Finding Inspiration - in Music and Lyrics (2)

My last inspiration in music and lyrics post revolved around the "body" of the music, the lyrics that gave it meaning, this post will focus much more on the "soul" of the music, the chords and melodies that create the feeling. This is perfect for mood writing and creating scenarios, very often I find myself writing one thing but as the tone of the music alters it can completely change what i'm writing, something very tense or fast might suddenly have a moment of tenderness intertwined, or it may become dangerous or just cease altogether. I've been writing to music for what feels like an eternity, I love classical music, that doesn't just mean Mozart, Yiruma and Einaudi, that can mean anything from a sound tracks to sound effects. Sound tracks are possibly some of the  best pieces to write to, they were designed to inhibit a particular emotion or response, if you allow yourself to write to the mood of a piece of music rather than trying to make the music fit what it is you're writing then it's pretty much a guarantee to some fantastic stuff.

* Remember sound track music was designed to create a specific feeling, so use it to help you develop the tone of the piece you are writing, whether you close your eyes and allow the scene to act out in your head or write it along side the music then and there, this is probably one of the best ways to ensure your writing has the right effect!

Here are some of my favourite sound tracks to listen to when i'm writing and a couple of favourites from the overall albums:

Gladiator.

- The Might of Rome

- Barbarian Hoarder

- Honour Him   

- Am I Not Merciful

- Now We Are Free

The Dark Knight.

- Like A Dog Chasing Cars

 - And I Thought My Jokes Were Bad

- Agent of Chaos

- A Dark Knight

The Tudors. 

(from seasons 1-2)

- The War Room

- Mixed Messages From Anne

- Katherine Stripped Of Her Jewels

- Anne's Premonition

- Dreaming of Killing Anne Boleyn

- Anne Miscarries Her Baby

- Aren't You The King Of England?

- Anne Dreams of her Childhood.

- Confessions And Arrests

The Village

- The Bad Colour

- I Cannot See His Colour

- Rituals

- The Forbidden Line

- The Shed Not To Be Used

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. P1

- Sky Battle 

- Death Eaters

- Dobby

- The Locket

- Destroying the Locket

- Hermione's Parents

- Captured and Tortured

- Rescuing Hermione

- Farewell to Dobby

- The Elder Wand

Eclipse the motion picture Sound Track

- Imprinting

- Rosalie

- Jacob Black

- Mountain Peak

- The Kiss

- Jane

- As Easy As Breathing

New Moon the motion picture Sound Track

- New Moon

- Romeo & Juliet

- Volturi Waltz

- Edward Leaves

- Memories of Edward

- Almost A Kiss

- Dreamcatcher

- The Volturi

- The Cullens

Lord of the Rings - Return of the King

- A Storm is Coming

- Minas Tirith

- Shelob's Lair

- The Steward Of Gondor 

(with Pippins song)

- Twilight And Shadow

- The Black Gate Opens

- The End Of All Things

Pride and Prejudice

- The Living Sculptures Of Pemberly

- Arrival At Netherfield

- Georgiana

- The Secret Life Of Daydreams

- Lizzie On Top Of The World

- Darcy's Letter 

- Your Hands Are Cold

- End Credits

Tarzan

 - One Family

- I Gorilla

Defiance

- Survivors

- Tuvia Kisses Lika

Atonement 

- Robbies Notes

- Two Figures By A Fountain

I Am Legend

- I'm Sorry

- I Am Legend (Epilogue)

The Ghost Writer

- Hidden Documents 

- In The Woods

- Chase On The Ferry

The Happening

- My Firearm Is My Friend

The Sixth Sense

 - Mind Reading

- Photographs

- Malcom Is Dead

Abandon

- Opening Titles

- The Country House

The Beautiful Country

- Strange Look 

There are so many hundreds of fantastic soundtracks you can use to help you create the right atmosphere for your characters or story, some of the names I find that keep cropping up are:

* James Newton-Howard
* Alexandre Desplat
* Brian Crain
* Hans Zimmer
* Trevor Morris &
* Howard Shore

So be sure to listen to some of their creations and allow it to influence yours.
After all, does the writer tell the story or the story tell the writer?
You chose!

Finding Inspiration - in Music and Lyrics

So I'm posting this a lot sooner than I thought I was because something happened last night whereby I was chilling out listening to my ipod and two songs came on one after the other and an entire story seemed to spring out of absolutely no where, to the extent that I managed a word count of 10,573 in one sitting that day. I realised that the story in my head was actually woven around the lyrics to the songs, a case of my own interpretation of the lyrics and the way my mind merged the two of them together. Of course it's not a complete story, but it formed enough of a skeleton in my head to enable me to launch myself into something new and develop it into another novel. 
So with out further adieu i'll share the examples I found and you'll see how easy it is just to combine two things into one. I've underlines the parts that, to me, really created something. Both songs are quite similar which I think helped, but not all the lines are necessarily all to do with plot, some of them are to do with characterisation, like the tone, feelings and motivation behind the words:

Taylor Swift - Change.

And it’s a sad picture, the final blow hits you

Somebody else gets what you wanted again and

You know it’s all the same, another time and place

Repeating history and you’re getting sick of it

But I believe in whatever you do

And I’ll do anything to see it through

Because these things will change

Can you feel it now?

These walls that they put up to hold us back will fall down

This revolution, the time will come

For us to finally win

And we’ll sing hallelujah, we’ll sing hallelujah

So we’ve been outnumbered

Raided and now cornered

It’s hard to fight when the fight ain’t fair

We’re getting stronger now

Find things they never found

They might be bigger

But we’re faster and never scared

You can walk away, say we don’t need this

But there’s something in your eyes

Says we can beat this

Because these things will change

Can you feel it now?

These walls that they put up to hold us back will fall down

This revolution, the time will come

For us to finally win

And we’ll sing hallelujah, well sing hallelujah

Tonight we stand, get off our knees

Fight for what we’ve worked for all these years

And the battle was long, it’s the fight of our lives

But we’ll stand up champions tonight

It was the night things changed

Can you see it now?

These walls that they put up to hold us back fell down

It’s a revolution, throw your hands up

Cause we never gave in

And we sang hallelujah, we sang hallelujah

Hallelujah

Source: http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/taylorswift/change.html

Taylor Swift - Long Live.

I still remember this moment

In the back of my mind

The time we stood with our shaking hands

The crowds in stands went wild

We were the kings and the queens

And they read off our names

The night you danced like you knew our lives

Would never be the same

You held your head like a hero

On a history book page

It was the end of a decade

But the start of an age

Long live the walls we crashed through

All the kingdom lights shined just for me and you

I was screaming, "long live all the magic we made"

And bring on all the pretenders

One day we will be remembered

I said remember this feeling

I passed the pictures around

Of all the years that we stood there on the sidelines

Wishing for right now

We are the kings and the queens

You traded your baseball cap for a crown

When they gave us our trophies

And we held them up for our town

And the cynics were outraged

Screaming, "this is absurd"

'Cause for a moment a band of thieves in ripped up jeans got to rule the world

Long live the walls we crashed through

All the kingdom lights shined just for me and you

I was screaming, "long live all the magic we made"

And bring on all the pretenders

I'm not afraid

Long live all the mountains we moved

I had the time of my life

Fighting dragons with you

I was screaming, "long live the look on your face"

And bring on all the pretenders

One day we will be remembered

Hold on to spinning around

Confetti falls to the ground

May these memories break our fall

Can you take a moment

Promise me this:

That you'll stand by me forever

But if God forbid fate should step in

And force us into a goodbye

If you have children someday

When they point to the pictures

Please tell them my name

Tell them how the crowds went wild

Tell them how I hope they shine

Long live the walls we crashed through

I had the time of my life with you

Long, long live the walls we crashed through

All the candlelight shined just for me and you

And I was screaming, "long live all the magic we made"

And bring on all the pretenders

I'm not afraid

Singing long live all the mountains we moved

I had the time of my life

Fighting dragons with you

And long, long live the look on your face

And bring on all the pretenders

One day we will be remembered

Source: http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/t/taylor_swift/long_live.html

Thank you Taylor Swift! <3

Adding on, i've recently come across another song where a couple of the lyrics really stood out to me.

Anna Bergendahl - The Army.

It was the calm before the storm and she was taking up the torch
She saw them riding for a fall, blind to the spirit of the lord
They sold their bodies and their souls but she held on to keep her own
Cause there were something in the air
That told her just fall in the stairs

Don't lose your faith, the light will shine on your way
And listen - don't change your heart
The day will breaking you, stand tall

And so she builds an army with all her friends
All prepared to fight til the bitter end
And they started marching irrespectable
It's the only dying in the name of love, love

And they were heading for the hills
She filled her caution to the wind and travelled off the beaten track
The one with shuttles of the past

Don't lose your faith, the light will shine on your way
And listen - don't change your heart
The day will breaking you, stand tall

And so she builds an army with all her friends
All prepared to fight til the bitter end
And they started marching irrespectable
It's the only dying in the name of love, love

It was the calm before the storm and she was taking up the torch
She saw them riding for a fall, blind to the spirit of the lord

Source: http://www.songlyrics.com/anna-bergendahl/army-lyrics/

                      Thank you Anna Bergendahl!

Finding Inspiration - In the News!

So lets start off with something that surrounds us daily, the news! All the time we have presenters and papers practically screaming new story lines on us if only we can learn to interpret them in a way that will make them enthralling enough to capture an audience. Being a new young writer myself I don't hold back in saying I find this task particularly hard, trying to turn one head line into a novel is a challenge for anyone, no matter how juicy the story! However, I've often looked for stories that can provide different elements I can include in my current work - if only to spice it up a bit. It's a great method if ever you find your plot running a little dry, scan through a paper, reading the smaller sub-titles as well as the main ones splashed across the pages and  you might be surprised at the things you'll find!

Here's a couple I found in the paper last week that I think could add an interesting element into a grounded plot.


The North/South Divide - By Dean Poulter.
Okay, so admittedly this article is about the wedding celebration plans (or lack of if you're in the North) for Prince William and Kate Middleton's wedding. However, it was the "North/South Divide" title and the statistics next to it that actually caught my attention. It brings to mind an oldish country, or possibly something more futuristic but impoverished, currently caught in the middle of a civil split - or as the Daily Mail referred to it "The Royalists" and "The Roundheads"...I hope you know your history enough to understand what it means!
As basic as that might seem if that helps you create a vivid setting for your plot or theme for it to revolve around then you're half way to knowing what you want and being able to write something decent. You don't have to pay any necessary attention to the events happening in the article / who it concerns, just be aware of the themes. But just for good measure, all the best to Will and Kate!

Fukushima heroes expect to die - Daily Mail.
This was a really touching story that immediately caught my eye! It's about 300 Japanese men who are repeatedly exposing themselves to lethal levels of radiation as they try to restore vital cooling systems after the Tsunami on March 11th. It goes without saying that these men are expecting to die, if not from radiation sickness then probably cancer or some other horrifying disease. This is a really touching story that has a lot to offer any novelist, it could give you a tragic scenario for your characters, self sacrifice of some form that is absolutely necessary, the theme of knowing what it is to be waiting for death, being trapped somewhere after a disaster has happened, natural or otherwise or the destruction of a disaster and the affects that has. There's a lot more to be taken from this story, this is just the first few obvious things that come to mind, but finding a theme or happening of some sort really can be as quick as that.
And God Bless those incredible men!

The day the earth moved in Blackpool - Daily Mail. 
Again, this is just another idea of how you can shake your plot up a bit...literally! Even if you just take some of the description from it about how the people described walls moving and the ground shaking. It's all realistic!


So there you go, it took me about an hour to read through the paper and there were a lot of really good articles that I felt could easily help move a plot along, spice things up or create a solid yet absorbing location for a story, all you have to do is grab your highlighter (and if you're like me, scissors, glue, paper, pen and folder) and get reading...and fear not those of you who cannot be bothered to trawl through or buy papers, there's no excuse now the news papers have gone wireless too, get browsing those newspaper sites!



References: http://www.dailymail.co.uk | The Daily Mail - Saturday - April 2 - 2011.

Adapting!

So my last entry vented a bit about how you should look else where for inspiration other than other people's works that you've already read any trying to tweak bits here and take out bits there until its more or less your own. Then there was the part about where to find inspiration and the extract from an interview with the fabulous Suzanne Collins! So I've decided to do some research on my own to find out how easy or difficult this might be for a new writer. This means i'll be trawling the newspapers, opening my eyes to the world around me and seeing how many story lines I can create without looking to other novelists for help!

Get your pens at the ready!

The Thing About Writing...

The thing about writing, whether it's a book, novel or novella is it has to be your own work. I don't think it really hit me until today when I came across information about author Suzanne Collins (author of "The Hunger Games" Trilogy). The trilogy is another one of my favourites and definitely up on the recommended list, one of the things that struck me whilst reading it was how on earth did she manage to come up with such a fresh, original story? A lot of people i've spoken to draw inspiration from books and stories they've all ready read, there's nothing wrong with it but i've always felt that by doing that there's always an element, a part of the story that doesn't belong to you. However Suzanne Collins' idea for The Hunger Games came almost by chance in a sense but is a fantastic example of how to create your own completely new, utterly original story line...
WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS!!


Collins says that the idea for The Hunger Games came from channel surfing on the T.V. On one channel she observed people competing on a reality show and on another she saw footage of the Iraq War. The two blended together and the idea of children fighting each other to the death was formed.

Of course, that doesn't mean that you can flip from BBC1 to Channel 5 and automatically have yourself a story line, Collins draws from her own experiences and makes them a running feature throughout the book, she has also incorporated in her own interests in Greek Mythology drawing from the Greek myth of Theseus, even describing the heroine Katniss as "like a futuristic Theseus." 

The thing about writing, I feel, is that if you haven't thought it up then it isn't yours. If you're drawing from someone else's work, using similar elements and ideas then the work you create can never fully belong to you. Collins shows that actually there are some really quick and simple ways to form a basic plot idea, what you choose to feed in to your story is completely up to you. Unless you know how to take a loose idea from someone and turn it into something completely original people will know the work isn't all yours.

Examples?

- A school of Magic
- Ohh, like the Harry Potter books?!

- Magic Kids trying to defeat a bad Wizard
- Basically Harry Potter without Hogwarts then?

- A Vampire Romance
- You mean like Twilight?

- Elves and Mythical People on a long haul adventure.
- So, basically Lord of the Rings?

It's near impossible to write a book that doesn't have anything in common with any other book, of course there are going to be similar elements but the thing about writing is that unless you thought of the idea for yourself, that story just doesn't belong to you...and it'll show.


References.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hunger_Games