The Adventure Begins
December 2023
You might think of the start of the book writing process as a joyous occassion. An event layered with the same celebratory, but melancholic, undertones of a medievel hero send-off complete with trumpets bugling in a town square.
And that’d be because you’re absolutely right. Well, at least for when it comes to my book writing process.
If you couldn’t tell, NOVA 03 writing began in earnest this week. Quite literally with trumpets and fanfare in my head while I listened to Anakin vs. Obi-Wan on repeat.
When I conceive of the idea of a story, after the characters and general plot line are constructed, I often start writing a book with specific scenes in my head. And these specific scenes are always set to temp scores.
In film, temp scores—AKA placeholder music—are edited to punctuate an early cut of a movie or trailer. Think back to Man of Steel’s debut trailer—it used a score from The Fellowship of the Ring to great effect.
For my writing process, that manifests rather similarly. Only instead of a cut of a movie, it’s a cut of an imagined scene that’s been in my head for a very long time.
In NOVA 02, for instance, we open quietly, with Oliver waiting for his mentor figure to arrive to carry on right from where we left off at the end of NOVA 01. That opening in my mind always began quiet, before transitioning into the bombastic, swelling, orchestrated cover of the video game classic, Gerudo Valley. The scene exists to underscore just how woefully unprepared Oliver is for the arrival of his nemesis—The Damned—and it does so by showing off just how much closer Oliver’s mentor figure is to fending off the villain than Oliver could ever hope to be—at least at that point in time. The score doesn’t just only swell, it also takes time to breath, to re-visit its leitmotifs, just like the scene takes time to have Oliver internally re-visit the stakes at play in his story, re-establishing them for both himself and the reader.
I don’t want to give away all the temp scores I have in mind for NOVA 03 or NOVA 04 just yet, mainly because the titles of the scores themselves might spoil things, but I will share one of the scenes I’m most excited about is set to the The Last Agni Kai. And if I had the resources to create a trailer in between NOVA 03 and NOVA 04, it’d be set to Deliver Hope. Maybe some day.
If you can’t tell, I’m a sucker for a good score. Don’t care where it’s from.
Right. Better leave it there before I start rambling too much. If I don’t interact with you online between now and the end of the month, I hope you have a terrific Holiday season with your loved ones. When you get a quiet moment, do yourself a favor and listen to some high quality temp scores.
And before I forget… meet Moose. He’s the newest member of our household. Of the fuzzy variety.
Look at those sharp teethies.
The end always arrives.
C. T.
P.S. if you’d like to support my writing endeavors, drop a review on amazon! Only takes a second to select the star count—text entry not a requirement.