Moody

Listening to: Please Forgive Me, David Gray

Victoria at Characters Journey has another great tip, one that I'm very familiar with; using music to get yourself into the mood of the scene you're writing.

As you can tell from the 'Listening to' section at the top of most my posts, I like to listening to music while I write and often set the pace with a certain artist, genre or ambience similar to the scene (you might also note my preference for Electronic music).

A prime example was from the night I first penned the chase scene. I was listening to a playlist of electronic music that suited the image of a motorcycle speeding down a freeway, pursued by a hell-bent helicopter. Especially note-worthy was the grinding synth-bass in Strict Machine by Goldfrapp, which was a huge motivator. Alison Goldfrapps' vampy and ethereal vocals set a kind of music-video image (a cool one, not some crappy teeny-pop song). An added bonus was the title suited my mental image of the motorcycle and the characters feelings towards his bike: love of its physical beauty, respect for the power it wields.

If you're wondering what the hell this Strict Machine malarky is all about, check this out.