Freewrite Interview on Creating the Monuments of Manhattan app

MC: You’re writing pieces that will be heard, rather than seen in print. Do you find that affects what you say?

DD: I’m learning that as I go along. Did I write a sentence that’s of daunting length or insane complexity? I can’t expect a listener to hit the Back button again and again, the way he might jump back a couple lines in a printed version. Did I write a series of sentences with the same structure? Boring. Is a passage difficult to pronounce? “Bricks shouldn’t dampen noise” – try reading that aloud.

MC: Yes, yes, yes! As an occasional speechwriter, I heartily agree: “Write for the ear, not the eye.” You yourself are narrating the app, yes? Had you done professional recording before?

DD: Being the narrator gave me extra incentive to read the text aloud and edit out problems before I entered the studio. I’ve lectured with a microphone, but that was for the sake of being heard rather than being recorded. Also, in a lecture, I can count on facial expressions and gestures to help me get my meaning across. For this project, I had to learn – mostly on the fly – techniques that make my speaking voice better: breath control, clear (but not pedantic) diction, variation in tone and pitch, variation in emotional tone, even the right amount to pause before a retake. Fortunately, I had a couple great teachers. Richard Gleaves, who puts the audio and images together (he also wrote original music for nearly every episode) has experience as an actor and professional singer. He comes to the studio occasionally and keeps my voice on track and improving. My daughter, who’s studying to be an opera singer, has given me a lot of help with breath control. I’m pleased to report that I can now read aloud in the car for an hour and not sound like a disgruntled parakeet.

MC: I sincerely wish more poets at open mikes would follow those techniques. You don’t need to be an actor, but mumbling is rarely effective. Who did the image research for the app?

DD: I did, because if I can’t find the images I have in mind, I need to rewrite. Finding historical images has been more fun than I’d ever imagined – and more challenging. I spend a lot of time prodding my brain for historical connections so I can find the pics I want. For example, Cornelius Vanderbilt got his start ca. 1810 helping operate a sailboat as a ferry from Staten Island to Manhattan. Since he wasn’t famous, no one sketched a picture of his ferry. I eventually found a sailboat similar to what his must have looked like by following links in Wikipedia to the Atlantic theater of the War of 1812.

MC: Did you acquire any other new skills?

DD: Dreamweaver. Aaarrgh. Each sculpture in the app has an associated web page with images, additional information, and cross references. Writing the “More” pages wasn’t difficult, but getting them into a format that worked on mobile devices was a major headache. According to Adam Reed, our wiz of a tech guy (he’s a professor of Information Systems at Cal State LA, and also the owner of Guides Who Know), Dreamweaver’s mobile formatting is a malignant source of corruption and decay. He should know. He’s the one who finally made the pages work.

MC: What’s the business model?

DD: Monuments of Manhattan will be sold on Amazon’s Android App Store for $11.11. That’s higher than most apps, but with 3 hours of video, it’s far more substantial than most apps. The preview for Android is now available  here. After the full Android version is finished, Adam will work on an iPhone version, and then a version that can be watched on a laptop. I hope Guides Who Know makes an outrageous amount of money. I want to keep writing videoguide apps – it’s been a fun and challenging experience.