It’s December! Snow will (hopefully) fall, the air is getting colder, you can see your breath in the morning and frost on the grass…
This week’s workshop was not in the usual format. Instead of the typical prompt/discussion/lesson, this workshop consisted of a few minutes talking about epic music, and then the rest of the period to write a story from a song. (With remembering that the story does not have to be in prose format, or any specific format, ever.)
The attendees of the workshop received a link to an epic music song. They then were told: write.
As the stories produced today are not shared and everyone writes a different story, even if it’s from the same song, there will be no pointers really on writing this kind of story to that kind of song.
Instead, when writing stories from epic music, you can think of a few questions if you want to:
Think of some events in life (getting an award, a fight with an enemy); what are the rhythms of those events?
Epic music excels in varying rhythms and paces. Thus: what rhythms in the epic (or not; this is not limited to the epic music genre) music remind of different events?
A fast-paced, heart-racing beat with lots of drums may remind you of a scene with an enemy’s death. Or it may not. It could be a scene of competition, of fast-paced, tense conversation. It could be anything. Everyone comes to a story in a different way. No two stories are the same.
That is just an example. What you think of when you hear a song may be totally different what the next person thinks. But if you want to perhaps compare the two thinkings (you don’t have to), you can write a story from epic music and show the other person, comparing. Or not.
Here are a few links to epic music:
Rocky Hill School's The Hill: Writing Workshops 