Letting Music Shape the World of The Dragonfly Temple Chronicles
Writing is such an individual journey with so many individual styles. Take music, for example. When I write, I need quiet. Music is too distracting for me. Music may change moods in the middle when I need to concentrate on one mood for my character. Or it may stay in one mood when I need to take my character from happy to sad or angry. And music with lyrics, forget-about-it! I’ll be singing along and not writing.
But that’s just me. My wife and today’s guest blogger, Kristine aka )O( Luna Whoticore, has a whole different take on how music inspires her writing…
Letting Music Shape the World of The Dragonfly Temple Chronicles
We all filter our emotional responses to a favorite piece of music through the lenses of our own personal experiences. When something touches us deeply, making us cry, it taps into (or generates) that connection that is so vitally important to the quality of our existences as beings that are more than mere flesh.
It gives us a glimpse into our own divinity – our etheric selves, if you will. For myself, it allows me to achieve heightened states of profound bliss, which opens the floodgates of non-stop story scenes and ideas that can last for many hours!
Music can even be said to be the “voice” that created the Universe. Many cultures give divine power to these very human tools of sound – a voice alone, or creating music, can (according to them) bend and shape energy, thereby bringing matter into existence, bending it to the will of their divine ones in order to bring about the Universe – and ourselves.
Testimonials to the power of sound are as profound as what the Bible Wiki says referring to the creation of our planet, “…at this point, God introduced the two ways with which He communicates with humanity: Sound and Light. The sound of His Voice speaking Light into existence began what would be the first moment of measured time” https://bible.fandom.com/wiki/Earth
Even an atheist must acknowledge the power of sound itself in our daily lives to shatter glass, detect objects at the bottom of the ocean floor (sonar), create wars (or peace) depending on the voice (tone and inflection) of the user’s will.
So is it really so far-fetched that an amazing piece of music can inspire me – and millions of other writers across the globe – to visualize a scene as we tell our stories, write our scenes, draft our scripts?
Not at all.
We all have our tools, settings and inspirations for how, when and where we write our stories, our poems, our scripts. These vehicles to the world of creativity are as varied as the writers and their stories themselves.
My main vehicle to getting a story from Inspiration to Creation is music. Plain and simple.
The mechanics behind how and why it works are slightly more complicated, but that is an automated process that works in the background and is nothing I personally need to worry about. That’s the beauty of having music be my inspiration…it can happen anytime, anywhere and if I keep an open mind, with nearly any form of music around me. Be it a movie or t.v. soundtrack, a popular band, Ambient Darkwave piece or East Indian religious chant, it sparks something in my mind that quickly turns it into a piece of my ever-expanding world of The Dragonfly Temple Chronicles.
I recently discovered that one of my favorite music artists, David Helpling, has a quote on his Facebook fan page I strongly relate to because of how deeply music inspires my story’s scenes and overall direction. This quote by David goes, “Music is always in my head. That’s how I write. I’m always dreaming.”. For me, my character’s stories and worlds are always in my head and that’s who I write. And yes, I also feel like I’m always dreaming as well.
Part One of many to come on the series “The Road to Inspired Writing” at https://whocate.info
(to read future installments and follow Kristine’s writing journey, visit my wife’s blog, Journal of the MoonWitch)
170th blog completed.
First Steampunk novel: 74221 words. <– Past 74,000. Goal: 80,000.
Second Steampunk novel: 783 words.
Second Steampunk screenplay: 157 pages.
First Steampunk screenplay: I need to update with notes from the novelization.
Third Steampunk screenplay: 38 pages.
I can’t say music never inspires me, but it’s sort of the other way around. A scene I write may remind me of a piece of music. When I’m writing my steampunk novels, particularly an action-packed chase scene on a train, it reminds me of the theme of “The Wild Wild West”. It’s the same time period and has an underscore of military drums. Two of my heroes have a military background with The British Royal Army. So when I reread these action scenes, this is the music going through my head: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILI5ZtyVNbI&list=RDMMILI5ZtyVNbI&start_radio=1
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