tips

Why You Should Make a Playlist for Your Novel

Everyone has a different preference for their writing routine. Some people need complete silence. Like, noise-cancelling earbuds in a soundproof room kind of silence. Other people enjoy a little background chatter. They thrive in a cozy cafe, or listening to some white noise on their phone. Then, of course, there are the people who like to listen to music while writing.

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I like to think of listening to music during my writing session as a middle ground between the first two options. All the benefits of cutting out the sound around me, but the added plus of not being left alone with just my own thoughts. When I first started listening to music while writing, I made a master playlist for all my novels, full of movie original soundtracks. Think lots of Hans Zimmer. It worked for me then. I was a teen, and I wanted everything I wrote to be “dark” and “gritty”.

But if you want to know where the money’s at, you need to make a personalized playlist for your novel.

I know what you’re thinking. “But Shai, I’m in the aforementioned ‘needs a soundproof closet to write in’ group. How is making a playlist going to benefit me?”

Whether or not you choose to listen to your novel playlist while writing is up to you. The process of creating a novel playlist on its own is one of the most insightful writing exercises you can do for your Work in Progress.

You should make a playlist for the same reason almost any accredited author suggests reading books in your genre before you start writing. Art informs art. So don’t limit yourself to purely literary sources of inspiration! Music can inform the depth and mood in your novel in ways you might not expect.

Here is how I go about creating a new novel playlist:

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Add some OSTs

Turn your writing experience into a movie - inside your head! Choosing music from video game or film soundtracks is a great way to set the tone and mood of your world.

Try to think of a movie or video game that has a similar tone or premise to your WIP. When I was writing my TV pilot script for After Oil, I listened to a lot of The Last of Us. Even if you’re not a gamer, I strongly suggest listening to some video game OSTs. They tend to be better for repeated listening because they’re literally designed to be! Game music is intended to loop naturally while also fading into the background a bit, whereas film soundtracks are often written to accent a specific moment in a film. I can’t listen to Hans Zimmer without recalling bits of film dialogue as I’m listening.

If you don’t know any video games personally, try scrolling through Spotify’s “gaming” section and see what resonates with you. A quick Google search for video games in your novel’s genre is sure to get you off to a good start too.

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Look for “theme” songs

I got into this practice during my good ol’ forum roleplaying days. For any who might not know, this is where a bunch of people join a thread in a forum to roleplay a story together. The thread creator writes a plot and form for people to submit their characters to participate. Then everyone takes turns submitting posts as their own characters.

A wall of text in a forum can be a little dreary and intimidating, so it was common practice for roleplays to spice up their posts with a “signature” for their character. This usually involved some badly formatted fanart lifted from Deviantart and song lyrics in fancy fonts. You know how we used to all use song lyrics as our offline messages on AIM? Yeah, like that.

As cringe as this might seem, choosing a “theme song” for your main character - or any of your characters - is an incredible insight. Lyricists communicate thoughts and feelings in a much different way than a novelist. A theme song is a great tool to finding your character’s “cornerstone”, or the thing that makes them who they are. For example, for my character Sarah in After Oil, the song “Don’t Want to Die in the Storm” by Anna & Elizabeth was the theme of her cornerstone. Sarah lost her mother at a young age, and watched her family continue to live comfortably despite their impoverished conditions during an international oil crisis. She sees this as a symptom of where she grew up, in the middle of rural America. She doesn’t want to “die in the storm” like her mother or her family. Sarah’s goal in life is to leave home.

Having a theme for each of your characters is a great thing to have in your back pocket while writing your first draft, and it’s something you can always go back to whenever you become unsure of your character’s motivations.

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Create a radio

I personally like Spotify for this, but if Pandora is more your cup of tea, that will work as well. I choose Spotify because I specifically like making a radio based off a playlist I’ve created, to get a more personalized experience. But if you only have one song in mind to begin with, a song radio is perfect.

This is great to do especially if you’re at a loss for what songs to add. It’s also just a nice way to find music you might not have thought of.

I had a breakthrough the other day with my current WIP while doing this. My novel playlist for Lake Rats is made up mostly of girl in red and the Gone Home video game soundtrack. I’ve been struggling to find other music that hits the vibe I’m searching for in the same way. So I made playlist radio while I was at work.

That’s when “Sick of Losing Soulmates” by dodie came on. I already know and love this song, so I remembered the lyrics. When the chorus kicked in, I felt the pieces slide into place.

“I’m sick of losing soulmates, so where do we begin? I can finally see you’re as fucked up as me, so how do we win?”

I suddenly had a whole new perspective on my two main characters. My protagonist, Goose, is in love with her best friend Em, but she still hasn’t told her. Throughout the novel, Goose and Em investigate the death of an unknown woman they find in the lake together at their family campground. I had been so focused on Goose’s deteriorating relationship with her divorcing parents and how it affects her throughout the story, I hadn’t really stopped to think… what’s going on with Em? What’s her home life like? I don’t know of a single teenager who has a “perfect” relationship with their family. I realized I hadn’t fleshed out Em nearly as well as I thought. It’s what had been missing in the dynamic between Goose and Em, and now I finally have a handle on what I need to do to really get into the juicy bits of their relationship.

Keep an open mind and ear to new songs - you never know what the lyrics might reveal to you about your novel!

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Listen.

As I said earlier, it’s up to you whether you listen to this playlist while you work on writing. Personally I often find songs with lyrics to be too distracting while writing. I just want to sing along the whole time.

If you choose not to listen while you work, make the time to listen in other ways. Play it while you’re at work (if you can). Listen while on your run or walk. Listen on your commute home. Listen while you’re in your garden. Make this a habit and you’re far more likely to have big brainstorm moments.

What songs or artists are you going to add to your playlist? Let me know in the comments below!

be safe and well.

-Shai

What No One Ever Tells You About Writing a Novel

At the start of this year, I made a promise to myself.  Like ever other New Year's "resolutionist", I started making lists of my goals for 2016, and on that list - just like any other year - I wrote "get published".  This year however, I also started making a smaller list that I considered "actionable goals"; small tasks that I could do every day to break down my goal into something manageable.  This is what that task list looked like:

  1. Blog every week
  2. Submit to writing competitions
  3. 15 minutes of networking a day
  4. 15 minutes of drafting query letter a day
  5. 15 minutes (minimum) of revising Ravage a day

Of these five goals, as you might have guessed, I've only (barely) adhered to the first two.  I've hardly ever checked on my social media, with the exception of maybe Pinterest and Youtube.  I gave up pretty quickly on the idea of drafting my query letter once I discovered that a third of said letter consisted of my "credentials" as a writer: degrees, awards, positions of significant employment, certifications of merit - aka, all things of which I do not possess.

But I simply cannot condone the fact that I have not even stuck to the minimum minutes of revision a day I set out for myself.  I had honestly thought that 15 minutes was an incredibly manageable expectation, something I could do to work around the screenplay drafts, reading assignments, and short essays that I have due for school.  I was so sure of this that I marked a date on my planner - February 29th - and circled the words, "Ravage content edit due".

That due date is now less than a week away, and I have not even revised past my third chapter.

The process of writing and revising is different for every writer, and I know a lot of the authors that I greatly admire look forward to the revision process.  John Green has been known to say "that all writing is rewriting", and while I tend to agree, I've heard from a lot of authors - established or just starting off - that they find the process of revising infinitely easier than completing their first draft.

I beg to differ.  Then again, this is coming from someone who hasn't completed a new first draft in the last three years.  That being said, I probably still have a lot to learn from authors like John Green about the process of revision, but in the odd chance that I'm in the minority here, I thought I'd share some insights into what it is that makes the writing process the easier one for me; the things no one ever really tells you.

1. It's never easy

Okay.  I know I just said that writing is the easy part.  But the truth is, nothing is easy, fun, and enjoyable %100 of the time.  Not even the thing you're passionate about.  But if I've learned anything from participating in NaNoWriMo it's that, that's okay.  In fact, I don't know I would have ever completed a novel if I hadn't been introduced to the process from that mindset.

When you're writing a novel in the context of NaNoWriMo, furiously pounding out words on a daily basis at an incredible pace, slugging your way through to 50k, you know what you're signing up for.  It's not going to be easy, and it wasn't going to be any easier, honestly, if I gave myself the permission to sleep in and only write 500 words a day - or not at all.  Trust me, I've done both.  What makes writing difficult isn't the work itself, it's the way you think of the work.  Not to be overusing John Green here, but like a lot of authors, I know he initially condoned the concept of writing a novel in 30 days.  He felt it was a fruitless task, because simply no one can be expected to write a good book in a month.  The fact of the matter is, no one can be expected to write a good first book: period.  The process of writing isn't about being "good".  If anything, it's about sucking.  If you're a practicing writer, writing on a daily basis, the ratio of great material to crap that you'll be writing is probably 1:3, and that's if you're lucky.

But you simply cannot sit around and hope to wait it out through the bad parts.  The only way out is through.  So give yourself permission to suck.  You won't enjoy yourself all of the time, but once you allow yourself to fail, you'll enjoy yourself a whole lot more.

2. Things change

It might seem like a no-brainer, but the truth is that a lot of people - myself included - walk into the writing process with very strong convictions.  That kinda motivation is to be admired, but at a certain point that ambition can go so far as to get in your own way.  A part of becoming a good writer is being flexible.  Your original vision for what this book was going to be may change.  You may have to make sacrifices in order to continue your story.  You're definitely going to have to make those sacrifices when you revise.  Besides, there is always the incredibly real chance that you may fall out of love with the story you first started writing.  Whatever the case, you do what is necessary.  You cut your favorite scene.  You trash the ending you've been planning since last year.  That character you were so sure everyone was going to love?  You kill them off.  Whatever it takes to get the story flowing, whatever it takes to reinvest yourself in what it is you are writing: that is what you do.

3.  You don't always win

I've said this a lot now, but this, to me, is what stands out as being the first big obstacle all writers have to overcome: and that's a fear of failure.  The truth of the matter is, your first draft is going to suck.  It doesn't matter if you take five months to write it, or if you take five years.  There is no such thing as a good first draft.  So don't try to make it perfect.  Just try to make it work.  And have fun!  The first novel I ever started writing, before I was ever introduced to National Novel Writing Month, was essentially a glorified rip-off of the World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King storyline.  If I looked back at it now, I'm sure I would have myself a good laugh.  Honestly, the first novel I finished for NaNoWriMo wasn't much better.  But that's okay.  Writing a bad draft or even giving up on the first draft of your manuscript altogether isn't the end of the world.  It may feel like it at the time, but get comfortable with the idea that not everything you write is going to the next big American novel.  I might not have had the most original ideas when I was writing in middle school, but when you're writing in a mindset similar to a fan-fiction writer, the love you have for your story overrides any standards of success or other expectations you might be putting on the work you're doing.

So if you're thinking about writing a novel, or haven't been able to finish your first one yet, my advice to you is:

Don't wait.  And don't worry.  If you can tackle the story in your head with the same enthusiasm, flexibility, and imagination as any of the stories you are a big fan of, that passion will translate, and you'll have a finished manuscript within your hands in seemingly no time.

And then you'll be where I am.  Making resolution lists when you should be revising.

Have you got any tips on writing or revising?  Leave them in the comments below!  God knows I'm in need of some.