Boldly Reading’s prompt #7, Music and Writing, asks the following musical questions –
Music, for many of us, is a part of the writing process. It might inspire us. We might need it to get started, or motivated, or to finish. We might give characters their own theme songs or might follow along with the lyrics as they pull us into a different direction. We might even write songfics.
Your blogging mission is therefore to answer questions like this –
Does music inspire you in your writing? Do any characters have a song that just clicks for you? Do any character relationships have songs (e. g. they’re playing our song)? Do lyrics inspire you? Do rhythm, beats and instruments inspire? Is one genre preferred to another? Do any of your characters sing or play instruments? Do any of your stories or characters have play lists?
Bonus questions!
Have you ever used music to set a scene or a mood? Do you feel it was successful? Have you read others’ musical connections to fan fiction? Did the music help in your enjoyment of the piece(s), or did it detract?
Second Verse, Same as the First
I’ve tackled this before, the whole idea of music and trek and writing, but it’s time to update what I wrote.
Many of my characters have theme songs, or they share them in couples. In addition, the HG Wells stories are heavily musical, partly as a mood creator but also to evoke certain years. It would be a lot to repeat all of that. Hence, rather than doing that, I’d like to talk about a few times when I think music really was a part of telling the story.
Day of the Dead
For Day of the Dead, I wanted to evoke the mood of Halloween, spookiness and horror. In particular, I wanted to move the mood from jokey, unreal, fictional horrors, such as are seen on a movie screen, to the very real and memorable and gut-wrenching horrors of a concentration camp. Further, I wanted to end, not so much on a happy note as on one of a set of lessons having been learned. And so the music, which starts off with tunes like Bobby ‘Boris’ Pickett’s Monster Mash, segues into eventually the Manhattan Transfer’s Twilight Zone/Twilight Tone to Golden Earring’s Twilight Zone to, finally, Ministry’s Everyday is Halloween.
The mood should absolutely darken, leaving the reader, when it’s all over, with a sense that Tripp Tucker‘s final days are pretty dark ones. The idea was, not only to tell the story, but also to give a bit of life to the explanation in the canon episode, These Are the Voyages, that he and T’Pol had broken up years earlier and had never reconciled.
Crackerjack
While it doesn’t have music actually in the fan fiction itself, Crackerjack has always been posted with links to period music. Although Joe DiMaggio isn’t in the story, I’ve always posted Les Brown’s Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio, as it’s accurate to the time period and is of course about baseball. I tend to use Artie Shaw’s Frenesi as the love theme for Geordi LaForge and Rosemary Parker. I also like ending with Frank Sinatra’s Oh, Look at Me Now as it’s an optimistic song with an eye toward a happy future.
Multiverse II
This story has gone through a number of twists, and the soundtrack is somewhat complicated, but the song I particularly liked adding was Cream’s Swlabr, which absolutely, to my mind, captured Seymour Sonia’s drug trip.
Downsides
I know I have sometimes allowed lyrics to dictate my writing a little too much. I will be the first to admit that. And I’ve also added music sometimes where, maybe, it didn’t need to be. On the Radio had a ton of music listed, and it followed Donna Summer’s lyrics a bit, but I also wanted to use it as a direct sequel to More, More, More! which is a disco party. Further, I wanted to evoke a dance, not so much tripping the light fantastic but, rather, the dance of two people and their attraction. One step forward, two steps back, as it were. But I know it didn’t quite work out as well as I wanted it to.
Upshot
For every song, and every lyric, the results are, I think, mixed. Do they add to the mood? Sometimes. But they can sometimes threaten to overwhelm it, and I know I can sometimes use them as too much of a crutch. I like using music in my writing, but the effects aren’t always as I intend them to be.
Then again, Otra D’Angelo got this song. And, at least to me, it feels just right.
