The Music of Writing

Happy Blog Day Everyone!

Today’s topic is based around music and writing, but as usual lets get onto the weekly briefs!

Weekly Briefs

Harvey Duckman Presents…The Return.

So are you a fan of the first Harvey Duckman Presents? Then you’ll be pleased to know that volume 2 will be soon making an appearance, and with it…Another brand new Brennan and Riz story! Yes, the pair will be making their return in a story called “Black Cat on the Prowl”.

Creator Chaos

Looking for the interview with Peter Hartog? Well keep checking your favorite places to get podcasts as it will be going live May 23rd!

We had a great recording session this past Sunday and the episode will be uploaded soon. We took a great deal of criticism onboard and hopefully we have upped our game. Keep an eye out for the podcast reaching your airwaves soon!

A reminder of who the rest of Creator Chaos are:

Me – I don’t think I need to explain myself…

Kelvin Rodriguez – Fans and followers of the #vss365 tag will recognize this fellow and his creations, a master of the pun.

Zack Brooks – Author of the ‘Charlie the Cupid’ shorts and ‘The Trials of Amaford” novellas, the second of which is out now so please look for ‘How Not To Be A Scribe’ and give it a read (and if a review, assuming you get the chance!) ! A great guy and the defacto leader of our rabble.

Pete Hartog – Author of the novel Bloodlines, and currently working on its sequel. A great guy with a great taste in music and a fantastic name.

Click here to listen to all the podcasts so far and look out for us on Spotify and Apples Music Service!

Vector Unit Regen Orphan’s War

Still on hiatus, hoping to resume it soon!
To catch up on the series so far, click here!

Brief Mentions

Liking what you’re hearing about Brennan and Riz? Click here to look at the short story collection of their adventures so far!

Looking for their newer stuff? Click here for their Christmas encounter with a Yeti, or click here for the anthology containing the short ‘A Walk Through The Pleasure Gardens’, get this one and you also get a whole host of brilliant short stories as well from fantastic authors.

Click here to find me on Goodreads

And now…time for our main feature presentation…

The Music of Writing

Music and writing go together hand and hand, in a manner of speaking. Some writers write with music providing the background, while others still devote their time to writing music, others still infuse their writing with music. During my early days writing, my friend shown me a piece he was working on that incorporated music during key scenes, effectively giving characters their own theme songs as it were.

I was blown away as I had never thought of using music like that, I didn’t think it was possible (Turns out it’s not, unless you have the money to pay for licensing fees of course, using copyrighted songs is not cheap and can derail your progress). I experimented with including songs in the story I worked on after this (The first draft of Daemon Soul Awakening…I’ll talk about that soon enough I swear!), and it helped the scenes come alive, though they ultimately proved very self indulgent.

Ultimately I took them out, partly because of the legality, and mostly because they just seemed out of place when going through it. This isn’t to say that this was the only part music had to play.
Outside of the story, music was helping me to be inspired, as I imagined the story taking the form of animation, and the music, giving it the soundtrack. Doing things this way helped me to describe better what I wanted to get across during the important scenes.

 I often use this approach with all my writings, where applicable. Take for instance, the piece I shared a few weeks ago, about Aldo the Ghost. In my head, that short uses Foo Fighters, The Pretender, as it’s backing track, and it is visible in the way the story is paced and some of the dialogue choices. Without that song, that short piece would be very different. The trick of using a song to inspire pacing isn’t new by any stretch, but I came across it through my other hobby: Drawing.

In one of the many, many, and I mean, many, books about drawing, one of them offers the advice of drawing while listening to music. The intent was that the beat would influence how you would draw the frames of the page (when drawing comics) matching the music to the scene you wanted was paramount. I had encouraging successes while drawing, doing a few test strips, that I wanted to try it with writing. I had an idea of what scene I wanted, and it was coincidence that Foo Fighter’s song happened to be a fantastic fit when I listened to it again and again. I will let you, the reader, be the judge in how much I succeeded with it.

But what if you really want a song in your story but can’t afford to get the songs you hear on the radio? Well, at this point, you do it yourself. This is what the friend who introduced me to this concept ended up doing. It has it’s obvious advantages (no fees, can tailor it to your story if you want) but it has a disadvantage, being that making a song is a lot harder then you would ever know. This is because writing a song is more then just lyrics, you have to think about the melody that will go along with the words. You can write all the fancy lyrics you want but if the tune doesn’t work, then the story will grind to a halt as everyone runs from the dodgy music.

Admittedly, this is the trap my friend fell in. He believed that the music he had wrote was fantastic, the truth was that it was well below sub-par. He also staggeringly, believed that it was easy to write songs, not taking anything into account.

It was for these reasons that I decided to leave the song writing to song writers, having gained a respect for what they were doing.

It’s a short blog this week, and the idea of music in writing is one I’m sure to return to, till then, may you never fall down a plot hole, and may the words flow through your fingers.

See you next week!