How to Score an Emotional Arc (Not Just a Scene)
- Stephen Berkemeier
- May 31
- 4 min read
In film scoring, your job isn't just to support what's happening now. It's to guide the audience through how a character changes and develops. This post teaches you how to write music that reflects a character's emotional arc — not just the emotion of a single moment.
To score an emotional arc, you must track how the story's energy shifts over time — then adapt your themes using emotional dimensions like Valence, Size, Movement, and Gesture to reflect each phase of Transformation.

Scenes vs. Arcs: Why One Moment Isn't Enough
It's easy to score a moment — a sad fact, a triumphant reveal —but powerful scores do more than reinforce the obvious. They guide the emotional arc of a story, helping us understand how and why the characters evolve.
Great scores aren't snapshots. They're emotional roadmaps.
Use Themes to Track Growth
One of the most effective ways to score a full arc is by assigning your story's key ideas their own themes — and then evolving those themes as the story unfolds.
Character Themes track a person's growth. Start by identifying how the character changes from beginning to end, then mark the scenes where those changes start to take hold.
Journey/Goal Themes represent the pursuit of something: a destination, a relationship, a dream, etc. They often appear during moments of progress, setbacks, opportunities, or new decisions that bring characters closer to or further from their goal.
Moral/Ideological Themes highlight the deeper message of the story. These themes stay mostly in the background, surfacing when the narrative's lesson becomes clear.
Every theme has an arc. Your Job as a composer is to map it.
Use Emotional Parameters to Track Change
Once you've chosen which arc to follow, it's time to shape that arc musically. The easiest way to do this is by using the four emotional parameters from my book, The Musical Storyteller:
Valence: Is the emotion bright, dark, hopeful, or tragic?
Size: Is the moment intimate or epic in scope?
Energy/Movement: How physically expressive is the emotion?
Gesture: What kind of musical metaphors can you create to personalize your emotion?
These four dimensions let you track how an emotion evolves, not just label what it is.
Transform Your Theme Without Losing Its Identity
Once you've mapped the emotional arc, you'll want to adapt your theme to match each emotional moment. But here's the trick: you need to preserve the identity of your theme while changing how it feels. Here's how:
Describe your original theme in detail: What makes the theme recognizable? Go parameter by parameter: timbre, texture, tempo, rhythm, register, articulation, dynamics, harmony, and melody/pitch. This will give you a clear picture of the theme's personality and sound.
Identify the non-negotiable traits: Which features must stay the same for it to still feel like the same theme? A good rule of thumb melodic contour and rhythmic ratios tend to be essential. If one note is shorter than another, or moves upward in pitch relative to the next, those relationships should remain — even if the exact rhythm or interval changes.
Define the emotional shift: Use Valence, Size, Movement, and Gesture to describe the original theme and the new emotion you need to express. How do these emotional qualities need to shift (if at all)?
Make a plan for transformation: Decide which musical parameters can be altered to match the new emotion, and which must stay intact. Which changes will help tell the emotional truth of the moment without breaking the identity of the theme?
Sketch the variation: Use your plan to adapt the theme. Keep the non-negotiables. Modify the flexible elements to reflect the new emotional context, and let your theme evolve with the story.
Case Study: How to Train Your Dragon — The Evolution of "This is Berk"
A perfect example of emotional arc scoring in action is John Powell's brilliant use of the theme "This is Berk."
Opening Credits: The first time we hear it, it's bold and adventurous — full of rhythmic energy, bright orchestration, and soaring melodic lines. It sets the tone for the high-spirited family adventure, introducing us to the Viking world through excitement and humor.
"Everything We Know About You Is Wrong": One of the most powerful transformations of the theme comes during Hiccup's quiet realization that dragons aren't the enemy. in this scene, the theme is softened and slowed, played with tender strings and delicate orchestration. It feels warm, intimate, and quietly romantic, reflecting Hiccup's emotional turning point and the beginning of new understanding. It's the same core idea, but now reimagined with entirely different emotional intent.
The Dragons' Island: Later, when the Vikings set out to confront the dragons—with Toothless chained and Hiccup left behind —we hear a darker, more war-like version of the same theme. It's the same melody, but now it's surrounded by low brass, pounding percussion, and tighter harmonic tension. The theme hasn't changed — but the emotion it conveys has, tracking the shift in tone and stakes.
Throughout the film, the theme evolves with the emotional arc of the story. It doesn't just signal identity, it reveals transformation. And that's the heart of emotional arc scoring.
Your Score Should Tell the Story Too
Scoring a single scene is about what the story feels like right now. But scoring an arc is about how that feeling evolves. By tracking emotional change and adapting your themes using Valence, Size, Movement, and Gesture — you can write music that doesn't just decorate the film.
It becomes the story.
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