In 2020 I discovered Skyrim music and ambience videos on YouTube. During the beginnings of Covid, I started writing my eighth book, A DANCE OF BEASTS AND PIANOS. I wrote that book listening only to the Skyrim soundtrack. I also wrote the first draft in three months which was the shortest amount of time I’ve ever written a draft. Now, at the time, I didn’t even know what Skyrim was—I just liked the music and images on YouTube and it increased my world-building skills. Then, a year later, I asked my brother for a video game recommendation where I would feel like I was in a fantasy world, and he gave me Skyrim on the Nintendo Switch for Christmas.
As soon as I started playing the game, I realized I knew the music because I had been listening to it for a year before while writing. It was a very strange and coincidental experience. I wrote another book after A DANCE OF BEASTS AND PIANOS called A HISTORY OF MEMORY AND GEMSTONES. Both of these are Young Adult Fantasy. I also listened to the Skyrim soundtrack while writing A HISTORY OF MEMORY AND GEMSTONES because I couldn’t bring myself to stop listening to it and it had become a part of my writing routine. I have to admit, it still is.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim came out in 2011, but I wasn’t playing video games back then, so I’m having a blast discovering new places on the Skyrim map eleven years later. I read a lot, so it’s nice when a video game can also inspire writing ideas. Spyro the Reignited Trilogy has also been an influence on my writing, though not as much as Skyrim. Has a video game ever inspired writing ideas for you, if you are a writer reading this?