Author's Notes on: 5 Ways I Use Music to Help My Writing
If you’re anything like me, music is an integral part of your writing process. So this week, I wanted a nice and simple article to show off some of the ways I use music and maybe even provide them as a resource if they end up helping other people! Let’s get right into it.
Structured Writing Sessions
I’ve talked about this before, but setting aside a specific time to write has been massively helpful for me when it comes to completing chapters on time. I’ve found great success with Abbie Emmons’ Immersive Writing sessions. They have a structure of four 25-minute writing sprints with 5-minute breaks in between.
It’s long enough to get serious work done, while also giving myself time to breathe in between so I don’t burn out. I highly recommend trying them out for yourself!
These two are my favorite—
Unstructured Writing Sessions
If I have finished the above two-hour videos and still need to keep going, sometimes I just put on general deep focus music. These videos are 10 hours long, so I definitely won’t run out of music. The music is simple and repetitive but with enough variation that you don’t feel like you’re listening to the exact same thing over and over.
Character Inspiration Playlists
I mostly do these for D&D, but you can absolutely make these playlists for any characters you have. The point is to collect songs that remind you of a character and get into their headspace to create for/about them.
Connecting to a character and understanding their motivations is helpful for making decisions for them in a narrative, or just generally enjoying the character you’ve created.
This playlist can consist of anything from songs that inspired the character concept, songs that remind you of the character’s motivations, or just generally songs that have the right “vibe” for the character.
Below is a link to a character playlist I keep for one of my D&D characters, Bellamy Ashcrowne. She’s a pirate, so some of her music revolves around sea shanties and that side of her life. However, she was also unwillingly bound to the spirit of an ancient druid, so a lot of her music revolves around a) the lingering trauma of that event, and b) her relationship to that spirit.
It’s far from comprehensive, but that’s why I’m always adding to it! And as the story progresses, I continue to add music to it. For example, after the death of several of our party members, I added the song “Bones in the Ocean” by The Longest Johns, as it was a song she sang to another party member of ours in the wake of their deaths.
Very helpful to listen to it and just get a strong sense of who the character is and how their story has impacted them.
And while I don’t really do this for book characters, I still have songs that I relate to them! Songs like The Mute by Radical Face and Home by Cavetown were great songs for listening to when I was thinking of Margo from Sleepless. The Fruits by Paris Paloma and the Janel Drewis version of In the Pines have been huge songs for me regarding Wendy’s character in Cardinal.
Like all things, this is a resource best utilized when tailored to your needs and your preference for expression.
Story Inspiration Playlists
These can go hand in hand with the character playlists or encapsulate all characters for a project. For the most part, for me, these tend to be ambient music playlists. Sometimes I listen to these while I write, because they just have a good vibe for writing what I want to write.
Movie soundtracks can work well for this. Find songs from similar genres to what you’re working on by looking at movie and game soundtracks and picking your favorites! I’ve used Interstellar’s soundtrack a lot while writing for Cardinal.
This video, Free Fall, is a great example of a playlist I use when working on Sleepless. It has a sort of dreamlike quality that really helps get into the mindset needed to write that story, especially if I’m coming off writing for Cardinal.
This point can also cover non-ambient songs too though. For Story Reasons, the entirety of Les Friction’s albums, but particularly their Dark Matter album, have really resonated with me while working on Sleepless.
And finally… Brain Candy
Listen.
Listen.
Hear me out.
This point goes hand in hand with those playlists I mentioned.
Sometimes as a creator, you just have to put on some thematic music and vividly imagine the fan-edits/animatics you wish you could make for your project.
Most likely, depending on your project and creative setup, you are gonna be one of if not the only person that knows your project as deeply as you do. In a lot of ways, you have to be your own hype machine. You have to love your project to its fullest, because it’s incredibly difficult to want to write something when you don’t.
I highly recommend it. Listen to new songs you like, try to fit things to them, see if you like prospective plotlines! Or think about what you’ve already written and fit it to the songs! Get edgy! Get sappy! Get cringey! Be in love with your projects.
And on that note, I hope you’ve enjoyed this little musical foray, and thank you all for reading!