The muse.

For me, the importance of music in my writing experiences can’t be stated enough. When I am sketching a character, my first question is often not what they look like, their age, or even what their name is. My first question, is usually “What would this character be listening to?” From there I get a mental picture (appearance, mannerisms, etc) and slowly begin to bring it into focus. With a character that listens to Miles Davis I may picture a sophisticated, artsy, urbane, hipster-kinda character. If they listen to Nine Inch Nails I may get an elusive, eccentric rebel. It all depends, essentially, on the power of a playlist.

Music helps me shape the plots of my stories as well. I can’t tell you how many nights I’ve sat down to write and that song I’ve heard a million times will play on my iPad and I hear a certain line and think: THAT’S IT. I write it down and begin my planning from there. I will write that lyric down and use it to guide my plot. It’s like a movie playlist. A short story that I wrote recently began with a line from REM’s “Everybody Hurts.” Which is a great opener, by the way, because it leads me into questions that will be answered throughout the narrative. For example, why is this character hurting? Why do they feel everyone else is hurting along with them? And what experiences have they undergone in their life to have such a feeling?

Tomorrow I’m going to post sections of my playlist so you can see what kind of songs inspires me to write. Spotify is a godsend, man…