Soundtrack: The Wisp
Hello everyone! I’ve finished a new short story called The Wisp and wanted to share the sound track that fueled the story.
The Wisp is about a man stuck where he is. All the stickiness is internal and could be shaken off at any moment if not for his lack of confidence and general fear of the world. With this story, I had a lot of soundtrack options but one particular album reached out and resonate with the story: The Boy Who Died Wolf by Highly Suspect.
Tracks like My Name is Human, Send Me An Angel and Chicago gave stories and tones that helped The Wisp take shape. Here’s some tracks from SoundCloud. Bonus: check out the album art. Pretty awesome!
Why this album?
When hunting for a story’s soundtrack in my music collection I think about the mood I’m in and the tone the story wants. For The Wisp, pace and mood were important. The story needed to flow from action to thought, from what’s happening now to what happened then.
The Boy Who Died Wolf has a mix of hard driving songs that put a quick pace to my words, to my typing. My Name is Human is a great example of this as the song starts off in an even pace growing quickly to a faster beat into the chorus. The words are fast, and provoke emotion in their delivery. Other songs like Chicago are slower which helped me downshift to more contemplative sections of the story.
These shifts throughout the songs reflect Theo’s (the Main Character) situation. Originally the soundtrack for this story was a lot darker, slower, droning on about life but that didn’t sound like Theo’s voice or his life experience. He’s stuck but not depressed, more resolved and hoping for something to change until he has to make it change or die. He’s stuck in the waiting place (ala Oh the Places You’ll Go) and when he faces his death, when he runs out of tomorrows, he finally is faced with a choice many humans run from: Die where you are, or leave and maybe live.
About the Story
The Wisp started as a story called “100 Foot Rope”. It was birthed from an idea in a writing book: “think of an interesting title then write the story”. 100 Foot Rope sprung to mind and I wrote the story that followed. After I finished the story I did my “what is this story about” exercise, I decided 100 Foot Rope wasn’t an accurate title.
“The Wisp” is a creature mentioned in the story that distracts people, takes them away from what’s important. In the end, Theo is figuring out what’s important to him and trying to figure out how to get there. At every turn in life where what he wanted was in reach, a Wisp appeared to pull him away. This made me think about all the Wisps in my own life, in the lives of those around me. Fear, lacking self confidence, being told we can’t/shouldn’t do something, these Wisps pull us away from what we could be. In the end, we stay where we are, safe being stuck, locked into a life of settling. That Wisp, keeps us distracted from who we could be, what we could do.
I’ve shared the work with my writing team and am awaiting feedback. Currently I’m on draft #5 and plan to start submitting to publications at week’s end. I’ll post more about the story as it evolves into a published work.
Thanks for stopping by! Let me know what you think I should be listening to in the comments below.