David Baerwald on Taking Writing Lessons from Hans Zimmer

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A typical song begins with a brief introduction that establishes space, moves into a verse that advances the narrative, turns through a bridge or b-section that complicates matters, and arrives at a chorus that delivers emotional release. These sections are so short that you usually must repeat this whole structure two or even three times to make a three-minute song.

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A four-movement symphony follows the same essential structure but on a vastly different time scale, and with very different intent. Songs return, while symphonies move forward. Songs gain their power from repetition, while symphonies gain theirs from transformation.

In a song, a chorus returns largely unchanged, accumulating emotional force through augmentation. A symphony rarely grants that luxury. Themes return altered by what has happened to them, darkened or brightened, fragmented or reconciled. They possess memory.

Historical fiction works in much the same way. A small incident in 1905 may reappear forty years later carrying an entirely different meaning, because history itself has transformed the listener. Epic historical fiction, with its long memory and changing themes, naturally aspires more to the symphony than the song. But we writers of historical fiction should never forget, in our focus on the vast sweep of time and change, that the symphony itself is composed of lots of little songs.

A song is not a symphony. A symphony is not a play. A play is not a novel. But beneath their differences lies a common grammar of tension, development, transformation, and release.

There are lessons beyond structure to be gained from writing music. When I was a boy learning to accompany myself on guitar and piano, I saw music initially as a series of blocks, basic chords with a melody on top. As an untrained guitar player, when I saw “G chord” on the page, I put my hand into the shape that I had memorized as a “G chord.” Same with the piano. I had not yet learned what a chord was. I thought it was a block in a series of consecutive blocks, when in reality, a chord is simply a moment of temporary agreement between independent voices, all of which are on their own journey. This is a valuable lesson for the novelist.

“It sounds too much like you’re writing music,” Hans said. “Well, what should I be doing?” I asked him. “Telling the story,” he said.

Many years later, after a long and relatively successful career in music, with a two-year-old son, I thought I should learn how to work with orchestras, and possibly do more film scoring. I studied for about three years and then put that very inadequate training to work in Hollywood, writing instrumental music for films under the tutelage of Hans Zimmer and his army of geniuses.

Writing orchestral music, even faux-orchestral music using samplers and synthesis, is radically different from songwriting. Far from block chords, most instruments in an orchestra play only one note at a time (except for keyboards, harps, and a few other polyphonic instruments), so all the chord changes, extensions, harmonies, and dissonances stem from the interaction between this army of one-note instruments. Each voice has its own tone, its own melody, its own will. As a result, the harmonies and chords are in a state of perpetual change, moving together more like clouds of starlings or minnows than a single frog hopping from stone to stone. Each voice is important. Each voice is a character; they are all melodic lines, and together they can create an organic, almost accidental-seeming mosaic or tapestry.

There is a further lesson for writers of any kind to be gained from Zimmer. Early on in our tutelage, I wrote a three-and-a-half-minute piece that I really liked for an emotional scene. Hans rejected it outright. “It sounds too much like you’re writing music,” he said. “Well, what should I be doing?” I asked him. “Telling the story,” he said.

Which brings us to the other half of a song: Lyrics. Lyrics also have many useful lessons for the novelist. I’ve always looked at lyrics as dialogue, or at least one side of a conversation. Even if it’s a maniac screaming at the universe, or a terminal drunk pouring out his life in a bar, or a lonely call in the night to an ex-lover’s dead phone, I always try to have a sense not only of who the singer is but whom they’re addressing and what they want. To do this consistently and quickly, I’ve learned to think like an actor, to almost deceive myself into briefly becoming the character I’m writing for. This is invaluable for a novelist.

A lyricist learns economy. Lyricists have to make sure the audience sees the entire situation by the end of the first verse. In the case of the first successful record I was involved in, Welcome to the Boomtown, the first verse was 29 words.

Ms. Cristina drives a 944

Satisfaction oozes from her pores.

She keeps rings on her fingers,

Marble on her floors.

Cocaine in her dresser,

And bars on her doors.

(My lyrical inspiration at the time was police reports.)

Words contain not only information, but rhythm. Sometimes, in our post-Hemingway quest for short, declarative sentences we can forget that like a lyric, a scene must flow, must carry implied melodies. It must pulse. In Murakami’s essential book of conversations with the great symphony conductor Seiji Ozawa, he says starkly, “I think that someone who writes without rhythm lacks the talent to be a writer.”

There’s one last lesson I’d like to take from great symphonies, and from great novels of the past. Discipline. I knew that taking on the writing of The Fire Agent was not a small task. I had never done anything on this scale, and in the end, it took eight years to write. It covers a large span of history, from 1900 to the dawn of the Cold War. It demanded everything I had ever learned and exposed everything I had not. It seduced me, obsessed me, even overwhelmed me at times. And without music to guide me through it, I would have been sunk from the start.

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The Fire Agent by David Baerwald is available via Spiegel & Grau.