Opinions needed: Book format - Graphic Novel Hybrid

[Venetia]

i'd like your insight here.

there are graphic novels and there are "regular" (written) novels. sometimes in regular novels you'll find a few pages with images or illustrations. Not many, but every once in a while. The Dark Tower series sticks out in my mind: there were a few pages with pictures of detailed paintings every once in a long while. I have a Conan compilation that has a picture at the end and at the beginning of each short story.

But what about a graphic novel + regular novel combined?
Every other page is a picture.

So like you open the book to a random page and it's:

___________________

| words  | [][][] |

| words  | [][][] |

| words  | [][][] |

| words  |  [pic] |

| words  | [][][] |         

|_words__|_[][][]_|

Where the picture is just illustrating whatever is on that page.
(either on every single page, or every few pages. Wherever there is an important thing happening.)

The novel (written part) would still be a regular novel length. 100-300 pages. But then there would be 50-100 pictures in there, too. Probably mostly in black & white, so it'd still be cheap to print. I guess some "special editions" could be in color.

When writing it you'd have to be careful to make sure that the action syncs up.
But I think this would be pretty neat to read.

When I see a book that has pictures, I often will read the page with the picture next to it extra carefully because it feels more important, having been illustrated. I get excited about these pages for some reason. I realize this stigma would be diminished with a picture on nearly every page, but I feel like it would make the thing just flat out more interesting, period.

But would it make it look too much like a kid's book? Even if the pictures were really gritty and adult-themed?


Like do you think it would interest an average adult reader?

Do you think you would like it LESS, as you wouldn't be able to IMAGINE things the same way as you would with a book that has no illustrations?

Would you (as an average 20/30-something) feel EMBARRASSED or something to be reading something like that on a subway or airplane or whatever?

Lemme know ~

 

[Venetia]

And this could apply to probably any of these genres:

- fantasy
- dark fantasy
- sci-fi
- horror
- thriller/suspense

but i doubt it'd do well with romance, or very slow/dramatic plots.

 

[dadevvtsvre]

Have you ever heard of a book called The Invention of Hugo Cabret? It sounds kind of like what you may be describing. The author describes it as "not exactly a novel, not quite a picture book, not really a graphic novel, or a flip book or a movie, but a combination of all these things." It's basically a combination of a regular book with words and junk, and pages with illustrations. It's not really a graphic novel because it has no speech bubbles or anything like that, more like a picture book with hundreds of pages.

(also they're making a movie out of it this year!)

Some pages are like this:

while others just have words.

Might be worth checking out. Anyway, I'd definitely give it a look if something like this were to be made. I'm a sucker for anything that reinvents mediums in neat and interesting ways.

 

[Venetia]

wow! no, i've never heard of that. Sounds interesting, just based on the format!

 

[Norton]

dadevster, I flip through that book every time I'm in a library. So cool.

 

[RavenTDA]

Well as for audience you're going to get people that wouldn't read it because they think it's a "kids" book no matter what you say because some people aren't open minded. There will be others though that are drawn to your book more because there's pictures. And then there will probably be people that read it only at home because of embarrassment until the medium catches on as "cool" or accepted.

Other than that... well balance would be the biggest issue. You'd also have to probably slip from using too much description as well. There's writing that's like minimalist anyways in novels but you could probably use that style here and have the pictures fill in the gaps. You'd also have to keep in mind immersion. Does changing formats disrupt this for the reader? Reading that book Dadevster suggested is probably a good place to try that out. You'll be able to tell if it either enhances it or disrupts it.

Personally? I'd have to try it out. But there's times that I'm in the mood to read a graphic novel and times I'm in the mood to read just a book. If it has both I'm not sure what mood to be in. XD It sounds interesting in theory but in practice I'm not sure.

 

[Daxis]

Personally i'd try to combo/mix it up even a littel bit more. Maybe have something like each sequence is directed by both pictures and words, or the narration flows from paragraphs to pictures with absolutely no difference in it.

Like

[] = words, x = pics

[][][][]
[] x x x
x [] [] x
x x x x

may a literal hybrid of comics and novels where it intertwines.

This could prolly make a very fun narration style, where "boring scenes" (which should not exist, but scenes like idk backgrounds and setting and etc.) could be narrated by words. Might be a bit jarring, the largest problem i could see.




On the other hand, anyone read a novel by chris wooding (one of my fav authors) called Malice? (part of a trilogy or series or something), where kids get sucked into a comic book world, and what happens in the world is drawn comic book like? (or at least parts of it). Not exactly what ven was going for, but there was some nice stuff happening inside of the book.