My Step-by-Step Process for Scoring a Scene

How to use storytelling, structure, and musical psychology to craft powerful film cues.

If you're trying to score a scene but keep getting stuck — writing music that technically fits but doesn't really say anything — you're not alone.

One of the most common mistakes I see newer composers make is treating every cue as an isolated challenge.

But film scoring isn't about writing a bunch of disconnected moments. It's about telling a unified story — one scene at a time.

And that's why the way you approach a scene matters just as much as the notes you write.

Here's a step-by-step process I use for scoring a scene, built around story, structure, and a few powerful tools I teach in my classes and book.

Step 1: Write Your Themes First — Away from Picture

I always start by studying the story and writing all my major themes before I ever sync to a scene. (To learn more about this check out my blog post on writing strong themes)

Why?

Because themes represent the emotional narrative core of your project.

They shouldn't be "designed" to fit a scene. They should be written to express a person, place, idea, or belief, and then adapted to support the story across different scenes.

This approach gives your score a consistent emotional identity and makes it much easier to adjust and evolve themes across your film.

(Plus, it's a lot easier to tweak a theme you already love than to try reverse-engineering one from a complicated scene.)

Step 2: Identify the Scene's Function

When it's time to work on a cue, I start by watching the scene a few times and asking:

| What is this scene really doing?

To answer that, I look at it through the lens of the three core functions of film music:

Psychological - what insight or mood does the audience need?

Is this scene about fear? Discovery? Empathy? Is a character smiling on the outside but crying on the inside? Your music should amplify or clarify the emotions inherent in the scene.

Physical - Where should the music enter, exit, or sync to the action?

Don't worry about specific hit points yet, but is this a walk-and-talk scene? A sudden reveal? A hard cut? Generally speaking, are there any specific moments you think need to line up with the music? (e.g., where does the music start/end)

Technical - What musical material needs to return or evolve (if any)?

Are you developing a theme? Introducing a new motif? Bringing back a sound palette? This function is all about how you're using continuity in your music to help track the story.

This 3-part lens helps me break down a simple description of what my cue needs to accomplish, and how the material I've already prepped can help before I've even begun working on the first notes.

Step 3: Map Your Hit Points

Once I understand the function of the cue, I go hunting for hit points — specific moments that shift the emotional energy of the scene and inform the structure of my cue.

Hit points aren't just action beats or cuts.

They are moments where the audience receives new information, something that changes how they feel or what they understand. Information that results in:

• A shift in emotion/mood

• A shift in energy

• A new understanding of which direction the story is moving.

Each time you find a new hit point, ask yourself:

• What just changed? How does this impact the story?

• How do the valence, size, and energy shift (if at all?)

  • These three elements are the core pillars of emotions in music. If you'd like to learn more, check out my blog post How to portray emotions with music.

• Which musical tools (themes, motifs, sounds, etc.) could reinforce this change?

Once I've identified the hit points, I treat them like emotional anchors. They give me the shape of my scene. My job is to connect them, not just with meter and tempo, but with intentional musical storytelling.

Step 4: Sketch the Emotional Arc

This is where I start mapping out the actual structure of the cue, not in bars or beats, but in emotional movement/content.

At each hit point, consider what's happening in the story and I make a note:

• Should the music get bigger or smaller (size)?

• Should it feel faster, slower, smoother, sharper? (movement)

• Should it become darker, lighter, more neutral? (valence.

These three traits — size, movement, and valence — come from the CMA model I use in my book The Musical Storyteller. They form the foundation for emotional clarity in music.

By tracking these three elements across the scene, I end up with a clear emotional roadmap, a plan for how the music will evolve over time.

Step 5: Choose Tempo and Meter to Hit Your Marks

Once I've mapped the structure and emotional flow, I figure out how to actually land those hit points.

That means choosing the right tempo and time signature — or combination of multiple different tempos and time signatures — so I can place musical events exactly where they need to go.

• Want to hit a point to feel really strong (e.g., mark the beginning of a new theme) place it on the downbeat of a brand new phrase.

• Want it to feel moderately important? (e.g., cymbal crash/drum hit) Place it on beat 1 or 3 of a bar.

• Don't care if it's particularly important or not? line it up with any beat at all.

Once the tempo and structure are locked in, all that's left is the fun part: Scoring the Cue.

Final Thought: Scoring Isn't Guess Work — It's a Craft

This process doesn't just help you write cues faster.

It helps you write music that actually means something.

By starting with the story, identifying emotional shifts, and building a structural plan based on psychological impact, you give your music direction, weight, and resonance.

That's how you stop writing background music.

And start writing film scores that people feel.