Designing narrative content
Narrative content are all the elements in your soundtrack that tell the story, hence the reference to narration, telling. This is a term more often used in relatively concrete works than in abstract works. Not to suggest that an abstract work can not tell a story in the broader sense of the word, but to indicate that in a narrative work the story itself is where the focus lies. Consider for example an average novel in relation to an average poem: novels tend to focus on the telling of a story whereas poems often have an emotion, a state of mind or another less factual focus.
There is plenty of evidence that suggests that narration is as old as humankind itself. When prehistoric humans started living together in groups and using vocal utterances as a means of communication we did not just use this for practical matters such as coordinating a hunt, we also started telling stories. Not simply as a pastime during long, dark nights in a cave but to create and propagate a common history and knowledge as the basis for living together in groups- and later in complex societies. For example all the holy scriptures of the big religions contain of course a lot of text on how to live and what to believe, but mainly also a very, very big pool of stories.
What does this have to do with your soundwalk? Many creators will be telling a story with it. The history and importance of stories in human history means there is not only an almost infinite amount of existing stories to tap into if you want, there is also a big amount of theory on how to tell a story in the first place. Within Western culture for example the theatre genre of the tragedy not only contains plays dating back to hundreds of years BC, there are also fully formed sets of ‘rules’ for working in the genre. For example Aristoteles already established unity of the place, time and action as essential for what we now know as ancient Greek tragedy.
Again: it’s an artform. Meaning that in spite of all these theories and even lists of rules that you might find for telling a story there is no need for you to stick to them. Imagine a person like film director David Lynch following what are considered the rules for a successful Hollywood screenplay: none of his major works would have ever complied and still it’s hard to argue that he is not a very accomplished filmmaker. In the same vein the principles of Aristoteles just mentioned were broken frequently by Shakespeare in his subsequent takes on tragedy, which are nonetheless considered classics in our age.
All this is to say that if you are in need of structure, a starting point or a basis to build on there is a lot out there. From tips and guides to complete step-by-step formats. And even if you are intent on breaking all the rules and forming your own way of narrating it might still be useful to know what rules you are actually breaking. But anything we can say about narration within the scope of this guide will be a set of general pointers more than an encompassing overview.
With that in mind a few key principles to consider when working on narrative content for your soundwalk are chronology, perspective and form.
Chronology (from ‘chronos’, meaning time) is simply the order of your story. Does it have a beginning, a middle and an end? And if so, are they in the ‘correct’ order? Which in this case would mean working from the beginning to the end. You will find that a commonly used narrative technique is to stray from the exact and ‘correct’ order of chronology. This might be a deflection as simple as a time lapse where one scene is on a Friday evening and the next one is on Saturday afternoon, with us skipping Saturday morning since nothing worth narrating happened then. For the audience to fully grasp a story you might need to give some information on what happened before, as a quick summary, without this becoming the story itself. You might even play with complex chronology like telling a story backwards, or telling two alternative chronologies for both outcomes of an important decision like a character taking the red pill or the blue pill. Whatever you do it’s important to be aware of what the chronology of your story is. And at the points where there is for example a timelapse: how do you make this clear to the listener?
Perspective in this case would mean the viewpoint from which you tell your story. Is it a so-called first person perspective where a person is telling us their story in the “I” / “me” form? Or are we for example on the outside where we have a third person perspective on everything? Are we acknowledged as an audience in the way where a character can speak directly to us, for example Romeo saying to the listener: “I know you might have heard it before but let me tell you the tragic love story of me and Juliet.”? Or is it what in theatre is called a “fourth wall” perspective where the audience is basically a fly on the wall and not acknowledged in any way by the characters in the story? Like in a lot of movies where the camera is our eyes but we are never looked at or spoken to directly. Or are we in a perspective where the story is told by an anonymous but all-knowing voice over, speaking to us but unheard by the characters in the world of the story?
Again anything is possible. You can have one perspective or switch it around all the time. The important thing is to be aware. A change of perspective where you don’t intend one can be very confusing and mess up the story you are trying to tell. If a switch is intentional: how do you make the audience understand this? Is there a sound, does the spoken word hint to the fact that we are now listening through the ears of another person or inside their head? Or do we literally shift our physical perspective, like the medium of the geolocated soundwalk allows?
Regarding form there is again a multitude of choices, with no rights or wrongs but rather things to be aware of to make sure your work has the intended effect. A main narrative concept having to do with form which is important in the context of a medium like a soundwalk is ‘show, don’t tell’. Which means for example that rather than have a character say the line “I’m very sad” as a writer it can be much more interesting to have the character remark on how grey the weather has been for days on end and it’s hard to fathom another spring. In a soundwalk this goes for both text and very important: sound. Even if you find nice, poetic words for a character to convey something like them being very sad it can be much more interesting to tell it in sound. A dull soundscape of rain and a slightly oppressive but unremarkable background sound combined with a flat tone of voice might give just as many clues to suggest the sad state of mind than words themselves.
When working on a narrative soundwalk the genre of the radio play can be a big inspiration since here stories are told primarily through sound. In this context please note that many radio plays today might not be labelled as such but are simply called a podcast, while still adhering to all the specifics of a radio play except for the being broadcast on radio. A soundwalk is not a radio play however: you have the added dimension of being out in the real world and in a certain location. So as mentioned before it’s a good idea to consider what parts of the story can be told by those elements of the audience experience. So while a radio play is exclusively audio compared to your soundwalk which is a multi-sensory experience the ‘ears first’ approach can still give you valuable insights.
The examples and concepts mentioned just now might seem to apply mostly to stories which are fiction. However a lot of it also applies to non-fiction. If your soundwalk is more like a documentary the need for telling a compelling story might not be any less. If for example a series of interviews is the base of your audio content obviously you have to work with that material and can’t freely add stuff like you could when writing a play. But the edit, as in your choice of what bits to use and in what order to place them can still be a very powerful way of distilling or highlighting a specific narrative. This enters into the area of what is called ‘framing’ and which can also have a negative connotation when you edit things in such a way that the original meaning of a bit of sound (in this context often spoken words) completely changes. But bear in mind that almost all journalism uses this technique of editing, in order to get to the core of a story within a limited amount of words or running time. So while you want to take care to use the technique of editing in an ethical way there is nothing wrong with the method itself. Which you will find has a lot of basic principles in common with the telling of an interesting fictive story.
Last but not least: narrative is not a genre. Your sound piece can have very clear narrative elements, while also containing more abstract, non-narrative ones. And between those there is a sliding scale.