When I took part in NaNoWriMo 2007 one of the things that
helped me through the novel that I ended up with was listening to movie
soundtracks as I typed.
I hadn’t long been buying soundtracks and only had a small collection.
Whilst it was all really good music, none of it fit with my style of writing.
Then one day I heard a piece of music from the movie Transformers called ‘Arrival on Earth’. Thirty minutes of sampling the
rest of the tracks on that album and I went ahead and downloaded the whole damn
thing.
I started to get a real liking for the atmosphere created by
listening to this and similar soundtracks. It helped me block out distractions
like people in other rooms or noises from the outside world. And with no lyrics
it meant I couldn’t be distracted by humming along or singing to the good bits (which
I never do, honest).
I found myself drawn to a lot of Hans Zimmer as well as some
of his contemporaries. At first I was worried that listening to the music from
movies I loved would just cause me to subconsciously repeat too much of the
movies themselves. I worried that all I’d end up with was pure plagiarism.
But it didn’t happen like that. Instead I found that it just brought
out more drama in my scenes and my ideas. Chase scenes felt more like chase
scenes. Fight scenes felt more like fight scenes.
And so it continued.
What happened next was more important though. I found that I could
listen to soundtracks at times when I wasn’t writing, like going for a walk
with my son or doing the washing up. During these times I would picture certain
scenes from various projects or create my own movie trailers for my novels.
Certain beats in the tracks I listened to would cause me to
suddenly introduce a character into a scene because the music had changed to a
slightly different theme. Other times the music would slow right down and maybe
drop everything except violins. This would make me ponder if the character in
the scene would stop and prepare themselves or realise something important at a
critical moment.
I’ve always been aware of the power that music plays in movies
as well as movie trailers. Personally I’m a sucker for music that starts soft before
building up, bringing in more instruments and heading towards a crescendo of raw
power. You know the trailers, the ones that have a lot of slow fades during the
first half but switch to jump cut after jump cut as the action ramps up.
I recently used the music of Two Steps From Hell (like Immediate
and ES Posthumus they create music to be used in movie trailers – you’d be
surprised by how many you might recognise) to re plan books two and three from
my [Project Death] trilogy.
It was pure chance that I was thinking about these novels at
the same time as the three pieces of music played in the order they did. It’s
hard to explain but after playing the music over and over for about half an
hour I had three ‘trailers’ in my head and a lot of key moments to the stories
than I had written down in my notes.
I now treat these like little audio notes and am able to
remember it all again in really good detail just by listening to the required
tracks. It was fluke but I guess we won’t see if it worked until I release the
trilogy.
And so I plan to continue. Whenever I sit down to write or to
plan I always go straight to soundtracks in my i-pod playlists and then let the
music guide me to where I need the story to go.
What follows are my three favourite tracks and the key scenes
that they have helped shape.
‘Fides en lucius dei’ -Immediate
(from the album
Trailerhead)
[Project Death] NaNoWriMo 2007
This story’s climax revolves around the hero finally facing
off against the villain in the centre of his home town. The only thing that
divides them is a vicious sea of monsters out for blood. As the music slowly
builds the hero begins to realise what he has to do and that he can still use
his new found abilities to win this fight.
With rage building inside him he uses his weapon and cuts a
swathe through the monsters before leaping into the air and straight at his
enemy. In the original version of this scene the main character just walked down
the empty high street while carrying out a verbal slanging match with the
villain. It was boring.
The music builds in steps becoming louder and more intense. Key
moments in the scene play out to key moments in the music; the sudden
certainty, the run, the leap and finally the start of the final battle.
‘Molossus’ - Hans Zimmer & James Newton
Howard
(from the soundtrack Batman Begins)
[Project Hero] NaNoWriMo 2009
With the heroes regrouped and ready to attack the villain’s
base of operation I struggled to get a real scale of a small team of super
powered beings attacking an island.
With ‘Molossus’ I was able to build up a picture of each
member of the team being to sneak further inland until, one by one, they came
up against resistance and were forced to fight. At the time this was the only
piece I had downloaded from the Batman Begins soundtrack but, putting it on
repeat and rewriting the scene in one evening I was able to build it up into an
epic attack where no one held back.
I especially like the break about three and a half minutes in
when things die down for a couple of seconds which pushed me into putting a
breather into the fight, a moment when the heroes think they’ve beaten back the
enemy forces only to discover the real threat waiting for them once they reach
the base.
‘Shard’ - Steve Jablonsky
(from the
soundtrack Transformer: Revenge of the Fallen)
[Project Mind] NaNoWriMo 2010
This piece of music helped me plan a critical scene during
the climax of the second act of [Project Mind]. The hero has been captured and
his three comrades have just worked out the villain’s true plan. There is a
specific point within the city they must get to quickly if they have any hope
of stopping the bad guy.
The first version had all three of them travelling across the
rooftops together. Occasionally they spoke as they got closer, building their
plan of attack. But the route was a straight line and description got boring.
After listening to ‘Shard’ at work one day I thought up a new
way to present it. The track shifts dramatically in style and it felt to me
like three different ‘themes’ were racing each other to the finishing line. I
decided that the three characters were not near each other at the beginning of
the scene and that each had a different way of traveling.
One drove through the rush hour streets, horn beeping as they
shouted at people to get out of the way. Another used his brute strength to run
across the windows of skyscrapers, leading between buildings where necessary.
The last kept his route across the rooftops but I put obstacles in his way.
Their paths crossed at times as the music changed and I used
that to switch the POV. It makes for a much more dramatic and jaw dropping
scene than three guys going for a rooftop jog.
And that’s how I’ve used music while writing. It might not
work for everyone but then again it might be what you’re missing. Give it a go
and find composers you like. Think about your novels while you’re out and about
and having the music on your MP3 player. See if a soundtrack makes you rethink
a scene or even an entire novel.
See you in seven
Recommended
soundtracks:
- Batman Begins Hans Zimmer & James Newton Howard
- Bourne Supremacy, The John Powell
- Fellowship of the Ring Howard Shore
- Inception Hans Zimmer
- Man of Steel Hans Zimmer
- Pirates of the Caribbean Klaus Badelt
- Requiem for a Dream Clint Mansell
- Star Wars: Episode III John Williams
- Transformers Steve Jablonsky
- Unbreakable James Newton Howard
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