Using Music for Inspiration

                                                        

                                                      Using Music for Inspiration

They say music hath charms to soothe the savage beast, but it also has ways to inspire us. I admit that often when I am stuck in the stories I am working on, I step away and play with an exercise to get my brain back into writing mode. One of my favorite ways to get out of a rut is to take a song I love and turn it into a story, like the song Neon Moon. It’s an oldie but a goodie. The first stanza: "There’s a run-down bar across the railroad tracks.  It's got a table for two way in the back, where I sit alone and think of losing you.” Right away, you have the setting, the main character, and the question. Where is the character? At a table for two in a bar. What is the question? How did he lose his love?

Or you can take Miley Cyrus’s famous song “Flowers,” which starts with: "We were good, we were gold, kinda dream that can’t be sold. We were right till we weren’t built a home and watched it burn.” (Ironically, her father, Billy Ray Cyrus, wrote and sang Neon Moon.) So now we have a female character. She was in love, and the love died; it burned up. Her following line reads: "I didn’t want to leave you, I didn’t want to lie, started to cry but then remembered I … can buy my own flowers.”

So we have a male character sitting in a bar thinking about what a loser he is for letting the best thing in his life go. He has regrets, problems, and loneliness. Meanwhile, his soon-to-be ex has slammed the door on him and proclaimed her power. She doesn’t need a man. She can do it on her own. This is the situation. The questions to be answered are …1) what happened to break them up? 2) How long were they together? 3) Will they get back together? Then you need to insert problems, like clearly, if he is sitting in a bar, he has a drinking issue. What if he quit and became a better man? Could they forgive each other? And bam! You have a story.

When I was writing Secrets Cafe, I listened to an alternative station. One of the songs that kept popping up was by a new band called War On Drugs. It became the song track in the background. Stephanie Myers, who wrote the Twilight series, said she listened to Muse for inspiration. My current work in progress has me listening to music from the sixties and spooky stories. One of the songs that inspired me is For What It's Worth. The first stanza is: "There's something happening here, what it is ain't exactly clear. There's a man with a gun in his hands, telling me that I got to beware."  The song brings to memory a scene from The Muppets where the animal puppets are hiding in the forest from a man with a gun. Add that scene to my hatred of trophy hunters and an old story I told my younger siblings and bam! An idea is fleshed out.

There are many ways to get through those moments when you are stuck. Pray. Light some incense and meditate. Go for a walk. Take a shower. (I get thousands of ideas in the shower and have to keep a notebook nearby to jot them down.) Day-to-day experiences and music. The main thing is to write every day, even if all you write is a grocery list.