Before anything else, I must congratulate three Thursday’s Children who’ve had exciting news this week!
Laura Oliva has launched her debut novel ALL THAT GLITTERS. Woot! She’ll be doing a guest spot here on my blog on Friday. I think even those of us attempting to go the traditional publishing route can benefit from her pointers about organization and promotion. I keep hearing pub houses have skimpy budgets for debut authors…
Jessie Devine is now an associate editor at Entranced Publishing. Yay!
Louise Gornall has revealed the cover of her book IN STONE!
Congratulations to you all! I’m looking forward to hearing more about…everything.
Inspired by Background Noise
A weekly blog hop where writers share their inspirations. Please join us!
The idea for this post came from two different sources.
There was last week’s post about winter surfing, which led to a comment which led to a reply, wherein I mentioned that hearing ocean waves makes my heart beat faster. And a couple of months ago there was a conversation with an agent - not the agent whose offer I accepted. She talked about audio-books Someone she knows produces them with “background noise” — soundtracks that weave in and out of the narration. She imagined ocean waves for TENDRIL because it’s set on the Maine coast and the sea definitely plays an active role in the story. (And I would add the occasional foghorn too, because my fictitious Frost Island is frequently fog-bound).
Something along the lines of
Waves are the omnipresent background noise during my daily walks on the beach, when I’m most often thinking about writing. Depending on the weather, I sometimes hear them at my house when I’m actually writing too. A few months from now we’ll be moving and I might need to resort to a wave soundtrack for my computer…
My childhood soundtrack included mourning doves. They’re called that because of their doleful coos. But I never think of them as sad sounds, instead they remind me of lazy summer mornings, where the day stretched out ahead of me, waiting to be filled by my imagination. I still get that same “anything’s possible” feeling whenever I hear them.
My husband thought they were owls… Guess his childhood soundtrack was different.
Owl hoots sound quite different, and give me a wild and spooky sort of sensation.
During my twenties, my soundtrack was urban. Lots of sirens, car horns, club music, and an apartment-building neighbor with an obsession. Think Hitchcock’s Rear Window, the comic version. “You still deliver, right?…Great. I’ll have the Shrimp Egg Foo Yong, Kung Pao Shrimp, Shrimp with Spicy Garlic Sauce, and the Sweet and Sour Shrimp, oh and some Shrimp Lo Mein…” Every. Single. Saturday. All shrimp, all the time.
Background noise in a book can convey a sense of place, time of day, season, and emotional atmosphere. Maybe the same sound has different connotations for different characters in the same story. Let’s say the MC lives near the train tracks. The sound of clacking and whooshing fills him with guilty excitement as he fantasizes escaping his snarky wife and bratty children. To his neighbor on the other side of the tracks, the same noise induces gut-wrenching despair as she recalls the day her son tried train-hopping with tragic results. Anticipating the train, hearing the train, ratchets up those emotions.
Perhaps even a seemingly innocent but constant background noise like a bouncing basketball, a barking dog, or the snapping of chewing gum could drive someone over the edge. Or maybe a familiar sound could pull someone back from it. Warning: do NOT snap gum around me.
What’s the background soundtrack to your writing? To the story you’re telling? What feelings do these sounds inspire in your characters? Your readers?
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