I am in the exciting stages of my new Work In Progress. I’m finalizing my plot, I have my character “inspiration pictures” chosen, and I just burned my story soundtrack. I was talking to one of my critique partners last night about my beginning process and my love affair with soundtracks, and thought it would make for a good post here.
Out of all of my favorite writing tools, my soundtrack is probably my favorite. I listen to it in the morning when I’m taking my shower and getting dressed, and jam out to it in the car with my girls. Before I write a scene I often play the song or songs that reflect my character’s emotional arc at that time in the story. And I love studying the lyrics for inspiration. The best compliment I ever got was from my husband who listened to my last story soundtrack and said he could actually hear my Protag’s arc from the first song to the last.
Yes!! And hearing that arc in my music inspires me to make sure my plot reflects that in my words.
My CP/Writing Sister asked how I go about choosing my songs, and really it is a fun and interesting process all on it’s own. This last time was much easier as my husband clued me into a handy feature called “the search box.”
Ground breaking discovery, right? Seriously, why did I not know you could do this with your music files????
Anyhoo, my first step is to search out any songs that I already have in my head, that came to me while hammering out my basic plot of inciting incident, three major turning points, black moment, climax, and resolution. If I’ve figured out more than that–any of the minor quests, surprises, critical choices, or climaxes–then I think about those moments and see if any songs jump out at me. If I don’t have one, this is when I’ll hop over to Amazon and buy it real quick 🙂
Then I start my search.
Our song files are in two locations. I have a good chunk of them listed in my Media Player so I quickly scan those, keeping in mind my character’s story arc. My character arc often reflects the plot arc, but I prefer my playlists to correspond to the protag’s emotional journey. I’m sure it can work the other way, too, though. When I’m done with that quick scan, then I think about all of the twists and turns in the arc and think of key words that are associated with that point–some examples from this last one were magic, future, perfection, change, fighting, stronger, love, loss, together.
Another step I’ve done in the past, but didn’t have to this time, is hop on google and look for songs that have to do with “X.” For some reason people talk about this ALL the time, so you should be able to find conversations where people have looked for the exact songs you are looking for and done the leg work for you!
Often when a song really fits, I look at some of the artist’s other songs, too, to see if any others fit. It always seems to work out that my soundtracks have one or two artist’s who have at least 2 or 3 songs on the playlist. It’s almost as if the singer’s personal journey is or was similar to the one I’m exploring in my story. My first soundtrack had a lot of Nickelback, my second had a lot of Taylor Swift, and this one has a lot of Avril Lavigne. Actually this one starts with several country songs and then breaks into Avril once the plot takes off, which I think is a funny example of my Protag’s journey.
But my favorite, favorite thing about my playlist?? Even after I am solid on my plot and I’ve begun writing, and I have my soundtrack all burned and reflective of where I’m going, I still get inspired by the playlist. I can be driving around, listening to a song and thinking of how it perfectly reflects that point in the story, and then WHAM! An idea hits me, inspired by a random lyric, and a whole new scene is born. Or a line gets added in an established scene that really gets the point I wanted across.
For my last manuscript I was stuck on my ending. I had the ending scene, I knew what I wanted to happen and was even pretty solid on the dialogue, but it just wasn’t clicking. I took a break and went to get ready for the day, of course pressing play on my playlist while doing so. And then I got it. I didn’t change the setting, the dialogue or my outlined plot. I just changed how the characters first saw each other, the action around their meeting, and how it unfolded a bit.
And it killed. KILLED I tell you 🙂
So, Question 4 U: Do you create playlists? Maybe instead, you choose a theme song that represents your WIP? Do you choose based on character, or plot? How do you use this tool to help the writing process? AND I’d be all types of happy if anyone wants to leave their own theme song, or one from their own playlist in the comments!
I’ll go first: Avril Lavigne’s What The Hell
