Music: the Food of Procrast-er, I Mean, Writing

I spent at least an hour one Thursday last year trying to find a good cover of The Rolling Stones’s “Sympathy for the Devil” by a female vocalist. What is slightly more disturbing is why I did this.

See, I have no taste in music, and I usually hate covers because I get attached to the specific nuances of an individual singer’s voice or playing style. I even get annoyed when I hear a different recording of the same song by the same band, because the phrases or timing are slightly off from the ones I’m expecting. But — wow, embarrassing admission — I really wanted to hear a woman singing it because it occurred to me that if I were making a TV series out of the short stories I’m working on, “Sympathy for the Devil” would be perfect for the opening credits… except, because the main characters are both women and that’s an important facet of the story, it would be really awesome to hear a lady’s voice singing those words instead of Mick Jagger’s.

Don’t worry, I know that with all the unpublished writers out there, the odds are against my stories’ getting printed, let alone getting filmed, let alone getting filmed under circumstances  where I’d get any sort of input whatsoever into a theme song*. And I know that this kind of creative exercise isn’t the actual writing that needs to happen for me to finish this series. But I still find it helpful.

I mean, yeah, it’s good at “helping” me to waste time I could be using to write. But there are ways in which it actually helps me to improve the story, I swear.

Specifically, and perhaps counterintuitively, music helps me to think visually. Maybe this is another way in which my lack of taste in music shows, but I seldom simply enjoy a song for what it is. I usually picture a montage or scene that goes with it, like in a movie or a melodrama**. Sometimes what I visualize is obvious — like someone playing or singing the song — and sometimes it’s more random, like certain songs I’ve given elaborate daydream sequences that occasionally involve hockey or Hogwarts or both.

Anyway, assigning songs to stories usually helps me put together mini-trailers in my mind’s eye, snippets of action, dialogue, and images that best represent the part of the story with which I associate the song. Sometimes, this lets me see what parts of my story fit best with the focus I’ve chosen and what parts are extraneous; if I’ve chosen a song that really captures the most important feelings of the scene but the structural or plotted climax of the scene doesn’t appear in my mental montage, I need to reconsider one or more of my narrative choices.

And it’s more than that. Attaching scenes, stories, and characters to particular songs sometimes helps me to develop an emotional coherence for them, and when I’m really stuck, it helps me to explore possibilities for emotional tone. It’s way easier to change the song for a scene to try out a new emotional atmosphere than it is to rewrite the scene itself just to see if my new idea is better than my old one.

To put the same practice a different context: in theatre, it’s often customary to use pre-show music, a sequence of songs chosen by the director and played as the audience enters the auditorium to set the right tone for the show. Pre-show music does a lot of things, but mainly, it prepares both audience and performers to approach the show in a certain emotional and intellectual frame of mind. It narrows down possible meanings by encouraging everyone to place what they see within a particular context.

For instance, a sad and romantic but kinda metafictional song might tell you that this production of Romeo and Juliet is going to focus on the titular characters and maybe play off of the star-crossed-lovers trope that everyone already knows — and also that you’ll probably be left feeling the tragedy of fated romantic disaster at the end. Contrariwise, if you sit down to a more pop-type song that emphasizes the perspective of a teen male dweeb with a crush on the popular girl, you’ll be more prepared if instead of Montague and Capulet, the production plays off the nerds vs. the jocks, and Romeo enters wearing a pocket protector and suspenders.

So essentially, the music thing is me setting the stage for myself, over and over, and seeing which production I like best. As a concrete example, for one of my characters, I chose (variously) Jimmy Eat World’s “Get It Faster” and Billy Idol’s “Dancing With Myself.”

I’d already written the story where she reminds me of “Get It Faster,” but just listening to the song and imagining it as the background music for a montage helped me to figure out the images that go with the concept of the song, and how to fix the climax of the story to make it effective. (Hint: include those images! Include the information in them!) The story where she reminds me of “Dancing With Myself” is still in progress, but listening to the song made me picture a brand new scene — which might be important to include.

Other times, the imaginary montage in my head will cut to a POV shot (for example, switching from the face of a character to a footprint on the floor so the viewer understands that the character has seen or is noticing the footprint) or a reaction shot (for instance, Mulder says something outrageous and the camera switches for an instant to Scully’s I-can’t-believe-you-just-said-that expression to cap the joke). And although it wasn’t something I thought about before, I go, “Wait a sec, it is key that the reader gets that Character A knows such-and-such!” or “Hold on, this scene is about Character B’s reaction!”

So while I’m aware that it’s all-too-easy to fall into the trap of doing stuff that “helps” with writing rather than, you know, actually writing, I do think music has been an invaluable tool for me when it comes to structuring my stories and scenes. Sometimes, instead of new material, what I really need is a new perspective on my old material, and a fresh song is all it takes to get that going.

But, hey, what say you, fellow writers? Do you find music helpful with, distracting from, or relevant to your processes?

P. S. In case you’re wondering, I eventually bought Gail Swanson’s version. A bit more-country, less-percussion than the original, but I like her growly attitude. Still not quite what I’m looking for, but what are you going to do?

* Heck, if I keep spending time on this blog instead of writing, the odds are against them ever getting finished *rimshot*

** Or a music video. But although some people consider me to be one of the “MTV generation,” I have never actually seen a music video in its entirety, ever. Or watched MTV. Figure that one out.