#as axeman
Do you use music to inspire your writing? Have you ever thought about trying different genres to see whether that affects your story? Today, writerA.S. Axeman shares how exploring YouTube videos helped inspire their novel:
For NaNoWriMo 2021, I chose synthwave and ambient genres as my writing music. While most of us write to music, some of us may have a rough time writing with singing in the background. I’m also an 80s kid so when I think of action or hard science fiction, synth music is in my head.
The fantasy and space opera movies of the 80s were voiced by a massive orchestras and produced great music to write to. Growing up I used to listen to the Blade Runner soundtrack and all John Carpenter music just as much as the John Williams scores. As I have aged, most of the time I write with big movie scores playing in the background due to the sheer volume of them available. This year, though, I ignored the sweeping epic scores and shifted solely to synthwave. YouTube is full of synthwave and its sub genres chillwave, darkwave, horrorwave, and retrowave. Springboarding off those, I also added ambient videos with great visuals to my general play list.
The first few days were easy writing, but around 10k words I was really stretching my imagination. I was stalling with my initial idea and I had to give my characters a kick in the pants. I was flipping through synthwave tiles to find just the right one when I saw a silhouetted traveler looking at the expansive skyline of a futuristic city. I though “put Axe and his crew right where that guy is standing”. Suddenly I different problem set for my amnesia-plagued team to deal with.
I typed a few paragraphs then looked at the image again for another dose of inspiration. 700 words later and halfway through that video, I was hunting for another video that seemed like it could connect. I found it among the hundred or so titles of just one content creator.
When I paid attention to the screen images for each synthwave or ambient video, I began stitching together a very different narrative than my intended course. Instead of Axe, Mac, and Quartermas dealing with gritty rough problems, they were on a trippy, cosmic journey.
Music lights up my brain (probably yours too) and images can be worth hundreds to thousands of words. Why not use them as your force multiplier? Think of the time you’ve slogged your way through a dull but awesome looking movie. I’ve sat through many boring but visually stunning and beautiful sounding movies. Choosing instrumental music videos with majestic animations as your writing companion can push you and your words in different directions that you weren’t prepared to go but might actually like better.
A.S Axeman is the pseudonym of a professional rabbit-holer and over thinker who enjoys general woodworking, guitar foot pedals, holiday baking, dark beers, and being retired from the Air Force.
Photo by Don DaskaloonUnsplash
