WALKING AROUND INSIDE MY STORY

If you take a minute to view this book trailer of Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick, you'll see how he walks around inside the pages of his book. I want a book trailer like that!

This is how I feel when I am researching and writing. It's like being there, feeling the atmosphere of the time and place.


For me, and my work-in-progress, the time is 1961. The place is East Germany. It all feels black and white. Stark and scary. Etched with mixed loyalties.

My character is struck but not wonderstruck - that's for sure.  Mostly he's just stuck.

AUDIO PICTURES?

This week, I was in the library looking at the audio book collection. There on the shelf was The Invention of Hugo Cabret. Like so many others, I was amazed by this fat book that tells the story via a mix of text and drawings.

I'd be reading along and suddenly I'd turn the page and there were NO words. Maybe for the next 10 pages there would be no words. But the story didn't miss a beat because Brian Selznick told his tale so effectively through his drawings.

He often went back to text and then would suddenly use pictures again.

I like this book because it's innovative and many of the drawings are very detailed.

I'm just trying to imagine it as an audio book. A movie, (I hear there might be one) I can imagine.

But an audio book? If I were listening to the book on CD, what would happen when I got to the part of the story that's told only in pictures? Would I hear the sound of pages turning??

Or maybe there'd be sound-effects for what's happening in the scene.

I didn't check the audio book out of the library. But now I am getting curiouser and curiouser...