Using Music to Spark Your Muse

Stuck staring at a blank page (or screen)? Feel like life has squeezed the creativity out of you? 

Believe it or not, the answer is in your iphone. Or wherever you store your favorite tunes. Music is a fab tool for overcoming writers block and fueling your imagination. 

Research shows that when people listen to music (especially songs they enjoy), their creativity and problem-solving abilities increase. Music can enhance abstract thinking and allow listeners to enter a mind-wandering mode, which is known to promote creative thought.

“Without music, life would be a mistake.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

Listen to a wide variety of genres

This trick takes your brain down new, exciting pathways. Branch out from your standard playlist and try out a song that might usually make you cringe. If that cringe-worthy feeling is enough to send shudders down your spine, just think of the emotion it could elicit in your readers. 

You may also find yourself enjoying a whole new style of music, once you give it a chance. Use the new lyrics and beats as springboards for your imagination. Study the style and ask yourself why it works. What about this song made it good enough to be played on the radio? Studying the rhythms and ideas of a wide variety of music can help generate ideas in your own work. 

Use music as a writing prompt

This is a fun way to stir up those creative juices. Choose a song at random from your playlist (or alternatively, turn on the radio!). Think of one of your main characters. Then listen to a 10-30 second clip of the song, with that character in mind.

See what new images, conflicts, and inspiration arise when you link the character to the feelings or words of the song. Then do a timed free write. Why timed? Because pressure can really stimulate your imagination. But if pressure shuts you down, turn the timer off. Either way, you’ll have plenty to write about.

Play inspiring tracks in the background while you write

Inspiring doesn't necessarily mean uplifting. Instead, choose music that reflects the rhythm of the scene you are trying to write or that elicits the same emotion you intend to evoke. 

For instance, the soundtrack from Pirates of the Caribbean is great to listen to when you’re writing fight scenes. It’s quick-paced, intense, and laced with a sense of danger. On the other hand, Taylor Swift’s Love Story might inspire just the right emotions for a tender-sweet romance.

Do you listen to music when you write or use it for writing prompts? If so, share some of your fave writing tunes below!

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The Playlist Process

I have a slight problem with the manuscript I’m working on.

It isn’t related to plot; I feel like I’ve got the mental outline pretty much put together, leaving enough room for the story to continue evolving as I write. It isn’t really about character, either; even though this story has a lot of characters, I have a decent grasp on who each of them are, who they’ll become by the end, and how they relate to each other. The problem definitely isn’t about voice; that’s coming through well so far, maybe because I’m allowing myself to write with a voice I’ve wanted to use for a long time, but haven’t found the right project for until now. 

My problem is I still haven’t put together a writing playlist.

Now, do I need a writing playlist for this? Thankfully, no. The story is coming along surprisingly well. Would I like to have a playlist providing the soundtrack for this journey? Most certainly yes. Finding the right music has always been an important part of the writing process for me. I wrote my first manuscript while listening to nothing but the same thirty Bruce Hornsby songs on shuffle, usually during the time of day when light from the sunset poured in the front windows and filled my house, just because all of that gave me something close to a tangible expression of the tone I was trying to create. I wrote another manuscript mostly after dark with all the lights off, listening the scariest Iron Maiden songs I could find, as well as a few others that matched up with that creep factor. One year during NaNoWriMo I had a playlist of over two hundred songs that dripped emotional catharsis, to help me get in the head of a character pulled in nine different directions by everything she was struggling to understand. I’ll use these songs and the feelings they inspire to guide my voice, and, if I’m being honest about it, to help visualize what it might be like if, say, my story ever became a movie and needed a soundtrack. After all, isn’t a good part of the writing somehow tied to trying to live out hopes and dreams and speculation?

Truthfully though, I’ve never needed much of a reason to assemble playlists. I’ll put them together for road trips, or school work days when the students aren’t around, or to have playing in the background when I have guests, or even just because it feels like a day to listen to nothing but music released between 1997 and 2004. Applying this hobby (habit?) to my writing seemed natural.

Back before I found my way to the online writing community, I thought it was mildly self-indulgent to be so insistent about finding the perfect music to pair up with whatever I was writing. Then I started connecting with other writers, and discovered many had similar habits. A lot crafted playlists just as I did, but others didn’t stop there: They made Pinterest boards based on what their characters looked like. They compared different aspects of their characters to other well-known characters from books and movies and TV shows. Some even tried matching up settings with appropriately scented candles. They had favorite locations to write, rituals and routines they followed, and reward systems to keep themselves motivated. It seemed that nearly everyone populating this magical online writing domain was, in one way or another, searching for and leaning on the same kind of creative self-support I had been using all along. 

That discovery made my propensity for playlists seem, if anything, less like an idiosyncrasy and more like a legitimate part of the writing process, at least for me. That circles back to the simple truth that everyone approaches their writing differently, and whatever process works for each individual is just as legitimate as anything else. 

Of course, this still leaves me working without a playlist for this new project, or even any first steps in the direction toward finding one. I still have a long way to go though, so I know the right songs will eventually present themselves.

I’m just really looking forward to finding out what they’ll be.