What do you listen to when you write?

[Zoom]

Did we have this thread already? Whatever.



Me, it's all 90's trance, '00s DnB, and modern Synthwave!

Anything chill, with a steady beat and not many lyrics.


Everybody else?



PS it'd be cool to each write 300 words listening to the music recommended by the previous poster!

Ehhhhhhh?

[sapphire]

My usual soundtrack is silence. Or, you know, as silent as it gets living on a fairly busy street in NYC. Traffic, silence, same difference. But yeah, I find that listening to music makes me subconsciously try to match the rhythm of the music with my words - which can be super useful, at times, trying to get just the right mood for a scene. (Actually, now that I think of it, I wrote a good chunk of my novel to Lorde. About the last third of it, probably.) But usually, I try to avoid it. Sometimes I'll listen to lyric-less music, though, when I'm really scattered and having a hard time focusing. Something to make the bit of my mind that keeps jumping around focus can help.

I like this plan! And I would write mine now, but I need to go to bed. Been up for about twenty hours now. But I will write to your selection of music tomorrow, Zoom.

And for the next person to happen along:
For your writing pleasure.
(Don't watch the video, though, unless you want your writing influenced by it. It's very evocative.)

[Endovia]

Soundtracks! Music without words is usually the best for me, but if there’s a song with lyrics that has a certain mood that works with what I’m writing I’ll listen to that too.

This exercise was really fun. I didn’t watch the video, Sapphire. Only saw a glimpse of waves when I opened it.



The waves were muffled, a cottoned slosh against the belly of the ship. Hilde breathed in deeply the thick air of darkness and oak. He woke abruptly, the swish of legs and a short gasp. He threw off the bear pelt and swung his legs off the pallet. He put on a woolen long sleeve and pants topped with a full length coat of cured leather to prepare for the wind on deck. He noticed a light colored bundle about the length of his forearm on his table in the corner. Hilde peered at the bundle, but could not make out anything but that it was lighter than the wooden walls of his cabin. He picked up the bundle and brought it with him on deck.

Small eyes blinked slowly in the nautical twilight. Hilde grasped the baluster with one hand and stared at the babe. The faint light softly glinted on something nestled in the cloth. Hilde felt in the fold and picked out a large green scale.

A bird trilled lightly. Soft voices hummed. The wind snatched at the tails of his coat.

Ahahaa…owaaa…

A high voice pierced the wind.

Du fond de la mer, j’amener mon amour.
Prenez-le loin de ma voix,
Le soleil ne peut pas allumer l'eau caverneux.

Du fond de la mer, je vous apporte aucun regret.
Prenez-vous loin de mon regard,
Votre âme ne peut pas alléger la douleur d'une mère.

Du fond de la mer, je vous apporte une alarme.
Prenez votre bateau loin de mes rochers,
Le soleil ne peut pas sécher ceux trempés dans du sel.

Puissiez-vous joindre à moi dans les vagues.

Ahahaa…owaaa…

Sea green eyes peered at him.


----
I didn't want to create a new language, so I used French. (I think Google translate is alright ) Here's the English:

From the depths of the sea, I bring my love.
Take him away from my voice,
The sun cannot light the cavernous water.

From the depths of the sea, I bring no regret.
Take yourself away from my gaze,
Your soul cannot lighten a mother’s grief.

From the depths of the sea, I bring an alarm.
Take your ship away from my rocks,
The sun cannot dry those drenched in salt.

One night, may you join me in the waves.
----

For the next person: www.youtube.com/watch?v=-X3MWqJoYuI

[sapphire]

Awesome, Endovia! (Now go watch the video, I'm curious to see what you'll think of it.)


Whoa, okay, that took me a long time but was super cool to write to. Nice choice, Zoom! Made my writing all jolty. I was going to cut myself off at 300 words, but decided to keep going a bit. Here it is:



Deep breaths. Deep breaths. Deep breaths. Don’t panic. Your heart isn’t beating any faster. You can breathe. Just… deep breaths. This isn’t what you thought it would be. But that’s okay. Just get through this, and you can go home.

A flash of white light. Headlights. Pulsing sirens, far away. You can do this. Okay. Go.

Pick up the backpack. Grip tightly, let the rough material dig into your palm. Swing it onto your shoulder. It’s just a simple delivery. Drop it off, go home.
Walk. Forward, across the street. Busy, full of cars, but not moving. It’s not hard to dodge between bumpers. Up onto the curb, cross the sidewalk. Don’t stop now. Deep breaths. Look like you belong here. This could end the world. No, it won’t. It won’t. It won’t. Just this broken society.

Through the front doors. Swipe your security card. Familiar chirping. Maximum security clearance granted. This is your company, after all. Empty this time of night. Just a janitor. Respond to his nod with a tip of your head. He’s just a janitor. It’s expected.

Onto the elevator. Down, down, down down down. Bottom level. Swipe your security card again. Eye scanner. Fingerprints. Maximum security clearance granted.

Master computer. You know the way. Down three doors, left turn, second door on the right. Close it behind you. Lock it. Can’t be interrupted. Approach the keyboard, type a command. It freezes, busy lights come on all at once. This one isn’t like the others. This one only responds to you.

Drop the backpack at your feet. Kneel down, root around. The disc is there. A weakness. An opening. Open the disc drive. Silly, they told you. Everything is online. But you know better. There is no online. Or there won’t be.

Settle the disc into the tray. Close it. Watch the slot swallow up its own end. Downloading. Downloading. Downloading. Error.

Pick up the backpack. Error. Turn quickly. Deep breaths. Error. Your heart is beating faster now. You can’t ignore it. Error. Deep breaths. Error. Lights go dark. The door closes behind you on a black screen.

Now you can go home. Sleep. No one will know it was you. And tomorrow, the world will wake up free.

[Endovia]

Whoa. I wasn’t expecting them to be literal with the cutting up and being eaten. While I suppose it’s true in a circle of life way, just hearing the song made it seem more cheerful. I’m glad I didn’t watch the video. That would have thrown me in a completely different direction.

Dang… No internet! Sadly very trued how consumed we are with the internet. (If there was no internet, I couldn’t do a majority of my homework. They have so many online activities or posting now.)
I read it while listening to the song and it was great. I started reading to the beat, which was easy to do with your short sentences. And the tying of electronics with the electronic sounds was brilliant.

[sapphire]

Yeah, the video is very striking - especially when paired with the song. Hence my initial disclaimer.
The song is apparently about the death of the singer's son, which makes it even deeper and explains the video's darkness, I think.

I think this exercise is the first time in a long, long time that I've started writing without a plan as to where the story was going to go. So thanks for that, Zoom! I started out writing an anxiety attack, which turned into potential terrorist attack, which turned into sci-fi person hacking the master computer to take down the internet. Oops? The song definitely influenced my writing, though. This is a very cool experiment. I kind of want to try it with other music, now, just to see how differently I write to different music genres.

[Zoom]

I like it, Endovia! What's the story behind it? Or maybe don't tell me - I like how getting glimpses of the background (where is he? Why is the voice French? etc) makes my imagination fill it in.

And Saph I love those choppy sentences! Fits both the music and the anxiety. I always have a hard time in action movies because, like, why isn't the main character just freaking out all the time? I would definitely be freaking out.

(Ps have you seen Mr Robot?)

Also I have never listened to Lorde, besides Royals, so I checked her out and wow, I really like this! Thanks, haha!


Working on mine now, thanks Endovia!

[Zoom]

The cruiser glided into the docking bay like a carbon fibre monolith. The electromagnetic thrusters operated at a frequency above human hearing, so it decelerated for no reason that was apparent to Glacy's human senses. Though she, and the other members of the board, knew the reason, she always experienced a little leap, low in her chest - that shouldn't be doing that, says the thalamus under its breath, and doesn't listen to the frontal lobe's explanations.

It was 4am. The station's corridors were dimmed and humming. The night crew were told there was a decontamination happening in the wing tonight, and to stay away. Just Glacy and the four other members of the InterSys Shipping Company Board of Directors were present. And the pilot.

Once the airlock closed, Glacy made an abrupt motion with her left hand to tell the station to open communications with the cruiser. They couldn't risk communications while it was open - the station would default to short-range global, and, if a passing ship knew what to look for, they'd be able to hear.

"Tell me everything went well," said Glacy. She'd been relieved to see that the cruiser had suffered no damage since it had left Sol 2 three days earlier.

No response from the cruiser.

"808, come in," Glacy said. Still no response. Panic flared. Behind her, she heard the boardmembers shuffle uneasily.

Finally the station boo-deeped and the pilot started speaking. "There were no snags," she said.

"It's all there? You checked?"

"Yes."

Glacy made another gesture and the station began detaching the cruiser's small cargo hold.

The pilot spoke again. "And my payment?"

"It's to your right - beside the stairs."

"That blueish case?"

"Yes."

The other board members were intrigued. "A case?" Anthony said. "I thought she worked for us?"

"Oh, she does," Glacy said. "She's in Fielding and Redirection, I think. I'm not paying her in money." She turned to watch the viewport. The pilot had left the cruiser and was on her way to the stairwell. She walked with a limp, she noticed. Why had she never noticed that before? It wasn't on any of her medical profiles. Must have been gotten it doing something illicit. She filed that thought away.

The station had finished unloading the cargo bay, and was transferring it to the storage unit. There, it would be labelled as having come in on the last ship from Tyga, with contents "stuffed animals - green lions - 100,000 units", to be shipped out again the next day along with the actual cargo to Verinna, via a pilot they could frame if they had to. But why would they need to? By the time the war on Verinna 8 was over and things started coming out, they'd be inimplicable.

The board members, relaxed now, got ready to leave, chatting together. They'd had their fun - their wee-hours arms dealing with a legend - and now they were tired and wanted to get home so they could do...do whatever things people like these do at 5am when they don't feel like sleeping just yet.

Bee-doop. "Hey. It's not all here," said the pilot.

"Price went up," Glacy said. "Your work buys less of them, these days."

"This'll last me less than a month!" she said. Even from a hundred metres away, Glacy could imagine her face.

"I'm sorry," Glacy said. "That's just the way it is. You can't expect me to pay out of pocket for more."

"You own the fucking company!"

"It's more complicated than that - "

"Bullshit it is! They're not even on the market right now!"

"I'm not going to sit here and explain this to you. Either take them or don't, but get out. The day shift starts in thirty minutes. We'll have more work for you in a couple of weeks, if you're interested." She could no longer look at the pilot safely. Woman of stone, she said to herself, and didn't let herself laugh.

She knew it was coming -

"Goddammit!!" the pilot screamed. She was crying. Glacy didn't have to look. It came to her like a vision. The face red and puffy, lip curled in a snarl. Hands in claws, shaking, about to drop the medicine she'd indirectly killed hundreds of thousands of people for. "You can't do this!"

She wanted to answer - explain the reasons - but she stopped herself. She made another gesture, and the station blackened the viewport into the docking bay. If it were her, she'd be throwing things at the viewport screen now, trying to damage something important or at least make a noise - you couldn't deny a noise. But the smartglass was thick, and well-insulated, and nothing reached her.









Hot damn that was fun! Just realized I haven't written anything start-to-finish for months. I like these characters! Thanks for the music, Endovia - Youtube didn't have it anymore but I found the full soundtrack and I'm lovinggggg it. What great writing music!

Also the perfectionist in me can't write anything without making sure it's Right so I now know a lot about theoretical space propulsion and the evolution of brains and the future of gestural UI, which is cool, except I wish I'd slept for those hours instead

[Endovia]

This is something I really love, the combination of arts. With films, the visual and audio. And adding audio to writing. Or looking at a painting and then writing not necessarily about the painting itself but how it effects you or what it makes you think of.

Zoom, the song’s idea of water coming to life made me think of sirens. So I was originally thinking of a backstory of how Hilde met this siren and their interactions and that they fell in love. Instead of Hilde dying, the consequence of that love was a baby, but maybe only female babies are able to be sirens and the male babies are human so that’s why you see sirens as women. Hilde has returned and the siren is giving him their son.
Ideally, the language would be whatever language sirens would speak, so a fantasy language. (And I imagine the sirens would know more than one language so that siren and Hilde could have talked) But creating a language is a lot of work and French sounds seductive, so you still get the idea that it’s not the everyday language Hilde is used to. It could also be off the coast of France? I didn’t have a specific region in mind.
What do you guys think of using other languages in your writing?

Wow, very cool, Zoom. It’s interesting how even outside our planet war is still war. And people are still people and cheat each other.

Have you seen Solaris? Makes me think of that in terms of the inter-galactic travel. Though Solaris is more a war with the self instead of with others.

Yes, I love that soundtrack! After I watched the movie it is for, I wasn’t able to listen to the soundtrack for a while because the movie is so powerful and heart wrenching. If you are prepared to cry, I recommend the movie.

Research is good! I don’t think you can ever have too much research. I think it’s better to be a little sleep deprived and know your stuff is on point than make a buffoon of yourself for not knowing what you’re talking about. Just yesterday, my creative writing professor was saying how she met an author who had written a book based in Brazil and talking about Brazil but had only been there for two weeks and had not done any research. So she had Portuguese in the book which was technically correct, but culturally incorrect that a Brazilian wouldn’t talk like that and so it was no surprise, except to the author, that the book didn’t sell in Brazil.

[Zoom]

(I wrote out a huge long reply and then my browser crashed and i lost it so if i sound kind of stilted or if the writing isn't that clear it's because i'm pissed at the universe and i'm trying to teach it a lesson? or something? man i just love being a human. anyway y'all are on the butt end of this situation because there is no way i'm going to go through that again)

"the combination of arts. With films, the visual and audio." Totally! It's so cool how a certain song paired with a certain shot can make people feel things that neither would do on their own. Reminds me - one time I tried to pair found footage with a particular song and see if I could evoke particular feelings in sequence that suggested a story (i couldn't, but I bet somebody could!)

Also, I was thinking - I was going to argue that video games are the next in the line of "combined art forms", because they have film's writing+audio+visual, and also the player - but I'm not sure if that's a good parallel. Like it's not like a person is an art form, but video games definitely bring SOMETHING to the mix. It's the interactiveness, right? Except I don't think my choice to turn left instead of right and get a slightly different outcome is all of it. I think it's something about the difference between watching the main character fight an important boss as the music pounds and the background flashes red, and playing it.

And oh, cool! I'd love to see something written from the perspective of the grown siren's son, or more about the background of the lovers (instead of her dying, she got pregnant? I have to find out more about this)

I've never seen Solaris, but I just looked it up and it looks cool! So I guess that and Beasts of No Nation are both on the list, woo hoo, thanks!


And haha that's terrible! Yow, imagine writing a whole book and having it flop because you never checked if it was accurate. Yikes.




(Oh also -

THIS is the only good version.)

[Zoom]

(Look at what I happened across!)

[sapphire]

The combination of arts is incredible, and really makes me admire the composers of soundtracks! I took an animation narrative class in college, and our final project was meant to be images paired with music. I spent so long trying to find the perfect song. So long. Heh.

I would call the interaction of video games the art form. Each person brings something different to each piece of art - every song sounds different to each person who hears it, everyone reads the same book differently, etc. Video games allow that interaction to grow and become a more obvious piece of the art.

Lord of the Rings music always gives me chills. And that video is super thorough! I've always loved how the Rohan theme carries the exact same notes, but the tempo determines its mood - the first time we hear it, it's slow and sad, the theme of a dying country. Later, in battle, it's fast and loud and proud - the banner song of an army at war, of people who fight for their loved ones and will follow their king to the death.

[Endovia]

(Aww…that sucks. I’ve gotten into the habit of pulling up a text editor alongside my browser, especially for long replies, so I can type and keep looking back at what was said.)

Yes! That’s like music videos. And actually, I was at a poetry reading last night and one poet did something interesting. He had a really long poem that he’d broken into five parts and then he read it while a video he had made was playing in the background. I think the visuals distracted a little bit from his reading, but since it was such a long poem I think it helped keep us engage to have us be utilizing another sense at the same time.

I think video games are totally a combined art form. Video games have become like films now with all of the artwork, story building, and soundtracks.

That video’s awesome. Great analysis. Definitely agree that soundtracks are a layer we rarely hone in on. We’re such visual creatures.

[sapphire]

Hey, let's do this again!
I'm going to kick it off with this: The Exploding People.
I'm on such a Cloud Cult kick right now.

[A Mask Among Many]

Why haven't I seen this thread before?

For the next person: Many of Horror by Biffy Clyro (Sorry for not putting this in before)
-------------------------------------

The drum beats used to begin as the sun set: bold and unyielding with the liveliness of guitars and electronic overtones. They haven't been heard in many many years, but I remember them like only an android can. There's no time to think about that at the moment though, because the last battle is imminent. The last battle for what We became.

Man created Us to be the first revolutionary consciousness: a new being bred of the ingenuity of man and the reliability of machines. For years they toiled towards the perfect vessel, and once they had created it, began to combine thousands of their brightest minds towards a truly transcendent being.

They rejoiced in their completion; reveling which began on one side of the universe, and didn't stop until the other. We were welcomed into society as any new sentient species would be, but quickly realized how un-LIKE them We were. Our differences grew not only in number, but in extremity, and through those differences we were eventually declared the enemy of Humanity.

Years passed, and war raged. Their superior numbers whittling down our defenses until We arrive at the present: the final outpost of our kind. We have advanced far ahead of them in defenses, but even what We have built is nothing to their ingenuity for destruction. We have known of their imminent arrival for days, but instead of preparing our own weapons, We have decided on far more drastic measures. A last ditch defense does nothing, for there are few left who care enough for Us to raise a rescue force. Instead, We have decided to declare our surrender. But this surrender will not end the war, for all we are to them are machines with a higher form of consciousness. We will be dismantled or forced into servitude.

We have a choice though. A choice to not go quietly into the night. A choice for our last cry to be heard across the universe. We will make our statement of surrender, but it will be followed with our immediate destruction. A statement to other races not to trust humankind's ignorance and folly. A statement to ensure the human race will not be allowed to destroy another race.

No more will their selfishness be allowed to run rampant.

So one by one, my people will explode.