At the time of writing this, I am starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel regarding completing the first draft. It has been around two years of thinking, researching, and crafting a storyline I am happy with.

INSPIRATION

Something I found incredibly useful for helping me pitch the tone and ambience of the scenes I had written was constructing a writing playlist. Some tracks were the inspiration for specific scenes, but generally, I had this playlist on shuffle in my earphones every time I sat down to write. Music is important to me. For me, a great film can be made or broken with its soundtrack. So, using that as the basic logic, I created the playlist that I believed would allow me to write the scenes in the tone I wanted them to be. The complete playlist on Spotify is below if you are interested in hearing it for yourself.

THE OVERALL TONE

I quite quickly latched on to ‘Southern Gothic’ as a musical theme. For me, the use of string instruments, dark themes, and obsession with death fitted well with the overall tone I was seeking to achieve. The late Victorian period was fascinated with the morbid and macabre. The style of ‘Southern Gothic’ dovetails those themes effortlessly. A few re-workings of well-known songs in this style do also feature on the playlist.

This to me is the perfect theme tune to James Maybrick. Every time this song played, I could not but help think of just how selfish his behaviour was. His actions at their base level were purely spiteful.
This song, for me, is like being inside Maybrick’s mind. The belief that somehow he was simply a victim of situations that conspired against him. The excuses he told himself as to why he was the way he was. No guilt at all.
This song really evoked to me the hustle and bustle of Whitechapel in 1888. It was a game of survival. “Beggars and liars do not call. They stood in line to hear and see you fall”. Brilliant.
The original track was in ‘Silence of the Lambs’, but this version with the strings arrangement really caught my attention. It paints a picture of industrial advancement at the expense of purity at all costs. A cold death.
An 80s synth classic, re-worked with an orchestral arrangement. Victorian in essence, but then equally modern.
A great example of Old vs Modern. The lyrics also evoke the mindset of the lone traveler, the final word.

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    Jack the Ripper, James Maybrick, Music, Writing Soundtrack