Outside the Lines With Rap Genius - OTL 48: Tom Wolf Excerpt #1 - Sound lyrics

SameOldShawn: Sound is really different from just about any novel I've seen. So for people who haven't read it, can you explain a little bit about it? It's very different than a lot of books, even down to literally the paper on which it's written T.M. Wolf: Sure. So I think probably the big formal hook for the book, the thing that really sets it apart, is that I've written it like a musical score. Basically, what that means is that you can see what characters are saying, but you can also see what they're thinking and what they're hearing while they're speaking to each other. You read dialogue in these big ensembles and strips that go across the page, sort of like you would read musical notation for an instrumental ensemble. You can see all the notes by all of the different instruments being played at the same time. In order to deal with some of the technical aspects of laying something like that out, and not fatiguing the reader, and the economies of scale for printing, the book is printed on paper that's almost square. It's a little longer than it is wide, but it's a lot wider and a little taller than most books, which is nice. So when you go to a bookstore, it stands out on the shelf.