So the music for Act 1 of the AO is basically there. There’ll be fussing, but i doubt major overhauls. That means it’s time to hit lyrics.
New Albion writes itself and it’s not actually… you now, IN the nuts and bolts of the story. No, it’s the first song by the actual lead that got me thinking.
The challenge is thus: it is easy for me to err on the side of favoring plot. In other words, there’s plenty of plot details to put in. A bunch of which i think are necessary. Which could easily (and on my first write through did) lead to a colorless character simply going over the the plot that’s occuring to her.
Her voice while doing this is rather passive. There’s no character other than what’s happening. Okay she’s sad. She’s… too passive. Stuff is happening TO her, she is not CAUSING stuff to happen. And for the first song that is okay, but there’s a wrongness in succumbing too much to it.
I’m not presently a character with much other than stuff happens to her and she tells us.
It’s wrong.
There’s no distinguishing traits to her other than maybe a victimhood. Horrible idea. Even if i don’t have much room… well no, i have as much or little room as i want. I’m calling the shots. I am favoring plot over character and i need to strike a balance. She needs to sing about what’s happening with a reaction. An attitude of SOME sort. Otherwise i have nothing. A plugged in character. You can recognize a plugged in character anywhere. They exist to have the plot happen to them so we can watch a plot. Generic good guy… generic everyman…
In this case i created generic victim. And this will not do.
Answer: Change the melody. Rewrite the lyrics. Having an full pass at the lyrics under my belt helps immensely. Got stuff to draw from.
I bring this up in the interest of transparency of the creative process, something i tried to do a lot with the writing of the SO and which i think can be nice to do. This is something that’s cropped up that i must struggle with and solve in order to create a better work.
Even though my generic victim will go through a long story arc which will transform her, it’s still not as strong because i’m starting with vanilla and going to Chunky Monkey, which is far less interesting than starting with Rocky Road and going to Chunky Monkey. For heaven sakes, don’t start uninteresting and get interesting. Start interesting and get more interesting. Sure we have a plot that perhaps does that, why not strenghten it all around and do it on a character level to the extent of which it’s possible?
Going on a long trip. Will be doing TONS of lyrics writing. Really looking forward to it. Tell you anything interesting.
