From Notes to Novels: The Symphony Behind My Saga

Welcome back to the new adventure. For those of you who have found this second blog post as your initial rendezvous with me, my name is Spring Cora, and I am a newly published independent author. I have created a four-book saga, which is fully complete and ready to read, called The Awakening Saga. I will also link my first post to get you caught up. Again welcome.

Today, I will bring you behind the curtain of my writing process and allow you to see one of my favorite ways I work on my novels. I have a mind that needs a motivational muse if you will. Since an early age, I have listened to music while working, which helps to keep me motivated and focused on my tasks. Music speaks to our souls in a way that many other art forms cannot reach us. In my storytelling, a good piece of music helps me see the storyline and the characters moving through that scene, much like music can drive a movie.

While working on The Awakening Saga, I created a music playlist that inspired me for the story's mood and themes. A collection of many varying genres of music played through the hours of plotting and laying out the story. When it came to actually crafting the tale within a chapter, most often, a single piece of music would become the undercurrent. These songs played repeatedly for hours. My family was not too pleased to have the same song on repeat, so they gave me a subtle hint of giving me a new pair of wireless phones I use while writing to this day.

By the end of my years working on this first Saga, I created a side-by-side playlist to accompany the novels. Now, I feel this collection gives readers and myself a mood soundtrack. If you want to listen, all the playlists are on my author's website or Spotify under Spring Cora, as well as the book's title.

As I have been studying my craft, I have discovered many authors use music in their writing process. If you scout your favorite streaming services, you will find the music that inspires their work. I, too, enjoy listening to songs and understanding the influence these pieces had on the authors and their stories. I recently read a newly released novel where the author mentioned how a specific song influences significant character development in one chapter. As I listened to music while reading the scene, I could see the whole event like a movie in my mind. It made the moment more heartbreaking and beautiful as a reader.

As we begin this journey together, let me give you three examples from my own work. When I was in the early stages of developing Drew and her anxiety, I knew I wanted to create a visual representation of her anxiety symptoms. For one reason, I am a visual person, and I do see my own anxiety as a visual manifestation that lives inside me.

My biggest issue was the manifestation, which had no clear body. It is a vaporous, shadow-laden character that haunts Drew throughout the saga. Without a solid description, I did not have a way to name the affliction. My problem was I just couldn’t come up with a viable way to express what anxiety looks like inside the mind of the person who has it. That was when Fate played the perfect song on my car radio. The local radio station played a new song by a band I had recently become acquainted with at the time. Imagine Dragons released Demons, and in that opening line, my mind could see the clear manifestation of a tactile creature for the first time. Demons constantly rotated in all my writing music and even played a prominent role in creating a chapter in Book Four.

If you log into Spotify and listen to my playlists dedicated to each book in The Awakening Saga, there is a pivotal song that did not find a space on any playlist. Yet, without it, I’m not exactly sure this series would not have been created in the same way. About seven chapters into my first draft, many friends asked me two questions. First, where would this story go? Second, what was the title?

My answer was, who knows? At the time, I had only written seven chapters to cleave the nightmare of past trauma from my soul. Those things were easy to describe, along with where the events occurred, because they did happen. My problem was where to take the writing in the fictional world. When anything and anywhere was possible, my biggest issue was discovering a location to take my characters for a family meeting about the situation they found themselves in.

One morning, I was ruminating about the problems on my drive to the high school where I was a substitute teacher. The music was blasting like it did most mornings on my thirty-two-mile, one-way commute through the backroads of rural Colorado. The morning DJs played Katy Perry’s song, Waking In Vegas, and the pop vibes hummed through the speakers. In my mind, I witnessed the seven friends sitting around a pool at the Flamingo. I could not get to my notebooks fast enough as the story weaved together. This is why the first two books of The Awaken Saga are set in Las Vegas. Where else could a lost minister awaken from a life of depression and death better than in the City of Sin?

Not only can one song influence my creative process. Bodies of work from an artist can inspire as well. While writing The Awakening Saga, I found that specific Artists became my co-collaborators of sorts. Muse, Imagine Dragons, Linkin Park, OneRepublic, and The Fray are just a few of the bands that have influenced my creative storytelling. Many of their songs have also been the soundtrack to my personal journey through life. I don’t think my life would be as rich without their creative force. For this, I thank their passion and art for creating the soundtracks that help so many traverse this adventure called life. 

As I transition from one novel series to a new set of projects, I continue to renew and search for new music for my writing. I have found exceptional new talent in some smaller artists and other genres of music I had not experienced before. I have found a passion for music without words, which can give me a scene's vibe. Artists like Single Note Scuba Diver and Vitamin String Quartet have taken prominent places in my writing playlists as I begin to work on my first Romantsy Novel Series.

The playlist I’m listening to as I compose this post is ending, and so is this moment with you, the reader. As a parting thought, I would encourage you to post how music plays into your life. I love to hear how others experience music, and what they are listening to. Is there a specific artist or a genre that moves you as a person or reader? I love hearing stories of how songs enhanced your experience with stories you are reading. Comment below and start a dialogue with an artist who loves the experience of the journey. Until next time, enjoy the new lives reading has to offer you.