Last week, my prompt was about songs that could be turned into novels. This week I’m broadening my question. What music has inspired your writing? Have you listened to a piece, whether a song or instrumental piece, and imagined a scene to go with it? It’s almost impossible for me to listen to any kind of music and not concoct a scene to accompany it. Here are a few musical pieces that have inspired me lately.
“The Ecstasy of Gold” by Ennio Morricone. This instrumental piece is part of the soundtrack for The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. It helped me craft a climax for the book that I’m planning to be the next to last book in my Rae Riley mystery series. I hadn’t seen the movie, which allowed me to imagine anything I wanted.
“On Earth as It Is in Heaven” by Ennio Morricone. This is a piece from another movie, The Mission. I haven’t seen the movie, but the piece has given my ideas for the ending scenes in my series. I haven’t been able to find an English translation for the words, but it really doesn’t matter because the voices act like other instruments.
As an author who loves music, it would be lovely if I could include a soundtrack with my books and stories. Do publishers ever do that with audiobooks? I would put songs or tunes that had inspired characters or scenes. Or my publisher could hire someone to write original music. Since those dreams will have to stay dreams, I have to include music in my stories the best way I can. Using music to show character is a fresher, more novel way for readers to get to know my characters than physical description and dialogue.
A Main Character Who’s Also a Musician
My teen detective Rae Riley is, first and foremost, an amateur photographer. It’s the way she sees the world. But, like a lot of creative people, she enjoys other arts. She played drums in her high school marching band and jazz band. Making her a drummer gives her personality another layer. She’s playing an instrument that leans more toward males, so some might see her choice as unusual or offbeat (ha!).
When I was in band, certain personalities tended to pick certain instruments. The Type A, straight arrows played flute and trumpet. The clarinet was the everyman or woman of the band. The more quirky kids picked trombone, saxophone, or percussion. My character’s choice of instrument can say a lot about who he or she is.
If you need to draw disparate characters together, making them all musicians gives them a common interest and a plausible reason for people who might not normally associate with each other to interact. Rae joins three young police officers in jam sessions because they play outlaw country music for fun and didn’t have a drummer. (Yes, it’s supposed to be funny that cops like outlaw country.)
Favorite Music Reveals Character Traits
The fact that these millennial cops are playing music from the 70’s says something about their personalities. Houston, who sings lead and plays lead guitar, explains how he can’t stand current country music. His love for outlaw country can mean any number of things. Maybe he’s not concerned with following popular trends. Or he doesn’t like how big business takes over an art form; he likes art for art’s sake. Or he just likes to be different, to stand out from the crowd.
When Rae and the cops take a break from jamming, they play songs from their playlists. I can use their choices to say something about their characters. Since Rae doesn’t know the three young men well, she hesitates over her selections because her playlist contains what she considers some pretty obscure songs. So she picks more popular songs. Her choice shows her uncertainty in this new social situation. Out of the four characters. the bass player is the only one to pick instrumental pieces instead of songs. I can use that deviation from the other characters to reveal something about him.
Now it’s your turn. Have you written or read about characters who love music? How did the author use music to show character?
I’m sure all of us creative people have listened to a song and thought it had the makings of a great story. Of course many songs tell stories set to music. But I’m writing about songs that would inspire you to expand on the story outlined in the lyrics. What songs could be novels?
Murder Ballads
I have listened to many songs over the years that fall into my writing genre, crime. A lot of them are country or folk songs. I didn’t realize that these types of songs had their own subgenre, murder ballads. I learned this when I read the book accompanying Ken Burns’s PBS documentary on country music. Murder ballads are songs that outline crimes, usually murder, and usually, they don’t have happy endings. I think these ballads came from songs sung in the British Isles. A local Celtic band performs a song “The Cobbler’s Daughter”, a traditional Irish song, about how a girl’s mother is in prison for accidentally killing her boyfriend, who had sneaked into their house.
I also think the “Dying Teen” songs of the fifties and sixties are a kind of offshoot of the murder ballad. Most of the time, crime isn’t involved. These songs deal with teens dying or getting injured, usually a car accident. Songs likes these are “Leader of the Pack”, “Dead Man’s Curve,” and “Last Kiss”. Any of these songs could inspire a longer story.
My Choices
Here are some songs I think could be developed into novels in any number of ways.
“The Long Black Veil” by Danny Dill and Marijohn Wilkin. I first heard this murder ballad sung by Mick Jagger on the Chieftains album The Long Black Veil.
“Lyin’ Eyes” by Don Henley and Glenn Frey, sung by the Eagles. This isn’t a murder ballad but it certainly sets up the situation for one. In a small town, young wife of older husband has young boyfriend. Any one of them could get bumped off if someone used this story as its premise.
“Puff the Magic Dragon” by Peter, Paul, and Mary based on a poem by Leonard Lipton. I know that either in the 70’s or 80’s a animated version of this song was made. I always hated this song as a kid because I felt so sorry for Puff and thought Jackie Paper was a total jerk. This could be a fun or very touching middle grade novel.
Sound may be the second most popular sense writers evoke. Below are three ways to enhance your writing about the sense of sound.
Voices
I love it when an author describes how a character sounds. Dr. Watson often stated that the voice of Sherlock Holmes was strident. Is the voice high-pitched? A scratchy bass? Carries a heavy accent? Does the character talk fast or drawl? It’s now considered amateurish to have a line of dialogue and accompany it with a tag, such as “he roared”, “she squeaked”, or “he snarled.” So I have to get creative to let my readers know how a character sounds.
“His snarl forced the other man to rear back.”
“His roar would have done ten lions proud.”
“He talked as fast as a flock of woodpeckers at work.”
Music
If you have a character who loves music, you can have songs or tunes running through her mind to reveal her feelings about other characters and situations. By the way, you can use the titles of songs but you can not use the lyrics of copyrighted songs. You can get inventive and have your character create her own lyrics to fit familiar tunes. A few years ago, my kids loved the middle grade mystery series Jigsaw Jones. Jigsaw’s partner Mila would make up lyrics appropriate to the story, using tunes of well-known children’s songs.
A character with musical talent could also describe sounds in musical terms.
Her staccato, piccolo voice clashed with her husband’s mellow cello.
The gate squeaked like a first-grader’s first stroke on a violin.
Nature
All my stories, so far, have significant sections set in rural areas. Working in the sounds is important because nature is never quiet. In face, when nature gets quiet, something strange is going on ( Speculative fiction, anyone?) Bird songs signal what season a story is taking place. My backyard is home to many mourning doves. Their plaintive call would work well in a scene if I wanted to underline a melancholy tone. I often write about the sound of the wind. Where I live, the air is rarely still.
Writing rhythm comes in two forms. One is the overall rhythm of your unique writing style. This rhythm is not something you can read a book about or sit down to your computer and decide, “Today I will work on rhythm.” I think it’s a by-product of mastering other writing techniques and filtering it through a person’s talent. Second is the rhythm of a small passage within a larger work. This is the kind of rhythm you can deliberately work on. Below are three ways to put rhythm in your writing.
Rhythm in Descriptions
One way to enliven descriptions is to give them a rhythm or balance. Listed below are passages I think have enjoyable rhythms.
The sentence describes the things a man decided were the essentials for a vacation on sail boat in England before WWI:
“They reduced themselves, apparently, to four essentials: tins of salmon, if he should want to eat; loaded revolvers, if he should want to fight; a bottle of brandy, presumably in case he should faint; and a priest, presumably in case he should die.” “The Sins of Prince Saradine” by G.K. Chesterton
I like how Chesterton describes the four items in similar ways, giving a bounce to the sentence and providing a balance to the list. It also give insight into the personality of the man planning the trip. Mr. Chesterton could have just listed the items: “He packed food, guns, brandy, and his friend, a priest.” But the longer version is so much more interesting and entices the reader to read on.
This is a description of Halloween during the Dark Ages from “The Cloak” by Robert Bloch.
“A dark Europe, groaning in superstitious fear, dedicated this Eve to the grinning Unknown. A million doors had once been barred against evil visitants, a million prayers mumbled, a million candles lit.”
The repetition of “millions” gives the description a rhythm, making it memorable.
In “The Monster of Poot Holler”, author Ida Chittum uses rhythm to establish the setting in the Ozarks.
“Folk in other parts of the mountains look down on Poot Hollerians. They say the laziest men and the biggest liars live there too, and men folk who would rather tell a lie on credit than tell the truth for cash.”
Since I write in first person, I try to give my descriptions rhythms suitable to the main character’s personality.
Rhythm in Dialogue
My editor Sharyn Kopf would tell me a section of dialogue needed a beat. Usually that meant a pause to give the section a certain rhythm. Damon Runyon used beats in his dialogue to reproduce the cadence of New York City accents in his tales of gamblers and crooks in the 1920’s and 1930’s. This sentence is from the story, “Dream Street Rose.”
“Well, Rose,” I say, “it is a nice long story, and full of romance and all this and that, and,” I say, “of course I will never be ungentlemanly enough to call a lady a liar, but,” I say, “if it is not a lite, it will do until a lie comes along.”
I use beats in dialogue to change the flow. If the person speaking needs to change the subject, but I don’t want to break in with another person, I use a beat. Or a beat can emphasize what comes after it. This is a sentence from my story, “Debt to Pay”. David is a character talking to a man who thinks David wants to blackmail him.
“”Oh, I know you don’t have much money.” David grinned up at him. “But whoever hired you does.”
Placing the action between the two sentences makes for better flow than putting it at the end.
Rhythm in Humor
Rhythm when writing a humorous passage is critical. In my novel, The Truth and Other Strangers, I have one character with a very bad memory trying to remember the password for a new phone. His cousin is standing beside him.
(I said) “What’s the password to your phone?”
Gabe’s lips twisted in a grimace. “I know we got one.”
“Yeah?”
“And I know Mike told me.”
“Yeah?”
“And I know he made it easy for me to remember.”
I sighed. “But you don’t remember it.”
“Not really.”
Establishing a rhythm to this exchange emphasizes the humor.
Now it’s your turn. Do you think writing can have rhythm? What kind of rhythm have you discovered in your own writing?
Sound may be the second most popular sense writers evoke. Below are three ways to enhance your writing about the sense of sound.
Writing rhythm comes in two forms. One is the overall rhythm of your unique writing style. This rhythm is not something you can read a book about or sit down to your computer and decide, “Today I will work on rhythm.” I think it’s a by-product of mastering other writing techniques and filtering it through a person’s talent. Second is the rhythm of a small passage within a larger work. This is the kind of rhythm you can deliberately work on. Below are three ways to put rhythm in your writing.