Using supplementary material as world-building in fiction

I’ve recently finished a novel by debut author Dawnie Walton called The Final Revival of Opal & Nev. It’s a novel about an editor composing a story about the infamous musical duo Opal & Nev - and a disastrous artist showcase gone awry through the seeds of racism - using nothing but interview transcripts, news articles and reviews, editor’s notes, and song lyrics. All of it is totally fictitious, by the way, zeroing in on a primarily white punk scene in Detroit and New York City throughout the 70’s. Sure, Walton mentions real artists from time to time, but she does so in a way that builds upon this myth she has constructed around the main duo. Too, Walton seems fixed on navigating race in this tumultuous time period, and for the most part, the novel works extremely well. 

What I found particularly fascinating was Walton’s use of supplementary material to tell the story - and by this, I mean the various letters, lyrics, and transcripts she throws together as if she’s writing from the editor’s perspective. This isn’t a particularly new concept in literature; the idea of using newspaper articles, diaries, first-hand accounts etc. has been around for decades. Dracula comes to mind as one of the very first tales to employ the use of letter-writing and journals to relay the mystery of the infamous Count. Already, there’s a kind of self-mythologizing nature in choosing this technique to tell your story: it’s a tried and tested trope that can be used wonderfully to mine a character’s ethos without actually describing the character’s decisions.

Another classic that employs this technique is Watchmen - another favourite, and another piece of “literature” (just in case the graphic novels-aren’t-literature snobs are around) that does so in a brilliant fashion. Here, Alan Moore deconstructs the superhero genre by including memoirs written by past superheroes, interviews by seedy and greedy superhero-turned-businessmen, and a brilliant parallel narrative in the form of a comic book that has nothing to do with the main story, but connects in subtler ways as the story progresses, about a pirate stranded at sea. In doing so, Moore single-handedly layers complex narrative over complex narrative, bouncing back and forth between past and present, projecting the reader through the mystery at the heart of the novel, while at the same time immersing them in an alternate 1985 that is at once familiar and different, nostalgic but frightening.

Watchmen was the very first instance of supplementary material adding to the world-building of a novel for me - it was a totally immersive experience for me because I wasn’t alive in the 80’s, but had seen enough films and read enough novels to have a general idea of what the decade looked and sounded like. Moore took that idea of the era and twisted it, and in doing so, crafted a story that had me hooked from the very first panel. Because it doesn't take place in a 1985 that actually happened (Nixon was re-elected again and again, the Manhattan project took on an entirely different meaning in this universe…), I can go back to the novel and just let myself bask in this entirely “new” world that will always be there, and one that I never had to be a part of to really understand. Perhaps this is another advantage of using supplementary material in literature: it formulates a world through various media that provides the illusion of reality, and so it remains that much more effective.

Since then, authors like Margaret Atwood have also utilized this technique: in her 2000 novel The Blind Assassin, Atwood uses newspaper articles and a narrative-within-a-narrative to tell her story. Here, Atwood has a science fiction writer telling one of the main character’s a story about an assassin on a distant planet - themes of oppression, abuse, and prejudice all factor into this fictional telling of the tale, in typical Atwood fashion. The Blind Assassin was another revelation for me; both Canadian and steeped in a literary world that championed her talents, Atwood had single-handedly inspired my writing motivation and style. Her writing was confident and honest, witty and imaginative in ways that I hadn’t seen before. Since reading her novel, I’ve concocted stories of my own that have employed this same technique and style - one in particular that has stuck with me, and is currently in the process of being written.

Though Atwood can claim dominion over my current work in progress, due must also be given to Alan Moore; to Bram Stoker; and now, to Dawnie Walton, who has shown me once again that confidence and style can still be championed in the ever-changing publishing landscape.

Cory Maddalena

August 5th, 2021