The Music of Your Novel http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/literary-fiction/threads/35711 Shem-the-Penman Not necessarily the music you're listening to while you write it, but what's playing in the story. Is one of your characters getting dewy-eyed over a Laura Brannigan song that played at her ill-fated wedding reception? Are your airborne zombie bikers marauding the post-apocalyptic Eastern Seaboard to the tune of Ride of the Valkyries? Is your germphobic shut-in washing his hands all morning to the sound of his own frenzied internal monologue and a bit of dub reggae? The story I'm writing is set in Edinburgh in 1956, so there are lots of Robert Burns songs; there's a whole conspiracy theory around Josquin's <em>Missa L'homme armé sexti toni</em>; Elvis sings "Love Me Tender" ad nauseam; Johnny Ray's "Walking in the Rain" perfectly describes Edinburgh's climate; Machaut's <em>Ma fin est mon commencement</em> is a New Year's Eve selection; the FMC sings Doris Day's "Qué Será Será"; and the password for an after-hours club is "What's Behind The Green Door." -Shem Mon, 14 Nov 2011 08:11:52 -0700 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/literary-fiction/threads/35711?page=1#forum_thread_comment_691385 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/literary-fiction/threads/35711?page=1#forum_thread_comment_691385 studentofrhythm My characters play Renaissance music in an ensemble they form, including a lot of John Dowland. One of his songs will figure prominently in the early denouement. Mon, 14 Nov 2011 10:50:21 -0700 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/literary-fiction/threads/35711?page=1#forum_thread_comment_693093 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/literary-fiction/threads/35711?page=1#forum_thread_comment_693093 robini My novel is set in Phoenix, AZ, in 1980. And my POV character is young enough that she cannot distinguish between quality music and utter garbage. I have had to dig around to find some of the really bad hits from around then, as well as the secret underground gems that were running around... Mon, 14 Nov 2011 11:32:38 -0700 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/literary-fiction/threads/35711?page=1#forum_thread_comment_693594 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/literary-fiction/threads/35711?page=1#forum_thread_comment_693594 DangerOLeary Music is very important to my story. My character is very musically inclined. If you were to compile a playlist of all the songs he listens to, that playlist would be my story's soundtrack. Here are some of the songs (asterisks by songs that most closely pertain to ongoing themes/story): "Spaceman" by the Killers*** "Fresh Blood" by Eels "The Love You Save (May Be Your Own)" by Joe Tex*** "Starlight" by Muse "Gold Lion" by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs "Used to Get High" by the John Butler Trio "Everlasting Light" by the Black Keys "Broken Sky" by Rob Laufer "Bruised" by Jack's Mannequin*** "Where Is My Mind?" by the Pixies*** "When the Lights Go Out" by the Black Keys "Maps" by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs "Everything Is Alright" by Four Tet "Postcards from Italy" by Beirut*** And there's a lot more. As I said, music is very important to both my story and MC. Mon, 14 Nov 2011 11:44:19 -0700 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/literary-fiction/threads/35711?page=1#forum_thread_comment_693745 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/literary-fiction/threads/35711?page=1#forum_thread_comment_693745 Fiona W My main character, Elsa Weaver, is born in 1955, so she pays a lot of attention to pop music on the radio from 1964 (Beatles on Ed Sullivan) until around 1972. Then she begins to be influenced by friends in her choices of records to play on her weird little round turntable setup with spherical speakers: from 1973-1976, she listens to Led Zeppelin, Simon &amp; Garfunkel, Joni Mitchell, David Bowie, Mott the Hoople, and lots of early rock-n-roll, including Chuck Berry and the "American Graffiti" double album. In 1976, she discovers Patti Smith, who quickly becomes her idol— a lifelong object of serious adulation. More or less the same time, she gets into Bruce Springsteen's first three albums, and starts to follow his output with the fervor of a fan. His 1978 album, "Darkness on the Edge of Town," is enormously important in underlining her fundamentally negative outlook on the Big Questions. All through the late 1970s, Elsa and her new husband, Sandy, work on filling in the gaps in their combined record collection, trying for the complete careers of Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Ricki Lee Jones, Tom Waits, John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Van Morrison, the Allman Brothers, the Rolling Stones, and the Dead. John Lennon's murder in 1980 hits her harder than any national or international event since the Viet Nam war: she covers a whole wall of her apartment with pictures of John and Yoko and Sean, the Dakota, and John's artwork. Elsa doesn't really get back to listening to music on the radio until 1982, when she gets into alternative college radio in a big way. At that time she's living in North Carolina, which is not far from Ground Zero for the Southern Alt-Pop explosion of the 1980s (e.g., REM, Don Dixon, Fetchin Bones). During this phase she also falls in love with Laurie Anderson, the Talking Heads, and Brian Eno. Paul Simon's "Graceland" provides the impetus to catch up with him: "One-Trick Pony" and "Hearts and Bones" go onto a cassette tape on infinite loop for days on end, only rivaled by the Heads' "Fear of Music" and "Remain in Light" tape loop. And it goes on from there: Cyndi Lauper, Guns n Roses, Nirvana, other grunge bands, more REM, Patti Smith's re-emergence in the mid-1990s, Nine Inch Nails, industrial rock, the blues (a long tangent), more old rock-roll, and eventually Lady Gaga. In 2011, she and Sandy still keep all of their vinyl and several boxes of cassette tapes in their main audio-video room. They also have one computer with its disk drive full of high-fi copies of all their CDs: this computer is wired into their home computer network, so those albums can be played in five different rooms of the house. They eschew the iPod, et al., and most of online music because they can't stand the low-fi sound of MP3s. Elsa also listens to Sirius-XM all day and night, especially their station Deep Tracks, devoted to obscure ( not classic) rock and rock-n-roll. Are you sorry you asked? And that was only talking about recorded music! Live music would need a whole separate posting. Yes, my novel has a soundtrack album in my head— an impossibly long and varied one. I'll have to make some decisions, later on, about which of Elsa's musical infatuations to include, which to skip. Patti Smith has to be in the novel: everyone else is negotiable. Well, except maybe Laurie Anderson...and Hendrix, Dylan, Lennon, Springsteen... =arrgggh= Mon, 14 Nov 2011 12:53:11 -0700 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/literary-fiction/threads/35711?page=1#forum_thread_comment_694694 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/literary-fiction/threads/35711?page=1#forum_thread_comment_694694 Wacie My main character grows up sheltered by cultured parents, so she listens to a lot of classical music; Vivaldi's Four Seasons suite is her favorite. As she grows up, The Ramones are her favorite band. Mon, 14 Nov 2011 17:18:58 -0700 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/literary-fiction/threads/35711?page=1#forum_thread_comment_699048 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/literary-fiction/threads/35711?page=1#forum_thread_comment_699048 Chicle During the part of my story that's set in the early '80s, my character (also young, but nowhere near Phoenix) is hearing a lot of very, very bad music playing in the malls and blaring from the large, portable "sound systems" kids her age are beginning to carry 'round. She has heard of "punk" music and has seen photos of people in London and New York and such places sporting day-glo mohawks, and she thinks punk music must be a lot more interesting than what she's hearing on the lame power ballads, the last gasp of disco, and the embarrassingly corny theatrics of the heavy metal she hears around her... but she has not yet learned how or where to find more interesting music. Mon, 14 Nov 2011 18:46:26 -0700 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/literary-fiction/threads/35711?page=1#forum_thread_comment_700259 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/literary-fiction/threads/35711?page=1#forum_thread_comment_700259 karaozgoy Raquel and Leah listen to folk music by artists who were presumed Communists (so basically, all of them.) Leah is a self-proclaimed member of the party she drags Raquel into everything, so songs like "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" and "This Land is Your Land" are the soundtrack of their lives. There's actually a scene (at prom, they're hiding) where Leah sings "Jolly Banker" by Woody Guthrie, to mock the banker in town's popular daughter. That whole scene consists of Leah turning up her nose in disgust at the modern hits being played, so she hums or sings her own, like "Russian Waltz" by Shostakovich. The town has the headquarters of a huge manufacturing company in it, so they always host a huge Christmas party. A father, who should be home with his daughter, listens to "John Prine's Christmas in Prision" while he watches the snow fall. Mon, 14 Nov 2011 21:31:44 -0700 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/literary-fiction/threads/35711?page=1#forum_thread_comment_703010 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/literary-fiction/threads/35711?page=1#forum_thread_comment_703010 robini Ahh... the Laurie Anderson/Talking Heads days of my youth... Mon, 14 Nov 2011 21:33:08 -0700 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/literary-fiction/threads/35711?page=1#forum_thread_comment_703042 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/literary-fiction/threads/35711?page=1#forum_thread_comment_703042 darklighter93 One scene involves tango, so I have two versions of La Cumparsita. I then have the battle theme from Final Fantasy XIII And Never as Good as the First Time and Jezebel by Sade And I think David Bowie's Changes is in there, I can't remember now though :P Wed, 16 Nov 2011 16:02:16 -0700 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/literary-fiction/threads/35711?page=1#forum_thread_comment_730672 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/literary-fiction/threads/35711?page=1#forum_thread_comment_730672 W.E.D. There is this piano player who frequently plays at this bar my MC is a patron of and always fills the page he is in with musical delight-- One scene he went as far as to play a medley of Blue Danube, A Midsummer Night's Dream: The Wedding March, 1812 Overture, and The Magic Flute: Queen of Night. xD That scene filled me with such joy. Wed, 16 Nov 2011 16:36:44 -0700 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/literary-fiction/threads/35711?page=1#forum_thread_comment_731210 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/literary-fiction/threads/35711?page=1#forum_thread_comment_731210 Fiona W How delightful! Thu, 17 Nov 2011 02:59:42 -0700 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/literary-fiction/threads/35711?page=1#forum_thread_comment_737686 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/literary-fiction/threads/35711?page=1#forum_thread_comment_737686 bibliosylph Well, you know, Dean Martin. I'm writing two stories in one. One has turned into a silly cheesy lovefest and I'm the verge of just letting them Do it. Been awhile since I've written one of those scenes, why not. The other, which I've just gotten back to today after a week or so away from it, is all Deep and full of Thinking and Meaning and stuff. Still, Dean Martin. Ooh la-la-lah, c'est magnifique.... My main characters are obsessed with music. But mostly stuff no one else listens to. Charlie is very into Nancy Wilson right now. Violet listens to her grandma's old records from the 40s, Lily is stuck in the early new wave 80s, Robert listens to kind of poncy serious jazz. Fri, 18 Nov 2011 22:41:24 -0700 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/literary-fiction/threads/35711?page=1#forum_thread_comment_762473 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/literary-fiction/threads/35711?page=1#forum_thread_comment_762473 sisterswallow it's all classical for me - Rachmaninoff's piano concerto no. 2, Debussy's Clair de Lune and Faure's Elegy. VERY hard to put much into words, has anyone else found this? Sat, 19 Nov 2011 09:37:36 -0700 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/literary-fiction/threads/35711?page=1#forum_thread_comment_766348 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/literary-fiction/threads/35711?page=1#forum_thread_comment_766348 Bewitched.Rhapsody Yeah, I feel that way a lot. I love Debussy. Debussy and Ravel. ^_^ Mon, 28 Nov 2011 11:47:58 -0700 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/literary-fiction/threads/35711?page=1#forum_thread_comment_876142 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/literary-fiction/threads/35711?page=1#forum_thread_comment_876142 PowerUnit Mine's about retirement angst. Harry Nisson's "I'd Rather Be Dead" and the Rolling Stones' "Jig Saw Puzzle" are both referenced in this Nano draft. I don't necessarily plan on keeping the references, but I put them in to remind myself of their influence when I edit later. The story's tune is mostly Harry's song. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mV-oYe4xLkU Tue, 29 Nov 2011 10:06:45 -0700 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/literary-fiction/threads/35711?page=1#forum_thread_comment_887688 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/literary-fiction/threads/35711?page=1#forum_thread_comment_887688 PowerUnit Last year's story was very much April WIne's "Weeeping Widow" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OR9K6sToG-E Tue, 29 Nov 2011 10:09:18 -0700 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/literary-fiction/threads/35711?page=1#forum_thread_comment_887711 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/literary-fiction/threads/35711?page=1#forum_thread_comment_887711