While working on the updated review for Ori & The Blind Forest (which seems to have taken a literal age to finish), I realized that I needed to clarify yet another point before I release my review.
The usability I reference is about writing soundtracks. I know I’ve covered this before in various forms or fashions on other locations. I’m trying to make sure I’ve got all my thoughts collected in one place for my dear readers.
I’ve found that I have two general sorts of writing soundtracks. This is in my experience, of course. Everyone writes differently – and we should! I think the world would be full of very boring things if we were all working the same! I’ll explain the two kinds that I use here, as those will be how I’m evaluating the Game OSTs that I’m currently doing reviews on.
I make both writing soundtracks that prep me for writing (Prep for Writing Soundtracks) – which can be either general or story specific – and also writing soundtracks to listen to while writing (While Writing Soundtracks).
Prep for Writing Soundtracks are the kind of music selections that I use… sort of like a rice cake.
Well, not perfectly, but a rice cake for thought processes, at least in terms of being a palate cleanser that prepares the brain for other things. There are some albums / playlists that I have that are good at taking me out of whatever mood the day has put me in and right into the mindset for writing. The soundtrack to The Hours, for instance, somehow switches me over quite easily from whatever has happened during the day to a clearer state of mind where I can focus on completely unrelated and creative things.
For Prep for Writing Soundtracks, I oftentimes listen to an entire disk through. The Catch Me If You Can soundtrack is good for it as well. (I also, perhaps oddly, have found that the Story Wonk podcast lecture series can be helpful. I haven’t found it good to actively write to, but I do find it helpful for me to listen to readers discussing what they like about literature. In Want of a Wife has been lovely fodder for two separate series I am writing that involve a period setting. )
Sometimes the Prep for Writing Soundtrack sets me in the tone for the specific story I am planning to work on, especially if I am switching from one story to another. For instance the Catch Me If You Can score/soundtrack is a good prologue to writing a magic based story I’m working on. If you came to this through tumblr, then you know I write fanfiction. Working on fanfiction can make this particularly important, as Dragon Age fanfiction and, say, BBC Sherlock or Resident Evil fanfiction are all in completely different genres, even though Sherlock and Resident Evil are both ostensibly “modern” and Dragon Age is “medieval fantasy”. I can’t just shift over to writing in a different story without some sort of transition, so I use Prep for Writing Soundtracks (or playlists) for that. It’s quite important for me, because I tend to write many stories all at the same time.
While Writing Soundtracks, on the other hand, are most often playlists I have built and not full album soundtracks. I tend to build these playlists with an actual emotional / plot journey as well as an eye to transitions between songs (jarring transitions will take me out of the zone pretty handily). The journey of the songs doesn’t have to be the exact journey for the story as it is when it’s finished, but the songs in the playlist need to move me through a series of experiences or emotions that are somehow related to how I feel the progression of the book feels. This may, for the record, have nothing whatsoever to do with how the reader feels when reading the book, but it works consistently for me in getting back to writing something.
For instance, I wrote The Wendy that Stayed primarily when I was working on a theater production, doing sound board operation for it. That might sound odd, but I promise you Peter was swooping around my head in the sound booth. That particular show was highly automated, so I was a go button monkey except for a brief section in which I ran a microphone, so largely I was fine if I could make my left hand hit the button when I got the call for the sound cue. When I was writing outside of the theater and once that show finished, however, I didn’t have the block of quiet time where I could zone in so thoroughly. The way I supplemented my focus was a playlist that I have made, lost, remade, and relost. It’s rather tragic, actually, because I pulled music from so may albums that I purchased purely for the purpose of using them to write to and now I don’t remember the order or the specific tracks that I used. Either way that playlist was the one that taught me I could write well to music, and that I could write a specific story well to music.
Building my While Writing Playlists is an important part of dedicating myself to the specific story that I’m working on. It makes my iPod playlist section long and means that I have a ton of folders in it, but it’s what works for me, and I would encourage anyone who has problems with their muse or problems with their focus or ability to complete their stories to give it a shot.
Music can be a powerful tool and either kind of writing soundtrack can work well, depending on the mood that you’re in.
UPDATE: I’ve been working on an entry for Choice of Games’ contest (one that won’t make it this year due to some health and Bruce Wayne setbacks) and have found that for branching narrative, I need a writing sountrack AND an additional focus method. More on that later.
