Inspiration Station - Skillet Songs
Today, I'm going to be focusing on two songs by the same band. Skillet had a few hits on the radio when I was in high school, and these two songs were really the only ones I ever really heard and actually learned. And both of these songs ended up inspiring me in some way. Let's dive in!
"Monster" by Skillet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mjlM_RnsVE
I think this song has had the most versatility when it comes to inspiring my writing. It's actually on multiple soundtracks for multiple stories I've written over the year.
The first time I remember it inspiring me was back in high school. I was writing a love story about two vampires from different backgrounds set in New York City called A Bite Out of the Big Apple. Damian was a criminal who sold his murderous talents to the highest bidder. Rebecca was an agent (for the vampire FBI, essentially), and she was trying to apprehend her criminal counterpart. This song helped me to get into Damian's point of view throughout several key scenes. It helped quite a bit in the beginning of the story when I was establishing his character. He was a vampire (but did that make him a monster?). And then he was also a hired mercenary, sometimes an assassin, thief, etc... Those were the traits that sometimes made him feel like a monster. The first verse of the song "Monster" worked quite well with establishing how Damian felt about himself. As the story continued on, he started to have a change of heart on some of the things he was doing, on who he was killing. Before deciding what to do about this change of heart, I used the chorus of the song as inspiration to help me realize how Damian now felt about himself. Now that he really felt like a monster. The song inspired me throughout the story, and I kept on coming back to it whenever I would get momentarily stuck in the plot.
The next time I used it was a year or so later in a different vampire story called Undead Grudges. This one was the third in a series of books I'd been writing, and it was about a vampire who spent the majority of her very long life as an assassin. She lived through some very trying times in history - mainly she was born in Carthage and brought to Rome as a child after the Third Punic War. She wasn't exactly thrilled about any of that - or that her parents were murdered in front of her - so when she became a vampire, she started ridding the world of her enemies. The trouble was, she saw enemies everywhere. Her name was Xaverine, and she hated Romans more than anything. So, she killed as many of them as she could. But wouldn't you know it, she fell in love. So, the story was about her overcoming her past grudges, and her realizing that she could be so much more than a monster. This Skillet song worked throughout the story for helping me get into Xaverine's changing stating of mind. In the first verse of the song, they sing about feeling rage that can't be controlled. That was how Xaverine had felt for the last 2,000 years. She had gone through so much trauma at such an early age, then when given the ability to do something about it, she lashed out. The rage never subsided within her. Later on in the story, she began to realize she didn't want to be that way anymore. She knew that she could've been so different. She hated what she'd become. The song repeats that type of mentality in the chorus over and over. So, this song really worked and helped me get to those varying places with Xaverine.
"Hero" by Skillet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGcsIdGOuZY
This song originally inspired me to write a very brief short story about two superheroes, and how they first met. Then I took another look at the short story when NaNoWriMo came around, and I found myself lengthening it. I ended up turning it into my first successful NaNoWriMo novel called The Anatomy of a Hero. So the story alternated perspectives between two characters - Blaire, a vigilante, and Derek, a superhero. In this world, there was a difference. Superheroes were accepted by the city, known to work with law enforcement. Vigilantes tended to take things too far, not working with law enforcement. This song was the very inspiration for me to start writing this story in the first place, and I can't hear it without picturing Blaire and Derek meeting for the first time on a rooftop after Blaire went too far with taking out a criminal. This one is almost hard for me to explain why it inspired the story, but just listening to it again as I write this post... I'm right back there. This song would be playing in the opening scene if this story was a movie - playing as Blaire and Derek are both working their way across opposing rooftops, taking down criminals as they go. Opposing views on how to treat their city, but both wanting to be heroes. Yeah. It's just good. I love it.
So, there you have it! How two different Skillet songs inspired multiple stories I've written! Inspiration really can come from anywhere.
Write on!
Amy
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