Recently, my brother and I finally finished our music video of “Trees” by TØP, after a year in the making. It’s very similar to our music video of “Stressed Out,” as we dubbed in cinematography and lip syncing to the original track. Trees, if you’ve ever listened to it before, has a completely different feel in the message, theme, and energy from Stressed Out. I wrote a post years back on my interpretation of the lyrics from Trees and I wanted to incorporate that into our music video––however, we ended up with a story that involved Blurryface and fear and a setting that doesn’t fall too short of a mind palace.
Category: Message and Theme
My Interpretation of “Trees” by Twenty One Pilots
A writer can write something with a certain theme, idea, or message in mind, and yet ten individuals can listen to or read that something and each of them will be impacted in a different way. Different people, depending on their own perspectives or walks of life will take something away that was totally different from the writer’s intention.
People may argue that writing a song with a specific message or theme that can have multiple potential perspectives is achieving the height of the art. I think that success comes from delivering a message in a song or story that everyone who reads or hears it not only identifies the writer’s intentional theme, but also notices other ideas and messages that they take away form it based on their personalities, current life situations, perspectives, etc. And I think that that is achieving the highest point of success when writing anything. I want to impact others with the message I weave into my story or song, and yet I want listeners or readers to take other things away from it that I didn’t put there that inspires or encourages them or causes them to think about things I never even thought of associating with the thing I wrote.
Twenty One Pilots and Expessing Your Belief Through Art
The song “Stressed Out” by Twenty One Pilots was put on my mental list of “questionable songs that might be good.” Only until recently, it was moved up to my mental list of “Personal Top 21 Songs.”
Okay, maybe not 21, but somewhere around that number. Shortly afterward, Twenty One Pilots became one of my six favorite music artists. Being a music freak who likes so many different types of music, making the top 6 is saying something. But it wasn’t just the music or the genre (if you could use the word “genre” in relevance to this particular band) that I liked about them. It was what they stood for and how their faith and encouragement to others showed in their lyrics and even the style of music. As a writer, this excited me way more than it probably should have. It was all I could talk about (and post on Facebook) for a few days.
Lyric Discussion of “Stressed Out” by Twenty-Øne Piløts
As you can tell by simply glancing at this blog, I focus a lot on stories. Most of the time, I post about stories in books: writing. Writing is a HUGE way to tell stories, if not the most mainstream. Don’t even try to count all the books in the world that tell stories (if you’re up to the challenge, then fine, go ahead, and it’ll just prove my point).
But books aren’t the ONLY way to get a story across. Storytelling comes in different forms such as art, dancing, photography, films, theater and music. And in this music post, I’m going to talk about a specific song that tells a story: “Stressed Out” by Twenty-One Pilots (TØP).
The Emotionally Agonizing Life of a Bookworm, Fangirl, and Writer
Okay, so I know the title of this post is sort of weird. But if you are an avid reader, serious writer, or big fan to any extent, you may find such a post appetizing. After all, us readers, writers, and geeks tend to enjoy harrowing stories that follow characters who are thrown into very tough hardships. But why would we call this emotionally harrowing? I’ve got some answers to that question below, as well as reasons for why it’s important and worth struggling with those deep emotions over stories that never happened.
Why I Write – A Story Creator’s Testimony
Sometimes people will ask me why I write. It’s a good question to ask yourself and it’s helpful to understand why you write, not just so you can tell people why, but also as self-motivation and reassurance in your skill and abilities.
Answer the Question “What’s your Book About?” Using Story Cards
Admit it. Pretty much all writers get asked the question, “What is your book about?” Me, I begin wishing for a memorized tagline while trying to respond and sounding stupid in the process. Probably, most of our responses run thus:
“Er, well, it’s about this guy who saves the world from this demonic guy … Scratch that, it’s about a boy who travels to another world and realizes he’s from that world and that he’s the only one who needs to kill the bad guy … it’s actually about a kid who’s the chosen one, and there’s lots of other stuff I can’t tell you because SPOILERS.”
Ooooh. Impressive. And I’ve read too many books like that. Cliche? BAM!
I think we’ve all been there.
Book Review of Fall From Grace by J. Edward Ritchie
About a month ago, the indie author J. Edward Ritchie contacted me via Twitter, said he enjoyed my blog, and asked me to review his debut epic fantasy novel that got published in 2014, Fall From Grace
A Strong Theme: Your Story Has One
Writers can express what they believe through words. Words have the power to encourage, inspire, give hope, change someone’s mind, make people think again about themselves, other people, the world, the meaning of life. Words have power to make the world beautiful, and if we use those words right, we can. 
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Writing Tips: Multiple Storylines
Yup, you read the title right: Multiple storylines. But who, you ask, likes storylines enough to write more than one?
I, for one, have always hated writing storylines. If I was going to write, I was going to write my story, not a storyline; I could figure it out myself. Unfortunately, I stuck with that belief for a loooong time, which is exactly why none of my stories ever got finished. I am the type of person who has very distracted and unorganized thoughts and hundreds of little plots … and who knew I’d be writing more than one storyline one day (and not going crazy)?
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