Thoughts on word and image, and wimage, and even imords.

It's been quite interesting to think about the balance of word and image in my audio story book. As far as I remember, all such tapes I had as a child had sufficient information in the audio that the book was not essential.

Of course, in a picture book, that is not always the case, quite the opposite may be true.. and that relationship hasn't disappeared just because I have a narration.. really that's little different to having written text next to the image. But I've perhaps become a little less aware of it as I've had in my head a (perhaps false) notion that the narration should tell the whole story. This is partly a consequence of not having written a story in some time, and getting carried away with it, but I think I need to wrestle some degree of control back to the images.

Off the top of my head, the only image I can think of that really has something substantial to say beyond the narration is the final page - Squergil and the trapeze artist sat side by side in the circus. The narration talks of finding new friends, but the image allows the viewer to infer a lot more.

Essentially, what I'm saying is.. I need to remember that what I'm making is not an audio play - more of an audio accompaniment.

This line of thinking has only been comlpicated by the fact that I've applied to have the audio broadcast online on May 1st. As mentioned before, my favourite internet radio station, Intergalactic FM, is hosting a one-day "streaming festival" where listeners get the chance to turn the tables and stream their audio to the station for half an hour. I'm massively excited to be taking part, but it raises some issues. Should simply ensure that all the images are available online somewhere for the duration of the broadcast (this would be my ideal scenario anyway).. or should I tweak the script so that the images are not essential?

On reflection, I think that if the book is to be at all interesting, I need to ensure that the images are as crucial, if not more so, than the narration.

On further reflection.. I suppose that as a rule, the less text there is, the greater burden the images take in communication.. which is what can make a good picture book so interesting, from an illustrator's point of view.

But then, the amount of text I've written for the story (at least 3000 words) is probably more suited to the type of book where images are presented as secondary to the text (or at least equal - one picture per page of text. Given the low cost of those web publishing sites, I'm very tempted to knock up a version of my book in that format if I have time towards the end of the project). Perhaps it would have been more interesting if I had done a picture book with very minimal text, and a muscially abstract soundtrack.. perhaps something a little closer to my original intention, but with less text?

I recently bought a cassette by the comic artist Matthew Thurber. It features an "original Sherlock Holmes story", called Sherlock Holmes and The Large Door. In this adventure, the narration leads the way, but much of the scene is left to be set by the (also rather surreal) audio. I suppose this is one of the strengths of a radio play, that the imagination is left (with prompts) to form its own image.

Am I trying to butt together two forms that work better exclusively, the picture book and the audio play?

But at the end of the day, I suppose that what is more or less interesting is a matter of debate, and I need to focus on simply doing the thing that I am doing as well as it can be done. So.. an audio book with non-exclusive illustrations.

I'll get thinking!