From: seawasp@sgeinc.invalid.com   
      
   Most of you know I'm posting various articles to r.a.sf.w to help keep   
   some traffic up. Most of those don't belong here, but I think this one   
   and a prior column on how I write probably are. So here we go!   
      
   	One of the key elements of the way in which I write is that I must have   
   music playing. Quiet – as in dead silence – intrudes on my   
   consciousness. I write best when I have sound that helps evoke emotions   
   in me, so that I can try to evoke emotion in my words.   
      
   	This has naturally evolved into a habit of constructing a "soundtrack"   
   for my books as I go along. In many cases the soundtrack becomes quite   
   detailed, with a dozen or even two dozen tracks each representing a   
   character, piece of the setting, or event. This helps me keep the mood   
   and "flavor" of the world, or part of the world, that I'm working on   
   fresh in my mind, anchors me in a way to the story I'm telling, the   
   locale I'm telling it in, and the characters I'm telling it with.   
      
   	This isn't a unique thing; a lot of other authors have mentioned they   
   do similar things from time to time. I have noticed that the type of   
   music varies rather drastically.   
      
   	In my case, it has to be instrumental music, or at least music without   
   voices speaking a language I understand. If I hear voices talking in   
   words I understand, it starts to distract me from the words I'm trying   
   to write. Thus, essentially no songs written or sung in English. There   
   is an occasional exception (Bonnie Tyler's "Holding Out for a Hero", for   
   instance, was a significant piece in composing Stuff of Legend), but for   
   the most part the music can't obtrude its own words into my consciousness.   
      
   	The music – in general – also has to have positive emotion in it in   
   some sense. Even the villanous themes need something that's powerful and   
   dramatic. I am, quite openly, a melodrama addict. Screaming death metal   
   or similar stuff leaves me utterly cold; I hear no glory or victory in   
   some guy shrieking half-understood words amid a bunch of whining   
   guitars. Similarly, even if the words weren't in English, a lot of   
   emo-goth music fails to move me.   
      
   	So, most of my music comes from orchestral sources, and – because such   
   music is quite deliberately constructed to produce powerful emotional   
   reactions – often from movie and TV soundtracks. There are other good   
   sources, such as classical music (Beethoven's Ninth, Holst's Jupiter,   
   etc.), but in terms of proportion of my library, soundtracks of one sort   
   or another make up the majority of my listening material.   
      
   	Music goes far beyond maintaining my connection and mood, however.   
   Sometimes it writes the music. Sometimes a piece of music catches my   
   attention when I'm trying to figure out a particular scene, a particular   
   character, and the music's pattern and thrust builds the remainder up in   
   my mind, until it's almost impossible for me to imagine the scene   
   without that music.   
      
   For example, the scene I call "DuQuesne's Victory" in Grand Central   
   Arena was born from the piece of music I associate it with: "Trigger   
   Situation" from Final Fantasy VII: Dirge of Cerberus. I knew very   
   roughly what had to happen, but the details – how I depicted DuQuesne   
   unleashing himself, the sequence of events in the combat and how it   
   ended, were all summoned from my mind on repeated listenings to that   
   piece of music.   
      
   The same thing is true in my soon-to-be-published Oz novel, Polychrome.   
   The setup for and subsequent grand conflict at the end of the novel was   
   laid out, in a very general sense, in my head, but it wasn't until my   
   brain seized upon two pieces of music that I suddenly found the details   
   emerging in my head: "The Greatest Story Never Told" from Doctor Who,   
   and "Stigmata", from Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis.   
      
   Another example is the beginning of the final battle in my   
   yet-to-be-completed trilogy Demons of the Past. The details of that   
   confrontation, where all of the plots and counterplots of all three   
   books finally collide and are resolved, revealing how the endgame of   
   this gargantuan galaxy-spanning chess match will be resolved, became   
   detailed and solidified for me when I listened to a piece whose title I   
   can't find a good translation to; Google translates the Kanji as   
   "Victory of the Minutest Care" or, as Chinese, "Victory of Stigmata",   
   but it is the theme played in the Yuu Yuu Hakusho: Poltergeist Report   
   movie when "The four spirits are as one" and they proceed to whip the   
   CRAP out of the big bad who formerly totally outmatched them.   
      
   This kind of thing is tremendously important to me when writing. I need   
   to have clear, and awesome, images in my head that I'm looking forward   
   to, things I want badly to actually turn into words on the page. Knowing   
   what "Crowning Moment of Awesome" I am working towards will pull me   
   through momentary attacks of doubt, exhaustion, or confusion, provide a   
   beacon for me to use in guiding myself through the plot. Where's my   
   destination? THERE! Can I get there by going this way? … no. How about   
   this way? … nope, not that one. How about like this? … Yes! That's it!   
      
   When I can, I post these soundtracks, but there's a maintenance problem:   
   most such pieces of music are under SOMEONE's copyrights, and so they   
   get taken down, and I end up with broken links. It's a shame in a way; I   
   encourage people to BUY the music I use, when possible (I wish there was   
   a simple way to link to music on iTunes as an associate, the way I can   
   with Amazon).   
      
   Music can also fit to the scene after I write it. I wrote the first   
   version of Kyri's confrontation with Myrionar many years before Doctor   
   Who got its rebirth in 2005, but when I was working on the final   
   version, I came to realize that the Season Four theme for The Doctor was   
   exactly what I wanted to symbolize that scene. It works perfectly,   
   evoking the quiet sense of loss and isolation,and then the sudden   
   triumphal power of the answer that Kyri Vantage gets.   
      
   Music, of course, is flexible; it doesn't have to be chained to a single   
   set of events. Since I use a lot of soundtracks, this is obvious; this   
   music starts out with a strong and very direct association with the   
   events of the movie or TV series from which it comes, and I am naturally   
   repurposing it when I start thinking of it as a theme for something I'm   
   writing. The theme "Thor Kills the Destroyer" from the movie Thor has an   
   obvious – and totally awesome – actual scene associated with it. But it   
   also, in my mind, became the perfect piece of music to serve as Legend's   
   finale against his enemy Ragnarok in Stuff of Legend.   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)