Music and stories

[Blue]

I'd like to ask the following question:

Do you listen to music while writing and/or reading stories? Or do you prefer to do it in silence?

If you do listen to music, what type of music do you prefer?

For me personally: I have the radio on almost all day, and music plays quietly in the background, even when I'm writing a story.
On the other hand, if I'm reading or writing a story and I'm at a point that fascinates me, I like to search for harder music – usually via Amazon Alexa – and then often turn it up quite loud (at least when my wife isn't home). I have a good hi-fi system, so I can turn the volume up quite loud.
When reading a story, I often find it easier to imagine the scene in my mind's eye even more intensely. And when writing stories, I often get new ideas that I like to incorporate.
How do you handle this?

[Claire]

I think that would distract me too much. I think as teenager I could have done that. I remember doing homework for school while listening to music. But as an adult, I seem to have lost the ability to truly concentrate on writing when I listen to music in the background. Maybe I could try this with purely instrumental pieces with no singing.

I did use music very directly though in three stories that I wrote. Chapter 1 of Venus' Touch incorporates the lyrics of Kathy McCarty's Living Life directly into the text as the protagonist sings the song and dances to it. For Party Hard I got the theme One More Time and chose to make Daft Punk's famous One More Time the center piece of the story that the whole plot revolves around. And finally, there's Sweet, Sweet Mess which does not only use a song, but actually adapts the song Mess by Rain Jewels into a short story. And that was fun but also extremely difficult to write. I took the title from that song, the protagonist's POV (first person narrator who constantly adresses another person as "you" in her thoughts) and I tried to incorporate as many lines as possible from the song directly into the text without them sounding completely unnatural and out of place. And that is not easy to do with lines like "I’ll remember you as you want me to" and "You’re not my remedy, nor my enemy, But still in my memory, You belong". But it was definitely a fun challenge and I think the story turned out great for it.

So yeah, I'm not listening much to music while writing but as inspiration for a story music is great! I hope I didn't derail your topic here too much with my little tangent here, @Blue!

[Vela Nanashi]

When reading or writing I enjoy having music as my reading/writing rate can be altered by it, and if it has a good mood it can help me write too

For certain types of writing I enjoy one of these (small sampling):

lots of youtube videos

playlist with above









playlist with above

playlist with more Babylon 5 music
babylon 5 titles


playlist with Syndicate music
The end:

for now

[LtBroccoli]

If I want to pay attention, I'll usually put on some music to fit the mood. If I'm writing a story based in a certain time, I might listen to music from then. Otherwise if I want to focus, I'll listen to something like Greenred Productions and one of their ADHD music lists. I also like to raise my desk to a standing position to force me into a better position. I get too easily distracted by, well, everything and like to focus on my work.

[Lucius]

If I want to pay attention, I'll usually put on some music to fit the mood. If I'm writing a story based in a certain time, I might listen to music from then. ...

I usually do that -- it's a way of getting closer to the characters, and music sometimes plays a role in my stories. I'm tin-eared, so it's both a challenge and a bit of fun to write characters who are into music.