I found a youtube music channel today, and it led me to write what I'm pretty sure is one the best works I've personally ever done. The mood and tone in my work was none I've ever tried before, me being somewhat dark usually. I'm just wondering from everyone here, what do you do to create mood and tone in your stories and poems? Listen to, watch, surround yourself with, drink, think? Doesn't matter. Share a few if you have any, and pass on to the rest of us new guys/girls in writing to grow from. Here's my submission today:
I wrote an attempt at vampire fiction recently. Not gothic vampires, but the horrible, walking corpses type. I wrote it mostly in the dark. I don't know how successful I was at creating atmosphere, but it certainly creeped me out as I was writing it, and I hope that filtered through into the writing.
I utilize a ton of Metal, Cyber-Goth, Industrial, Techno, and some Orchestral Hybrid stuff to help with scenes, mood, or tone cause I pretty much live in some kinda noise in the background (the silence is way to deafening here). Of course I think cinematically so music helps to play out the actions and things in my noggin. I used this song for some pretty extreme Sci-fi ground war scenes in my unfinished (never gonna fin) sequel to my first novel. Definitely gets the violent juices flowing for a good scene that needs to move fast and be chaotic and nasty. Fun times.
My entire life is marked by music of so many genres my play lists look like ten people in twelve eras created them. When I want to focus on a specific time or event I play the music associated with it. Never fails me.
Some borderline Hauntology there, @Some Guy. Nice! Check out Ghost Box Records at https://ghostbox.co.uk/
Are you talking about music you listen to WHILE you're writing? Or music that gets you into a frame of mind to write? The only kind of music I can listen to while writing is non-verbal, mostly even-toned pieces—like chamber music or classical guitar. I only listen to these if necessary, to drown out other competing noises while I'm writing. (Like ice cream vans hanging around the neighbourhood for hours, etc.) Any kind of music that's more intense or verbal proves too much of a distraction. However, I often listen to different kinds of music to get me into the mood for creating particular scenes. Appropriate music helps me envision the scenes beforehand. For example, I wrote one chapter of my novel that takes place at a barn dance in 1886 ...so I put on some of my collection of traditional dance music of the era, and listened to it for days, while envisioning the scene. It worked a treat. I think it's one of my best chapters. Certainly one of my favourite chapters. In a nutshell, music helps me a lot when I'm creating a scene in my head. It's no help at all while I'm actually writing it, however ...except as a noise-filter.
Just the sound of the word in Oktober! have one last tune for Halloween, if I can figgerout how to play MP3 here?
Don't think you can. They have to be uploaded somewhere. You can link to any sound file, but I think embedding is restricted to YT and Soundcloud.
My MC, Alexei, is a classical pianist and composer, so I write to Rousseau's YouTube channel a lot. I've used his interpretations of several pieces to pace scenes. (I also use Rousseau's videos to choreograph the physicality of Alexei's playing scenes, and Rousseau will get a credit on the acknowledgments page.) Here's Rousseau's version of Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody #2: My novel takes place in 1980, so to conjure up that time and place while writing I also burn my characters' favorite incense, play music that was released that year, and occasionally eat the same foods my characters are having in a scene.
Cool! There's one called Starry Night (I think) that is pretty intense. (I'll look for it while I listen to DOM again)
Oh, I love background noises when I write, more than music. My writing spot is really quiet and that's what I like most of the time but somtimes it just gets to me and I need to have some sound. I used to look up rain noise videos but I found Mynoise instead. It's a site that generates background sounds to help with focus and there are a dozen different sound generators like cafes, forests, zen gardens, etc. I'm a big fan of the rain on a tent, personally. https://mynoise.net/
I get inspired pretty easily, but getting (in) the right mood to write down my inspiration is trickier. It means I have to sit my butt down, filter the rest of the world out and focus my all in transferring a combination of thoughts and emotions on "paper". It feels like meditating, while being active - active part being the verbalization and the typing. There are controlled, semi- controlled and uncontrolled factors that place me in the zone and if I'm right, you are talking about the controlled factors, but I feel it's imperative to mention the other two factors as well, since their importance in writing the mood is too great to simply skip. I'll keep it short. Uncontrolled: Weather (much easier for me when there's crappy weather. It changes everything for me, since my real-time setting and everything that it brings to my senses swifts drastically), sudden, unexpected stimulant (from a smell to a photograph to a song to a person to whatever. Usually, but not always, a first-time-thing). Semi-controlled: Place (this comes to me pretty rarely. ex: A sudden urge to sit on the bench under "that" tree to write, because there's something about that place that triggered me), intoxication intake (from booze to whatever else you might fancy), dream (I categorize this as "semi" since although it might not be 100% conscious or controlled thinking it still derives from the mind of the dreamer and it does affect the mood of the writing if the dreamer wishes to hold on to it and use it), scene from a film or a book. Controlled: Music or chosen sounds in general, smell (scented candles,etc.). Hm. What's interesting here is that the controlled factors are mostly aural and they're greatly lesser than the other two factors. Another notice is that the controlled factors can be real-time easily (thus controlled), while the others tend to bring moods you have to hold on to until you are able to find or create the space and time to write down. I wrote all of this down here, because I believe that "mood" in writing cannot be 100% controlled, since a great deal of our "fantasy" mood is affected by things we seldom find the need to monitor. As long as we get in the mood and find our "right" mood we are content and that's fine. But "mood" comes from a combination of these factors. Still, what's the point of me referring to the semi and uncontrolled factors you might ask. Because I believe that most of our inspiration (inspiration being the whole package: plot, characters, voice and general mood) and getting just the right mood, is something that does not come just from listening to music. It's all the other things we experience in our waking and even our dream life, which we try to hold on to for some reason (maybe to process them) and what we desire in order to express them is just a spark of something fitting and consistent as a helper, such as recorded music is; something similar to our original mood which we can replay enough times in order to throw our emotions on paper (or screen) and share. So, in short, I want to say that the most powerful mood stimulant, although not so noticeable, is our random life experiences and they tend to be out of time. Memories. Extracts of emotions. How we push them towards the present is usually by harnessing the emotions music gives us, since it's one of the few things we can control in our private environment. This is a song I had in my playlist for a while but it hasn't given me a... hm... how to say this... a clear sense of a mood until some weeks ago. It was too abstract. What changed some weeks ago is that I was with a friend of mine, late at night, lights out, open window while wearing a t-shirt, was quite chilly but not uncomfortable, we drank, we smoked weed and suddenly... I was somewhere else. A brand new mood was created. Did I harness it on the spot? Nope. I needed all my focus on it real-time as it unraveled, since it came so unrushed and naturally to me. I tried to simulate the same factors again the next day, when I was alone, in order to get this mood down verbally and fit it into something but it was quite difficult. My thoughts flowed too fast to verbalize and focusing while staring at a glowing screen actually made me nauseous after a point. I made some progress though and it was an interesting experiment. The thing is that right now, this mood is engraved in my soul. I need not simulate the factors anymore. I don't even need to listen to this song.
Sometimes, I listen to long recordings of thunderstorms while writing. Other times, I'll listen to some intense or dramatic music. Some of my favorite songs have my synesthesia fired up, which heightens my experience. Il Divo's "Regresa a mi", for instance, is shimmery gold in color and tastes like delicious pasta. Imperia's "Let Down" is like a sunset sky in color, and tastes like cascading water during its chorus, but then hits me with a very strong mothball type flavor at a certain point, lol! It's quite strong and unpleasant, but I still like the sudden change in effect.
I use Radiohead to set the mood, as the singer often does not fully pronounce his words it means I have somewhat of a blank page to work with. They can also be dark and the music is evocative. I am pretty sure JK Rowling used this type of musical influence for the goblet of fire, but thats just a wild guess. Apart from that I use Iron Maiden ; The Talisman is a superb tune to be played loud.
I like this idea of the three groupings: controlled, semi-controlled, and uncontrolled. I think tomorrow I'll try to group together my own version of this and compare. See where I could change some of the settings up a bit and experiment. Thanks for that detailed version of you have happening.
