similar to the use of the words from the Anne Sexton quote - they gain meaning and significance through repetition and juxtaposition with other voices. What might have begun as a small containable page from a newspaper later in the book becomes a frame through which readers might view a vital clue.
I also considered including other archival imagery from the time and place of the actual murder - fictional images from Hollywood film posters and pulp magazines. It was the very visible 'fictional' feeling of these images that appealed to me in that they could work as a perfect foil to the utterly non-fictional voice of the author in the second half of the book. Images like this pin-up are absolutely staged - they are pure fiction, and yet there are curious intersections with the reality of the time and place. Something in the juxtaposition between images like this one and forensic documents from the actual crime was reminiscent of Ellroy's novel. He deliberately blurs fictional and non-fictional characters and events - the very premise of this novel is a weird blurring between a famous unsolved American murder, and the murder of his own mother in a similar time and place. There seemed to be potential for a beautiful tension between these two viewpoints, these two ways of seeing the events at the heart of the novel.
NOVEL AND NOVELIST
I assigned a distinct typeface, size, and placement on the page to the two remaining voices. The key was not their individual characteristics, but their relative traits and context to one another. It was vital to the communication goal of the book that readers/viewers understand the voice from within the novel is distinct from the voice of the novelist. I deliberately introduced the novelist's voice ambiguously (in that readers don't identify the speaker), but realised it was essential that there was enough difference in the appearance of the voice that is stood out on the page. I opted for the simplest solution - colour.
As always, I begin by mapping out a macro view of the story before I get too immersed in nuance and tone within the telling. I am trying at this stage to work out the interplay between the different points of view. When does context need to be established? How much repetition of the central Sexton quote is necessary? How can I give enough information to keep the reader engaged but still build suspense through some sense of ambiguity?
Once roughly mapped, I move on to my frame and my content; the words on the page. Where do these small spark points between voices occur? Where does it make sense? Where does it have maximum impact? Where does the type need to be soft and where does it need to bellow? How will repetition create both an underlying structure, and the appropriate emotional undertow?
At this early stage, I was aware of my role as orchestrator as well as author and designer. Designing this book was about my handling (defining, intertwining, and then clarifying) different points of view. I approached them as actual voices - as characters and performers on the stage of the book. What was pivotal was how I handled the shift in voices - at first a subtle shift - and then a radical shift halfway through when the ground on which the reader thought the story was built suddenly cracks. This book is a play within a play in the Shakespearean sense; in the vein of Calvino, Greenaway, Stoppard, and Beckett.
ANNE SEXTON QUOTE
I have chosen letterpress to convey the voice of the Anne Sexton quote. I want these words and letters to have a very physical presence on the page - a sense of how they were made still visible. This will interplay well with computer-generated type and the type from actual police documents.
ELIZABETH SHORT MURDER
In considering ways of visualising different levels of voice/point of view - the most obvious and maybe best solution was to go to the source. This line of narration is about providing real world context, a glimpse into the language, visual look and evidence of 1947 Los Angeles. This is one of many LAPD documents about the investigation of the murder of Elizabeth Short. Such documents were used as both as historical reference and at times as texture that obstructed and also revealed other voices in the book. My approach with the use of this 'voice' was similar to the use of the words from the Anne Sexton quote - they gain meaning and significance through repetition and juxtaposition with other voices. What might have begun as a small containable page from a newspaper later in the book becomes a frame through which readers might view a vital clue.
I also considered including other archival imagery from the time and place of the actual murder - fictional images from Hollywood film posters and pulp magazines. It was the very visible 'fictional' feeling of these images that appealed to me in that they could work as a perfect foil to the utterly non-fictional voice of the author in the second half of the book. Images like this pin-up are absolutely staged - they are pure fiction, and yet there are curious intersections with the reality of the time and place. Something in the juxtaposition between images like this one and forensic documents from the actual crime was reminiscent of Ellroy's novel. He deliberately blurs fictional and non-fictional characters and events - the very premise of this novel is a weird blurring between a famous unsolved American murder, and the murder of his own mother in a similar time and place. There seemed to be potential for a beautiful tension between these two viewpoints, these two ways of seeing the events at the heart of the novel.
NOVEL AND NOVELIST
I assigned a distinct typeface, size, and placement on the page to the two remaining voices. The key was not their individual characteristics, but their relative traits and context to one another. It was vital to the communication goal of the book that readers/viewers understand the voice from within the novel is distinct from the voice of the novelist. I deliberately introduced the novelist's voice ambiguously (in that readers don't identify the speaker), but realised it was essential that there was enough difference in the appearance of the voice that is stood out on the page. I opted for the simplest solution - colour.
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