Music as the muse.

[mellymell]

I was discussing this with belluthien about songs that strike us as we think about our stories. As my story grows, I'm finding myself adopting a soundtrack to it almost. There are songs that I imagine for certain parts of the story. Once visualized, I can't shake the movie-like scenes that come to mind. I've got a screenplay approach to getting things down at this point as it is. My outline consists of just dialog, brief action descriptors and only the absolutely necessary scene descriptors to get the point across. As I begin the draft, I'm filling in the spaces with more description and perhaps some back story and it becomes more like a novel. I'm apparently not alone in this approach and although it was another thing I thought I was doing wrong before, it seems to work.

Anyway, we were discussing some songs that have inspired us and after a couple of lengthy comments on her journal, I decided I might want to document this for myself and see how my feelings on it change as the story is developed.

First, I've been listening to a LOT of Coldplay. Something about their songs feels more composed than just thrown together like a lot of pop music is. But something that's very typical of pop music makes it a great vessel to find familiar themes in a dramatic story such as this. There are very vague lyrics about universal emotions and it's easy to apply them to a number of characters and situations in our stories.

I heard the song Fix You (lyrics here) for the first time a few days after coming up with the devastating ending to my first story/conflict/book/whatever. For me, the final scene really hit as "real" after hearing this and I couldn't hear it without crying for about a week. belluthien mentioned being curious about what my devastating event could be after hearing the song and for the similarly curious, I'll give some background.

SPOILERS! skip this paragraph if you care about such things: My main characters are Aedan, a 1500-year-old Druid vampire (and all the baggage that entails) and Nadine, a 32-year-old wife and mother and ??? (I keep changing her profession or trying to decide if she even has one, right now, she's an interior designer). She' married to Gabriel who owns/runs a struggling motorcycle shop and they have a 7-year-old daughter (at the beginning of the story) Isa. Nadine is the reincarnation of Madeleine, a vampire and Aedan's lover in the late 17th century who was mistaken for a witch and burned by Puritan settlers in the 1690s. I don't really want to get into all of the push and pull between Aedan and Nadine and the huge conflict that starts the vampire civil war and all of that. I'll skip past all that to the end of book one, where Gabriel is killed when a bunch of bikers on meth ransack and rob his shop then burn it to the ground with him in it. So yeah, that's where I leave my main characters at the end of the first story. Isa is 12 at this point, Nadine is now a vampire and has been for about 4-5 years. They've come to terms with all of that. They've fought in the first of many battles regarding this war and a treaty was reached (to which Isa is the key) and they get to go home for now. So, they think they're kind of in the clear for a while, something like 4-5 years roll by and they're all getting used to this weird life. Then BAM! tragedy strikes from a totally unexpected direction (real world violence juxtaposed by the supernatural violence they just escaped) and completely shatters their entire world. Nadine takes revenge and slaughters the entire motorcycle gang which the offending bikers were affiliated and kind of becomes a vigilante for a while. But we all know vengeance doesn't bring anyone back and after all that, she's still left a broken woman.

What I see in my head for the last scene in the book is totally a movie scene, complete with end credits and now that I have the image, I don't think I'm going to be able to do it any differently in the book (minus the credits, of course). This song put it there. I mean, I had the events down on paper, but they didn't solidify into a vision until I heard this song.

Another Coldplay song, Kingdom Come (lyrics here) would be the end credits song to the second movie/book/whatever, in my head. The strange thing about this one is that when I hear it, I'm not sure if it's from Nadine or Aedan. Also, it's not so tied to a scene like Fix You. It's more just a general feel. I see themes in it that I'm trying to capture in my characters and their struggles with each other.

And lastly, for now, I see a fight scene, maybe the battle in the London catacombs to Modest Mouse's Whale Song (lyrics here). It just has this sort of meandering, stalking feel to it in the beginning that breaks into chaotic aggression and then a desperation in the lyrics. Screams fight scene, quite literally, I think.

I'm a very visual person, so I have to see all this and even hear it to get it worked out before I can ever put it on paper. I work out dialog several times over in my head or even out loud when I'm alone before I ever type it out. I'm almost to the point where I want to start sketching out places and people and clothing so I can properly describe them when the time comes.

It also comes down to concerns about continuity. There has been a lot of talk over on cleolinda's journal about both Doyle and Stoker and the, "I just don't freakin' care" approach to writing that used to be acceptable. There are notes in annotations of their works of there being 3 full moons in a month and things of that nature. Lots of great discussion there right now, actually. The comments are fantastic, but I just can not keep up and only have seen a glimpse of people's thoughts on it. One point I did see made, and maybe it was by cleolinda herself, was that now we've got the internet and anyone and everyone can hop right on and compare notes after reading your work and things you might not have caught yourself are going to be caught by someone, somewhere. So, as a writer, you have to care about that stuff now or risk the resulting criticism. Not that you won't be criticized regardless of what you do, but it's always good to minimize what people can criticize you on if possible.

So, to get these scenes in my head and really map them out as much as I can before they ever hit the page might make it come out that much more realistically. That's my theory and hope anyway. I haven't even gotten into the vampire lore and trying to make all that make sense and not seem too contrived.

Apart from songs that remind me of my story, there is another Coldplay song that makes me want to grab the laptop and start writing immediately just for writing's sake. Square One (lyrics here), with the lyrics "you're in control, is there anywhere you wanna go?/anything you wanna know?" and "from the top of the first page, to the end of the last day" just sounds like a writing theme. I have to say, for a band that I wrote off a long time ago, I am really digging them a lot now. Could be worse, I guess.

Comments

[amaz0n-princess.livejournal.com]

I skipped the spoilers... but yes, I TOTALLY know what you mean about music. It's SOOOO essential in the writing process for me. I have certain songs that I will play on repeat while writing a scene.

[mellymell.livejournal.com]

I thought I'd want to write in silence, but there's certain music that makes it hard to do anything but write for me. It's fast becoming essential if I want things to really roll along. And I'm glad I'm not the only one who puts things on repeat if I find it really fits something I'm working on. ;)