I know I’m not the only one out there to use music as a tool for writing. A lot of y’all use playlists to help set the scene or cover up annoying distractions (like I’m doing right now with three cats in heat—oyyyy!) but have you ever found a song that fit some aspect of your story or characters perfectly?
A couple months back, I was working on a story very difficult to write, as the heroine is an incest victim and much of the story is her coming to terms (in a way) with what happened. The hero is the first person who’s ever shown her what love really is. Since I was having trouble, I set up a playlist, but I had a few “new to me” songs in the mix because I liked the artist. Well, as I was writing the most emotional part of the story, a certain song came on. I threw it on repeat because it felt “right,” but I didn’t look up the lyrics until later:
The last girl in the last reason to make this last for as long as I could
First kiss and the first time that I felt connected to anything
The weight of water, the way you taught me to look past everything I had ever learned
The final word in the final sentence you ever uttered to me was love
And I don’t know where to look
My words just break and melt
Please just save me from this darkness
Please just save me from this darkness
—Make This Go On Forever by Snow Patrol
Um. Yeah. My jaw dropped, because it fits the way she feels so utterly perfectly it’s surreal.
Any of you ever experienced anything like this?
February 11th, 2008 at 12:52 am
I have had that happen a couple of times. As an opposite twist-a song actually helped me create a story-Regina in the Sun. When I had to find a picture and a song to play the RPG Vampire game on divas, as soon as I looked at the beautiful artwork by Victoria Frances-I heard a song. She’s Only Happy in the Sun by Ben Harper.
Those words just seemed to fit. The combo of the music and the pic created Regina-until I couldnt NOT write her.