Michael Betcherman's online novels make imaginative use of email, website links and YouTube videos to mirror the way people use the Internet.
Given how the Internet has come to dominate our professional and personal lives, the idea of an online book that takes the form of emails written by its characters to each other seems like a blindingly obvious one.
However, the possibilities of the “e-pistolary” novel hadn’t really been explored until Toronto-based writer-filmmaker Michael Betcherman decided to collaborate with his longtime friend David Diamond on a book made up entirely of emails.
What resulted was a thriller about a journalist, Samantha Dempsey, dealing with turmoil in her personal life even as she investigates a California cult that may be exploiting young girls. But though the plot of The Daughters of Freya is consistently engaging, the more notable thing is the manner of its telling.
Readers are invited to subscribe on the book’s official website (http://emailmystery.com/dof), after which they receive — on their own personal IDs — a series of emails exchanged by the novel’s fictional characters.
Between four and five mails arrive in a subscriber’s inbox each day as the mystery unfolds in real time; the three-week period that it takes for the story to reach its conclusion mimics the amount of time a casual reader (with not more than 15-20 minutes of reading time per day) might need to finish a novel.
More From This Section
According to Betcherman, a former entertainment lawyer who began his writing career with a stint as consultant for the popular 1980s TV show Street Legal (“It made me realise I liked writing much more than law,” he quips), the idea was to update the epistolary-novel format for the modern age.
“We decided to write a mystery,” he says — in an interview that, appropriately, takes place on email — “because that would allow us to take advantage of one of the more insidious features of the Internet: you never really know who is on the other end of an email.”
This proves to be a useful device. Without giving much away, at least part of the frisson of the tale comes from the reader’s uncertainty about the identity of a mail-sender (including a passage where we realise that a character has been kidnapped and someone else is using her account to send mails).
Reading full-length books online is something many of us have learnt to do over time, albeit with some griping about the loss of the cherished tactile experience. Contemporary writers have made imaginative promotional use of the Net — offering “teaser chapters” of their books to subscribers before an official, real-world launch — and the complete texts of older, copyright-expired works are easily available online.
But The Daughters of Freya is more than just a novel that can be read on your computer — it’s very much a product of the Internet era, one that consciously mines the possibilities of the virtual world. “The form of the story is integrated with the medium,” explains Betcherman. “Instead of opening an email and reading a lengthy chapter from a book, our readers open an email and read… an email, written in a chatty, informal style. It’s almost as if the reader has been ‘CC-ed’ on the mails sent by characters to each other.”
Adding to the sense of authenticity, and making the reader feel almost like a participant in the story, is the device of including some links to external websites with photos and articles — e.g., a site with detailed information about the cult that is central to the plot.
“The idea,” Betcherman says, “was to mirror the way people actually use the Internet on a daily basis.” In fact, he has gone a step further with his second novel Suzanne — a romantic comedy about an opportunistic widow in search of a rich husband — by incorporating YouTube videos into the story.
These, again, can be accessed by readers through links in the emails they receive. “It was a logical response to the increasing use of videos on the Internet,” says Betcherman. His next story, another mystery, will feature more extensive use of this medium.
Given that people usually expect to be able to access online content free of cost, is this a lucrative project? Betcherman is convinced of the enormous potential in this kind of storytelling.
“I think people are increasingly prepared to pay if they feel they are getting good value — in our case, five dollars for three weeks of entertainment. We have had thousands of subscribers — we’re hoping to reach five figures by the end of this year — and our real challenge so far has been marketing. What we need is a partner with a website that has a lot of traffic, and where the story can be promoted on a daily basis.”
With dwindling attention spans and with people spending an increasing amount of time in cyberspace, does he think projects of this sort could shape the future of literature? “I think people will always want to read ‘real’ books,” he says, “However, we are all leading busier and busier lives, and there is a growing market for entertainment that is delivered in bite-sized pieces — especially now that people can access email from just about anywhere.”
Meanwhile, he has attempted to add value to the project by organising a “group read” in conjunction with an alternative reality game site, ARGN.com. Participants begin reading the mystery on a predetermined date, which meant they receive the email installments on the same dates. They then discuss the mystery, while it unfolds, on a discussion board set up by ARGN.
“This offers a new wrinkle on the traditional book-club experience,” he says, “and helps to engage and involve readers.” Purists will have their reservations, but Betcherman’s e-pistolary novels are very much products of their age, particularly well-suited to a world where “second lives” on social-networking and virtual-reality websites have acquired more urgency than the real thing, and where people don’t always have time for “real” books — you know, the ones made of paper and glue.
A preview with the first three emails is available at http://emailmystery.com/dof
