I rarely listen to the music inspiring
my writing while actually, you know, writing.
Instead, I use music to fuel my
characters.
For me, anything with lyrics has me
singing along or, worse, writing along. When I’m actually
fingers-on-keyboard writing, my music picks are instrumentals. Movie
scores (Lord of the Rings and Tron: Legacy were primary
on my dark young adult novel) and baroque pieces dominate my actual
writing playlist.
That said, I do a lot of listening to
music before I write. This is especially true to get into characters’
heads. While my protagonist could link up to any number of songs,
all of my secondary characters have theme songs.
Yeah. I know. Theme songs.
It wasn’t intentional. I just started
adding to the playlist as I ran across a song perfect for a
character. The most helpful here is that one of the lesser
antagonists is going crazy in a literal sense. He’s under the
influence of an underworld goddess and she likes to inflame
insecurities, emotions and fear. This guy is having trouble
processing why our protagonist ended their quasi-relationship.
As insanity flares, he acts out
flashing from manic and violent to depressive and scary. As such, he
gets two theme songs.
At times he’s everything in “Okay I
Believe You, But My Tommy Gun Don’t” by Brand New.
And at other times he’s 100 percent “I Should Have Sent Flowers” by NORA.
Chelsea Mueller runs Vampire Book Club, blogs for Heroes & Heartbreakers and writes dark YA lit with a mythology bent. She loves strong heroines, paranormal worlds that feel real, TV vampires, nerd-ery and snarky comments from the crowd. Find her online at ChelseaMueller.net or @ChelseaVBC on Twitter.
