Writing and Music

I've definitely posted on this before - how writing, especially instrumental playlists, can help write a scene and set a mood. Movie soundtracks are especially good for this kind of thing, because movie soundtracks are scored with the purpose of invoking a certain mood.

In light of that, this post is all about the actual music - what I, personally, listen to when I write for a particular kind of scene. I'm titling each kind of scene by its TV tropes name, with a link to the TV tropes description if you're not familiar with that kind of trope. I'll put the top five songs I like (and maybe a few more if there's a lot of ways to write it).

Keep in mind that I primarily write fantasy adventure with romantic subplots. I listen to music that doubles onto a playlist I listen to when running.

HERE WE GO!

Beginnings:

It Began With A Twist of Fate

1. Concerning Hobbits by Howard Shore, from Lord of the Rings: the Fellowship of the Ring

2. Toy Soldiers by Carbon Leaf

3. Geronimo by Sheppard

4. The World is Ahead by Howard Shore, from The Hobbit: an Unexpected Journey

5. Paloma by Carbon Leaf

Hero's First Rescue

1. Roundtable Rival by Lindsey Stirling

2. Radioactive by Imagine Dragons

3. Ragtime Carnival by Carbon Leaf

4. Bloody Good Bar Fight Song by Carbon Leaf

5. Battlefield by Jordin Sparks

Relationship moments:

Big Damn Kiss/ Dance of Romance

1. I'll Be by Edwin McCain

2. Faithfully by Journey

3. Flying Without Wings by Westlife

4. Story of my Life by One Direction, covered by The Piano Guys

5. River Flows in You by Yiruma

BONUS:

6. Glitter in the Air by P!nk

7. Never Gonna Give You Up by Rick Astley

8. Thunder Road (live version) by Bruce Springsteen

9. I Know the Reason by Carbon Leaf

10. Just A Dream/ Just the Way You Are from Pitch Perfect

Climax:

Final Battle/ Last Dance

1. Someone Like You (or Rolling in the Deep) by Adele

2. The Steward of Gondor, sung by Billy Boyd, from Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

3. It's My Life by Bon Jovi, from This Left Feels Right Album

4. Viva La Vida by Coldplay

5. Fight Song by Rachel Patten

BONUS:

6. Duel of the Fates from Star Wars: the Phantom Menace

7. Anything from the Pirates of the Caribbean series

8. Quite a bit from Lord of the Rings
9. In Remembrance (particularly for Last Dance trope) - link here

Ending:

And The Adventure Continues

1. Out of the Woods by Taylor Swift

2. Send Me On My Way by Rusted Root

3. Dreamer by Elizaveta

4. Here I Go Again by Whitesnake

5. Unwritten by Natasha Bedingfield

The Fellowship Has Ended (and the Fast Forward to the Reunion)

1. Long Live by Taylor Swift

2. Goodbye Song by Elizaveta

3. One Day by Hans Zimmer, from Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End

4. The Boys of Summer by The Hooters

5. Sympathy by the Goo Goo Dolls

6. Red by Taylor Swift

Singing and Cool Stuff

So this weekend I went on choir tour, as visible by my last post. (I was able to get my dress, thanks to the kindness and coordination of my friends and roommate. People wonder why I often take so long to pack from one place and travel to another - now I can say, 'LAST TIME I DIDN'T DO A SECOND SWEEP I DIDN'T BRING MY UNIFORM ON CHOIR TOUR.')
But this post is not about my uniform woes; this post includes stuff about Christopher Smart, who was locked in an insane asylum because of his religious mania and wrote poetry about his cat. I would go mad, too, if my primary job only paid one pound a year. (that's bad, even by 1700s standards). Though his spending habits no doubt had something to do with it, I feel like the whole one-pound-a-year thing might have been a contributing factor.
One of the poems he wrote was called Jubilate Ango, which was translated back to English from Latin and put to music by Benjamin Britten. What's really interesting about this piece is that it changes mood so often. There are a few happy solos about cats and mice and flowers, and then there's a slow, epic, dramatic bit about how he is under the same accusation as Christ. All of this happens within about three minutes.
Anyhow, because I lost sleep last night, I'm keeping this short. Will post on Friday.

Back in the USA!

Well, I've made it back from another reasonably good trip abroad.  I need to catch up on some posts on TravelPod (the blogging platform we used for class when we were in Greece and Turkey), but that should happen shortly - if only because the blogs must be completed by tomorrow night.  If you want to see what I was up to when I was doing the travel course, go check that out over there.  I have a link in my last post, I believe.

Anyway, now that I'm back, it's interesting to see the differences among cultures, and also the similarities.  Greece and Turkey obviously have more in common with each other than they do with the USA, in everything from length of history to kinds of food to even the coffee (there is a strong, bitter coffee in both countries that is served in a small cup with the dregs at the bottom; the Greeks call it Greek coffee and the Turks call it Turkish coffee), but that doesn't mean that there aren't things that are similar to the US.  For example, when we went out in a social context with some Greek high schoolers in Kavala, we did two rounds of bumper cars before going ice skating, and then we went for coffee (or hot chocolate, or alcohol in some cases).  There are hookah bars in a lot of places (particularly in Turkey, because that's a Thing That People Do).  Personally, if I go for hookah, I'm just there to talk to people; for me, the smoke smells good, but I don't want to inhale it too much.  I did try it a bit, just to say for sure whether or not I like it, and my conclusion is that the atmosphere is more my thing than the actual smoking.

It's hard to pick my favorite archaeological site, because we went to so many.  Going to the Parthenon was absolutely amazing, because it was something that I've really wanted to do since middle school.  One professor at our school is the director of the Agora excavation, and he was able to give us a behind-the-scenes tour of the place, which was also really cool.  Going to Greece especially was really cool for me: it's one thing to hear about these places in class; it's another thing to read about them in Ancient Greek; it's altogether a separate event to actually be there in person and to see each of the places that I've heard about so often.  My dad asked if I could check in with the Oracle of Delphi about the winner of this year's Super Bowl, but the Pythia wasn't around for predictions that day, unfortunately.

You may be wondering whether I'm going to be posting my journal here later; unfortunately, I am not.  Half of this is because we did so much that I just didn't feel up to writing a blog AND a journal for the entire second week.  The other half is that it turned into something that had more of my personal thoughts - things that I wouldn't want people to see (for example, off-the-cuff opinions of people that aren't the most flattering, because I was writing in the journal in order to vent off the negativity).  So, unfortunately, y'all are going to have to go check out my TravelPod blog if you want to go check what I was doing.

At any rate, it's good to be back in the US.  The trip to Greece and Turkey was a wonderful experience, but it's nice to not be moving around every few days.

Day 13: when in doubt, go meta

Current Page: top of 71
Target Page: um...
Place in Story: um...

So the title of today's post is derived from the fact that I do, technically, have three planes of existence in one novel: Myrtle's level, Jess's level, and Spencer's level. I have barely touched Myrtle's level in the last week or so, but Jess and Spencer have been sharing the stage fairly regularly.
Anyway, in order to shamelessly pad my word count, I wrote a scene with Myrtle, Jenna (her flatmate), and Elijah (her good friend), as well as a brief reference to Myrtle's and Jenna's cats (Samwise and Quark).  The scene lasted only around a page, but it mostly involved Myrtle saying how she had writer's block, and Jenna and Elijah giving her ideas.

There are so many levels of this that I could write the sequel to Inception.

In other, related news, I have recently discovered that requiems are really good writing music. My two right now are Mozart's in D minor and John Rutter's.  GO LISTEN.  NOW.

Singing and Greek Philosophy

The Greek language is one that will eternally frustrate me - not necessarily because verb conjugations and noun declensions are particularly difficult (though that is a majorly contributing factor) but because of the damn philosophy of it (also, I can no longer say or type 'philosophy' without thinking 'philo sophia' - 'I love wisdom').  It's quite interesting, don't get me wrong, and we had quite an interesting discussion this morning about it, but still - sometimes it's too philosophia-y for its own good.
For example, the Ancient Greeks had no past tense.  The aorist tense is what we would normally translate as an -ed verb (I walked), but that is not necessarily the case.  The difference between the aorist tense and the present tense is a one-time action versus a continual one - the difference between paying rent for one month one time and paying it several times over the course of the year.
And then there's the difference between the active voice and the middle voice (I walk versus I am walking).  Many verbs don't get philosophia-y, but there are some that do.  The verb for "I obey" is "I persuade" in the middle voice, for example; at its heart, "I obey" is really "I am persuaded."  Though this sort of philosophy is kind of cool, it gets frustrating when translating stuff.

This afternoon/ evening, I also had the amazing pleasure to work with Deen Entsminger and the chamber singers from Belmont University (it's in Nashville).  Let me say this: THE CHOIR IS F*CK*NG AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!  Their blend was awesome, and they do all of their pieces a capella - they're actually training to be able to find a pitch from a single note.
But Entsminger.  That man is a 70-something-year-old ball of happy, excited, wonderful, positive energy; he's the sort of man who seems like he has a good thirty or forty years left, and he probably does, even though it'll put him past age 100.  He dances when the music dances; and feels when the music feels.  I'm pretty sure he might not actually have real emotions, but just feel through music.  When he does feel, it's almost always some form of joy.  He composed a piece for the R-MC Concert Choir a few years ago, and he worked with us today on it - and it was the most unbelievable thing I've experienced, possibly ever.  There was such an energy in the room - you can't get it at just any time or just anywhere.

Week Two

Week two of college started today.  So far, it's still sort of manageable.
Greek is beginning to creep up on me, but I've established friendly contact with another freshman in my class, so I'll have a study buddy/ reference point if I'm confused about what the homework is.
I had a panic attack about whether or not I should stay in chorus, but I decided I should - music is my sanity, and the Requiem that we're doing, by John Rutter, is kind of amazing.  I love it, and we've only done a bit of two movements.
In Ancient Egypt, I have also established friendly contact with two other people (who are also in choir), and we're doing a mandatory major group project together.  We were initially going to do Cleopatra, because one of them was doing something on her for another class, but the professor apparently emailed him back, saying that 1) This is ANCIENT Egypt, not Egypt Transitioning out of the Dynasties, and 2) Cleopatra was technically Greek.  That was kind of unfortunate, so now we're thinking about doing Hatshepsut, because we covered her today and she seemed kind of cool.  She also seemed like kind of a butt, but whatever.  In all, I think she came up with a decent compromise - and if you're unfamiliar with Hatshepsut, look her up, because I don't have time to explain this.
In FYEC, we had class outside, where we saw a possum playing dead because a hawk was in a tree nearby.  After a few minutes, I think the hawk left; at any rate, the possum got bored of shutting itself down and woke up and walked away.  It had no relevance to the discussion of Buddhist and Taoist principles, except for the possum's being one with its state of being for a good ten minutes.
I also went to the activities carnival, where all the clubs try to get you to sign up for stuff.  I put down my name for so many things that I KNOW I'm not going to make, but I've got info now on everything from Outdoors Club to Campus Ambassador to a co-ed service fraternity (which, honestly, I'm more interested in rushing for than the sororities; YES, MOM, I'M GOING TO RUSH SORORITIES ANYWAY, BECAUSE I PAID THE MONEY AND YOU'RE MAKING ME DO IT AND EVERYONE SEEMS REALLY NICE ANYWAY).

So far it's been a good week, I think.  I'm getting used to being at college, though it still feels kind of odd to be living away from my parents and being responsible for my sleep and drinking orange juice and getting all my dairy and exercise and stuff.
Yes, Dad, I did discuss being Workout Buddies with one of my friends today, and I AM working on getting my daily orange and stuff.
And yes, one of my daily glasses of dairy IS chocolate milk.  I know it's not healthy, but still.  It's good.  I COULD BE DOING WORSE.  Like someone just outside our dorm who I think is drunk and trying to yodel or sing "We Are Young," or whatever that song is called.  It's kind of hard to tell.
But anyway, I need to go to bed now, because I have to study in the morning.  It's what I do.

music

Music is probably one of the best inventions ever.  It helps people express feelings. You can use it for writing.  It sets the mood of countless movies.
Most of all, if it's composed by Hans Zimmer, it's probably epic and suitable for all occasions.
Well, most occasions.  You probably wouldn't play the Dark Knight soundtrack at your high school prom.  The Prom Queen would probably hate it, and the King would like it, and the whole committee would cave under the pressure of the Prissy In Charge.
Also, I don't know how many DJ's (or live bands, for that matter) have the entire Dark Knight soundtrack on hand.
Anyhow, music can be, as I said before, a very good thing for your writing.  Especially movie scores.  They're instrumentals (if you're like me, that's a good thing, because if a song has lyrics, I'll probably wind up focusing on their words rather than mine, which is rather counterproductive), and they're very scenic, meaning they help set the scene really well - that's part of the point they were composed, except for a movie and not your novel.  Except you can use it for your novel anyway, because you're not going to be quoting it so it's only for helping you come up with something to put on the page.
So. Food for thought. :)

The Final Countdown!

Well, shifting gears slightly, I'm going to talk about college packing today.
In a word, it's stressful.  It could have been worse, I admit; indeed, I could have pulled something like one of my best friends and not packed until the day I left.  (why she did this is still a mystery to me, and I'm not sure I want to ask her about it.  Apparently, her dorm room now has an abundance of shoes).
Anyhow, in all seriousness, I'm glad it's mostly over with.  I've done the massive run to Target to get pretty much everything except a microwave (because of school regulations, my roommate and I decided it wouldn't be worth it to get one), a TV (which my roommate has been assigned to have custody of, one way or another, since I don't mind either way), and a printer (which Mother and I could never decide on, so we're just waiting to see how well the library handles stuff before deciding).
Still, though, I have a few things to get, and most of them are clothing-related.  Before I get all girly and dive into that, give me one second to do something else of an important nature.
a;weif w;oef aowenfow GOING TO COLLEGE ao;efijweo;aifjeow ;ijowaifjoiejwoiejfe CAN'T BELIEVE IT ao;ijwo;eifwa;oefjowaeifjowifjoweiajfow;ijfoiwj FEEL REALLY OLD.

Right, well, now that's over with, let us proceed.
So, what's in my trunk?
Cliff bars, Toblerone, flip flops, and personal hygiene stuff is what it comes down to. In the suitcase is all my clothing (except the stuff that has to get hung up, which Mother insists can't survive a two-hour car ride.  I'm not complaining; there's barely enough room for the jeans I still need to get to fit formal wear and hang-up t-shirts in my suitcase).
So far, I have no advice to any incoming freshmen as to what you should or should not get.  Just make sure you keep your head and think like a backpacker when you're packing.
In case you don't know how to think like a backpacker when packing, here's how:
1. take only what you need to survive.
2. If it can be shared, do.
3. when packing your trunk and/ or suitcase, rolling is your friend.
4. Don't take too much of anything in terms of clothing, except socks and underpants (okay, fellow backpackers would hate me for saying that.  Usually, if it's more than you need, don't bring it).
5. If you think you can survive without it, you probably can.
6. If you can't, your parents can bring it during parent's weekend.

Yeah.

But still.  THE FINAL COUNTDOWN.
Today was my last day at work - and the last day at the dojang I've attended for ten years.  In case I forgot to tell you (I'm pretty sure I did, but I'll tell you again), I'm a second degree black belt in tae kwon do and I worked at my dojang's camp for the summer.  They're letting me off tomorrow because of final packing and such, and then Wednesday I leave.


Anyhow, to tie it all into writing, CATALYSTS ARE YOUR FRIEND!  If someone is moving, that's a great way to invent relationships as you go, because so is your character, so it's all good.
Also, music is your friend too, especially instrumentals.  Hans Zimmer is really good, for example (he composed the instrumentals for Madagascar 3, Pirates of the Caribbean, the Dark Knight, and the Lion King, to name a few).  But anything that stirs your imagination, go for it. :)