A Note to Writers: Choose Your Voice and Your Media Carefully

Photos: From richardpreston.net : Top: Author Richard Preston in the forest canopy 310 feet up a redwood called Poseidon. Bottom: Botanist Marie Antoine 310 feet up in a redwood called Adventure.

Richard Preston’s new book contains some important lessons for writers. Preston is an accomplished storyteller, and his biological exposÈs The Hot Zone and The Demon in the Freezer are riveting. His latest book The Wild Trees is the story of the young men and women who have, recently and without much support or acclaim, discovered a phenomenally rich ecosystem within and atop the world’s tallest trees — the Coast redwood, Douglas fir, and mountain ash — by climbing them. It’s an interesting story, since these pioneers had to invent much of the technique and many of the tools they use to climb these 350-foot giants, and the idea that the canopy of these trees is so strong and intertwined that you can play in it like a huge jungle gym (see top photo, of Preston, above, taken from his website).

Preston tries to create a sense of urgency for learning about and preserving the thousand-year-old redwoods (which are 96% gone thanks to logging) but this is a much harder task than the sense of danger and urgency he taps so successfully in his earlier books about virulent, infectious, largely unknown diseases. He also tries to create intimate portraits of the pioneers, including Marie Antoine (lower photo above). These characters are brilliant, courageous, dedicated and quirky, but (with due respect) they aren’t heroic enough to build a biographical story around.

I’m an impatient reader, and I was just about to abandon the book when Preston, about two thirds the way through, started a new and personal thread. It seems the unassuming Mr Preston has become, himself, at about (I would guess) twice the age of his story’s lead protagonists, one of the pioneers in this quest, one of the few to have scaled the tallest of the giants, both in California and Australia. What’s more, he has infected his teenage kids, his wife and even his parents with his passion. Now there’s a story. What would inspire a successful author to so step outside his comfort zone that he would take up a new, complex and dangerous hobby, relatively late in life, and pursue it to the limit? And what is so compelling about climbing trees that just about everyone exposed to the opportunity to do so gets hooked on the hobby, to the point Preston has to conceal the whereabouts of some of the trees, and information about some of the more advanced techniques and inventions, for fear recreational climbers will overwhelm the last remaining stands of ‘wild trees’ and bring about their demise before this newly-discovered ecosystem can even be mapped?

The answers to these questions are the story screaming to come out of Preston’s book, and, either out of humility or perhaps because such speculation is outside his area of interest, Preston leaves them unanswered. As I closed the book I thought immediately of biologist and ultra-marathon runner Bernd Heinrich’s semi-autobiographical Why We Run. Heinrich’s work is immensely educational and interesting precisely because he tells his story in the first person; you can relate to the emotions he feels as he discovers kinship with other creatures, and he is more than willing to generalize from his own passion for marathons to speculate on our universal penchant for movement and speed.

Preston, ever so briefly, describes his children’s fascination with climbing. He tells stories about their astonishment and delight at discovering that some of the creatures who live in trees (e.g. saw-whet owls and flying squirrels) are so unaccustomed to human contact that they are unperturbed by human presence in their tree-canopy homes, coming right up to Preston and his family and even climbing over them. What I would have loved to read is whether and how they overcame an instinctive fear of heights, and whether his children have any plans to do something with this unique new skill, in their own words. I want to hear Preston’s own story — what led him to go to such extraordinary and seemingly-courageous lengths, beyond the need to do research for his book. I want to learn the basics of climbing, step by step, enough to decide if it’s something I want to do. The real story here is one of personal discovery, challenge and transformation, and what it tells us about ourselves.*

The other major lesson for writers (and publishers) is the fact that this is largely a visual story. The book has some useful black-and-white maps and sketches, but what Preston is describing is unimaginable, even with the help of an excellent story-teller, without rich visual images. And in the 21st century, there is no excuse for not providing them. Preston’s site has some excellent photos that not only add immediate clarity and drama to his story, but also introduce us personally to the climbing pioneers he profiles in a way that no rich biographical information can do. Marie Antoine and Michael Taylor, particularly, look nothing at all like how I pictured them when I read the book.

The publishers could have put the colour photo spread inside the book. But they could have done something even bolder and richer: National Geographic is making a TV special based on Preston’s book. The book could be cued to images and video clips from the special, so that the reader pauses at prescribed points and goes online for the next clip. The resulting multimedia experience would have been amazingly rich. The merging of online and print media could, just like Preston and his brave climbers, have pioneered something rare, extraordinary and important.

It’s not too late. If Preston were to work with National Geographic to do this, and add in some video clips of his family talking about their passion for climbing and how it emerged, and some video clips teaching us how to climb safely (just small trees will do), and then sync this with a second edition of his book, I’d go out an buy another copy just for the URLs of the clips positioned appropriately throughout the book. And then this book could be as revolutionary and eye-opening as The Demon in the Freezer.

Anyone currently writing, or thinking of writing, a book should imagine the possibilities of enriching it with video clips, interviews and other multimedia content. It is no longer awkward to have both a book and the Internet at your fingertips at the same time. There are things that a hard-copy book just cannot do, and things that only a hard-copy book can do. It’s now possible to have your cake and eat it too.

*Interestingly, one of the major reviewers of the book takes the opposite perspective, arguing that Preston should have kept himself out of the book entirely. I can imagine the agonizing discussions Preston must have had with the publisher! The reader has no idea until two thirds through the book that Preston has become a world-class climber himself, a player in thedrama he has, until then, told exclusively in the third person..

Categories:Industry-Specific Innovations, and Language, Narrative & Story-Telling

3 Responses to A Note to Writers: Choose Your Voice and Your Media Carefully

Joan says:

May 30, 2007 at 12:25

Dave: If you haven’t done so already, you should read the latest Kim Stanley Robinson books, which have a protagonist who actually lives in a tree in Washington, DC. “Forty Signs of Rain” is the start of the series and there are two books that follow.
Gary McIlroy says:

July 20, 2007 at 09:49

Hi Dave,Yes, what a fascinating story. The book’s main flaw, as you point out, is the personal story nearly buried in the back of the book. Writers need to think about their readers’ expectations and tell them what is coming. Indeed, writers need to start with something special (their most interesting material) to capture their readers’ attention. Here moving the personal story to the beginning of the book would have been perfect. In fact, the personal story could have been intertwined throughout with the factual and background information. I am a freelance editor who helps writers who don’t know how to get their stories on paper.
Jean Farley Brown says:

April 7, 2008 at 09:35

I, on the other hand, thought there was just enough personal info to keep my interest but without devolving into a story about people. The story is about the trees! I did crave photos, though, and even on the website I wish there were many more pictures of the life flourishing in the canopy because I strongly suspect I will never get up there to see it.That was the power of Jacques Cousteau’s work, I think. People could learn about and love and care about aquatic life even without the resources and opportunities that that great explorer had. How can we fall in love with that canopy community without seeing it?