Lazarus Remembered – The Creation of a Story Told with Words and Music

Lazarus Remembered, a story told with words and music, is an immersive audiobook. My debut novel, it’s a contemporary family drama that explores the challenges within non-traditional family structures and how the pressure to conform to society’s expectations can tear lives apart. It features a soundtrack with thirteen original songs by my husband, composer Andy Harper and sung by different singers. The idea to develop a novel into an immersive story-telling experience came while I was listening to an interview with musician Benjamin Clementine.

‘Music tells a story’, he said. Early 2015, a few months into my first draft and immediately I knew it would be so much more powerful with a soundtrack.

Fast forward six years. Lazarus Remembered is officially launched on January 26th: a twelve-hour listening experience comprising novel, soundscape and production that takes some scenes into the territory of a radio play. So how did we get there?

I had already outlined the structure and key plot points for Lazarus Remembered when I pitched the idea to Andy and one of my friends, singer Nicola Moxham. They loved the concept and started developing songs. For the first song they used a central thread within the storyline as inspiration for the lyrics and melody. This eventually became Love in the Room, which is referenced throughout the novel but only heard in full at the end. Within two years, several songs were nearing completion.

Meanwhile, given my background – I’m a biochemist and spent a career in research and communications – I was facing my own set of challenges. How to turn technical writing skills into the craft needed for a compelling novel? I joined a writers’ group, attended workshops, devoured dozens of books on the art of writing and continued with my lifelong passion of reading novels although now with an eye on all the elements of writing.

About this time I realised that songs provide a unique opportunity within the novel structure: an additional point of view. In Lazarus Remembered, a key character is in hospital on life support.  Surrounded by her friends and family I wanted to share Lydia’s experience; sensing her loved ones along with the memories stimulated by their presence. This was the idea behind Twilight, a hauntingly beautiful melody. It’s the only point where we enter Lydia’s head and became the first track to have an obvious place within the storyline. Not only does it provide another character perspective but it heightens a hugely emotional touchpoint.

Until now, the story had inspired the songs but one day Andy pitched a song he’d written independently from the novel. I saw immediately how well it fitted the personality of Lydia. Frankly is an ode to disdain and perfectly reflects Lydia’s frustration with aspects of her life. The lyrics include the phrase ‘quite honestly your tragedy it staggers me’ and, on the back of this, I adapted Lydia’s characteristic speech patterns. Listeners will notice how she frequently starts a sentence with the word ‘honestly’. This is the perfect example of a song influencing the novel.

Once we had five or six songs we mapped out where they’d support the narrative. This highlighted gaps in the overall structure so we focused on pivotal scenes as inspiration for additional tracks. Early on, Peter, the main protagonist, makes a life-changing decision and thus the song Sense of Fate was written. It illustrated the opportunity to vary the vocals, ie have different singers to represent the characters and we recruited another friend, Robin, to take lead vocals on four tracks. It also flagged the need for an upbeat melody to counterbalance the darker material. One chapter is set in the 1960s and we used the optimism of that era to write Come Dance With Me, performed by Dingo, another musician whose passion is music of that era.

By autumn 2019 the novel was complete, the songs arranged and we were ready to record the narration. We had a clear vision of the listening experience we wanted to create; the same atmosphere of warmth and intimacy that you might feel sitting in a room with the storyteller. Our narrator, Francesca did an extraordinary job. For nine days we worked together in the studio refining things as we went along. As an example, one afternoon we made a spontaneous decision to have Francesca sing Sosban Fach, a Welsh folk song. Overnight Andy worked out the melody, Francesca rehearsed it and the next morning a piece of magic was created.

Once we had all the raw material, in order to retain complete creative control Andy took on the huge task of editing the mix. It became an iterative process with re-arrangement of melodies to fit the atmosphere, endless debate on how much to enhance the soundscape, and identification of narrative pick-ups for Francesca. We were in full lockdown and the complexity of organising pick-ups from afar is another story altogether!

The final mix took around 150 hours to master by our sound designer, Josephine, and was eventually completed in November 2020. My key learnings? Be clear at the outset on the atmosphere you want to create. Only use music and supporting sounds if they enhance the narrative and be prepared to make tough editing decisions. It took longer than we imagined but the overwhelmingly positive response from listeners has made it all worthwhile.

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Lazarus Remembered is a story told with words and music, produced independently as an audiobook. Set in the fictional town of Lazarus in New South Wales, it is an innovative approach to storytelling that provides a unique immersive audio experience. The novel is a contemporary family drama. It was written by E J Harper and includes a soundscape featuring thirteen original songs by composer Andy Harper.

“Pete, look mate I’m sorry but there’s no easy way to say this. Lydia’s dying.“

These are the words Peter Mackenzie wakes up to on a chilly March morning in 2012. Over the next forty eight hours his life is thrown into chaos catapulting him into the decision to leave the UK and return to Australia, the country from which he was exiled thirty years earlier. The opportunity to see Lydia, his mother, one last time means confronting his family, friends and the community of Lazarus that he abandoned as a teenager.

Lazarus Remembered is a powerful domestic drama that explores the challenges within non-traditional family structures. A story about secrets and lies, love and loss, reinvention and redemption but most of all about how the pressure to conform to society’s expectations can tear lives apart.

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Category: Contemporary Women Writers, How To and Tips