music to write to

Does anyone else look for music to write to? For me, writing is a very emotional act, and as such, I find my best work comes in sporadic emotional bursts. When I’m in the mood, the writing just seems to flow through me. When I’m not in the mood, the sentences drag by.

One of the ways I try to get into the ‘zone’ is by looking for good music to write to. I find with the right music on in the background my ideas come faster and my prose reacts to the rhythm of the music. This, for me, is a good thing as I tend to match the music I’m listening to to the emotion of the piece I’m trying to write.

I may, at times, have to go back and fix the prose a little to make sure it sounds right sans music (not every reader will have my musical taste). But for the most part, writing to selected music usually results in tighter, more liquid prose.

In a recent story I wrote, City of Birds, I was struggling to write one of the final scenes that required fast, punchy prose with a hint of the chaotic. I had a very specific rhythm and emotion in mind for the scene and I wanted the reader to feel pushed along with the prose, slightly asphyxiated by pace and tension.

Whilst I’m sure that the end product didn’t quite meet my expectations (when does it ever?), I chose to write it to a song by The Doors, This is the End, which is featured at the end of the movie Apocalypse Now.

The song has a haunting, murderous melody that picks up pace about halfway through and relentlessly pushes forward to it’s inevitable ear splitting end. At just over 11 minutes long, it’s also not one you have to hit repeat on too many times to last the length of your writing session (that is if you’re like me and write in fits and bursts).

The song helped get me in the mood for the traumatic theme of the story, and also provided pace, chaos and disorientation together with a deep sense of sadness, which I always get from Jim Morrison’s voice.

Film soundtracks in general seem to be a rich hunting ground for music to support the emotional rhythm of my stories.

When I was writing in the post-apocalyptic genre, I listened to Nick Cave’s soundtrack to The Proposition for it’s lonely ballads and sharp, bleating violin chords. For a piece I’m trying to write currently, in which a narrative occurs across multiple locations following each other in short succession, I listen to a range of Philip Glass pieces as his music is popular with films that feature a strong sense of forward movement through the narrative. I need this rhythm to keep my prose in check, to match the ideas I have in my mind.

Part of this habit is part and parcel of my overall approach to writing. I write stories that I see in my mind as movies. Some of my stories I’ve even written first as screenplays, just so I can get a feeling for how the visual aspects fit together. I’m much more in love with visuals (including those in a reader’s mind) than words.

Hence putting music to my writing feels very natural, like a songwriter provides context to words through accompanying music. In much the same way I often read to music. In this way, a piece of music previously played whilst I’ve been reading a book can invoke memories of the reading and the images I had in mind at the time.

They say the book is always better than the movie, so a soundtrack to reading and writing might just be the best middle ground. What music (if any) do you listen to while writing? Or do you prefer silence?

No related posts.