Musical inspiration

[EntAllat]

A thread like this came up at another site and I thought I'd repeat it here. The initial questions was: Do you listen to music when you write? A follow up in the thread was the kinds of songs/music/playlists that people listened to either when writing, or when trying to get into the headspace of a particular character, etc.

So, what about you? Does music play any part in your writing?

Me, I can't listen to anything when I'm actually writing. Instrumental music is okay, but I'd rather have silence. I'll have difficulty focusing on wrting otherwise, and if there's something with language in it - a conversation, a television show in the background, a song with words - it can bring me to a halt. I must use the same part of my brain for listening to language as I do for writing it down, or something like that.

On the other hand, music can bring to mind entire scenes when I do listen to it - the music brings visuals, as if it was a movie, and I eventually work that out into something to write. (This works too for non-fiction. I listened to a LOT of music in the days when I was in my Master's program, writing 30 page papers every otehr week.) Today I actually created a playlist on my iPod called "inspiration" with the songs that keep repeatedly giving me an visual idea for a part of a story. It's a pretty eclectic list.

Then there are "theme songs": something that really brings to mind the character at that moment. Right now the song that's been on repeat for a story with my very first OC is "Leader of Men" by Nickelback (more for the sound than all of the lyrics). Every time I listen to it I can picture that OC more vividly. "Sympathy for the Devil", the Guns and Roses version, also gets played a lot when I'm thinking of scenes for one of the canon (not our ENT heroes) characters. Finally, there's one by an Israeli singer (who tragically passed away), Ofra Haza, that helps me think of one TnT scene for the same story.

You?

[Aquarius]

I create entire playlists that are meant to help me find character headspace or moods I'm trying to accomplish for a scene/story. They always come out pretty eclectic, too, no matter what the fandom.

Since I'm a screenwriter in the making, I tend to see my stories in my head the way I would shoot them...and I'm also mentally scoring the story as I write, so the music actually helps more than hurts. Those who've read the beginning of "Body and Katra" can see this in the way I juxtaposed the Skynyrd song with what was going on between Trip and T'Pol--and it wasn't just to create atmosphere for the bar.

"Moments in Love" by the Art of Noise has become my mental "Trip and T'Pol's" theme...and there are three very different arrangements of it, which is very cool again from a "scoring" standpoint--when you watch a show or movie you do often hear the same piece of music but interpreted differently to reflect the different mood or setting of the current scene. There's the very intense radio edit, the longer and more sexual original version, and a much less-known melancholy sounding "(three fingers of) Love" mix, which I tend to gravitate toward while writing conflict between them.

I tend to listen to "This Woman's Work" by Kate Bush whenever writing about Baby Elizabeth, and it was coming from my speakers as I penned "Panic" and "Anticipation."

"Part of Me" by Serge Devant pretty much, for me, represents the White Space and "Bound".

There's lots of others. But I'll stop there.

[mareel]

Music is very important to me as I'm writing, and as I’m conceiving and planning a story. I too have full playlists that go with each story or series.

On my original website (now lost to geocities), I did include a playlist for my first full length fic, "Without Change." This one was a bit unusual in that one song was important to the story itself, and I wanted readers to be able to find it to listen if they wanted to do so.

As I wrote my Season 3 based "Refuge" series, the music list for it kept growing over the several years it took to write it. Having the music to refer back to always helped me to recapture the moods I was trying to create. I distilled that list down into one or two songs representing each of the 16 parts of the series, and have been meaning to post that with the story index for it on my LJ and website. It's a pretty wide range of musical styles, from Gaelic songs to pop.

I'm doing the same as I try to recapture the style and mood of the "Indiscretion" series, which I’m trying to complete. I wasn't as careful about really setting up the playlist at the time, so I've had to recreate it from rereading the earlier parts of the series.

Sometimes I strongly associate a particular piece of music with a character. There is a beautiful uillean pipe version of "Sliabh na mBan" that I will always hear as Degra's music, arising out of a RP arc where I wrote Degra and Jon (which reminds me that I have always meant to transform that into a standalone piece). And Sarah McLachlan's "Answer" will always be "Twilight" Jonathan's song.

I could go on about music for a long time, but I'll stop here.

[crystalswolf]

I tend to listen to "This Woman's Work" by Kate Bush whenever writing about Baby Elizabeth...

I love that song! I think the best scene matched with it was in "She's Having a Baby" "The Ghost Whisperer" tried to capture that magic but fell woefully short, I think.

For "Peace of Mind" I had Faith and the Muse "Chorus of the Furies" (I'd suggest listening to the song without watching the video. The video gives a totally different feel to the song.

"His Companion" inspiration was a bit strange. "Witches of Eastwich" when Daryl Van Horne instructs Jane.

"Missionary's Perspective" was Enigma "Return to Innocence"

[Kathy Rose]

This may sound strange but, while I normally don't listen to music while writing, I do listen to it while revising. It's a habit I developed in college while studying. If I'm concentrating on something that's already right in front of me -- like the written words of a story -- music helps block out everything else. But if I'm trying to write something original, it interferes because I start listening (or even worse, singing along) with the music. Weird, huh?

However, that's not to say I don't find inspiration in music. Often it helps lead me to titles for stories. For example, I was listening to Little River Band's "There's Not Another You," when I was working on a story about RU Hoshi being stuck in the MU. She'd had a relationship with Malcolm back on her Enterprise, and winds up in a relationship with the MU Malcolm. My title became Not Another You.

In one instance, the title of a song was the inspiration for two short stories. Billy Joel's "A Minor Variation" led me to write two stories about Hoshi, Malcolm, and Major Hayes. The first, A Major Variation, has Hoshi seeing a change in Malcolm and Hayes' attitudes toward each other after their fight in Harbinger. The sequel, A Minor Irritation, has Malcolm worried because he thinks Hayes and Hoshi have started a relationship.

[crystalswolf]

HR, not weird at all.

[Mr Smith]

"Missionary's Perspective" was Enigma "Return to Innocence"

I've been listening to that one a lot lately on a playlist for an original novel that's just swung back into focus, as well as "Age of Loneliness", I find Enigma has some great tracks for writing.

As for me, I always turn to music for inspiration. Often if I'm thinking about something, or feeling something, that coincides with the mood of a song to which I happen to listen, a fic is much more likely to result. Listening to music that I find relevant to the story helps me regulate and craft better tone, atmosphere and pace, so I do it as much as possible. I find losing myself in the music and in the story one and the same, so I'm not distracted by the music at all.

I'm definitely one of the ones that compiles playlists for my stories, or associates a particular track with a character or scene. I have a song for every Malcolm, which is a big help, at the moment "You Haven't Earned It" by Assemblage 23 and "Warmongers" by Frozen Plasma are haunting a rather introspective and self-deprecating Malcolm, but I also have a playlist purely for his interest in explosions (and maybe even a romantic one for those Archer/Reed moments...maybe).

I've recently started one for MU Malcolm, too, involving a lot of Laibach, a little Rammstein, and some Die Krupps. The martial music vibe I find especially helpful. There's also a lot of Combichrist, charting I suppose a bit of a decline into madness. I think industrial, EBM and aggrotech is really appropriate for the MU.

[Misplaced]

Music is a huge part of writing for me. It doesn't bother me to have music on while I write -- it helps to set the mood. I actually have extensive playlists for the bigger fics that I'm writing and I tend to have theme songs for the more emotional stuff.

I do write sometimes without any music at all, but it's kind of rare. Music actually helps me to concentrate on the work (I use it when doing art as well or housework. ). I have a crazy busy life with lots of distractions and I find that music helps me keep centered.

My theme song for "Don't Want to Let Go" is "Hear You Me" by Jimmy Eat World.

I wrote an entire chapter of "Dark Echoes" recently listening to one song over and over again: "Breath" by Breaking Benjamin. That's just one of the 44 songs on the playlist I have for that fic.

The Archer fic that I'm toying with has some brooding moments that are inspired by "What I've Done" by Linkin Park.

No, alternative rock is not all I listen too... I promise! LOL But I'm sure considering my love of the MU that it's no surprise that I do listen to that particular music genre a lot. LOL

[Honeybee]

I don't necessarily listen to music so much when I'm writing, but I listen to get inspiration.

If I'm writing TnT stuff - I listen to Radiohead's "The Bends" album, especially the song "Black Star" which totally gets me in the mood to write frustrated and confused Trip.

For T'Pol alone, I listen to a lot of the yoga/meditation music I have.

And for Trip alone, I like Ray LaMontagne, Drivin' & Crying and maybe some Alison Krauss - Southern folk rock stuff.

[Honeybee]

I think enough time has passed so I can double post:

I am totally working out a Trip-longs-for-T'pol story in my head, all inspired by For the Summer by Ray Ray LaMontagne. I totally picture Trip in the RW book thinking about her - and the line in the song about wanting to see his lady smile takes on a special meaning given that she probably doesn't do that very often, maybe only in their most intimate moments.

So, anyway, I'm totally writing a fic based around this. I'll add it to the list of all the other ideas I have!

Hey, idea - throwing down a song instead of a prompt - seeing where it takes people. But it would have to be a more general song. Ray LaMontagne screams Trip. If it became an official challenge in the challenge thread, it would have to be a song that worked for multiple characters and/or pairings.