Why Write With Background Music?

I got a dog a few weeks ago. It’s cool to see the world through a puppy’s eyes, wondering how she’ll react to any new thing for the first time—music, for example.

I constantly listen to music, but I hesitated the first time I went to stream some tunes while the dog chomped on a toy beside me. Would it distract her from the important task of beheading her plush pig? Would she like the new Ozzy Osborne album, or prefer his older material (perhaps Bark at the Moon)?

This entire post is an excuse to post this picture of my dog, who lies here while I write. LOOK AT HER.

It turns out that, as with most things, it depends.

Most dogs just ignore music, which says something about their tolerance for our noisy and confusing human antics. There’s a tendency for some dogs to react angrily to metal, be soothed by classical, and have a “meh” reaction to pop—which says something about how dogs aren’t all that different from humans after all.

My dog seemed momentarily confused by Ozzy’s voice magically emanating from the bookshelf, but soon she was back to having a snooze.

That got me thinking about another type of creature that likes naps, is easily distracted, and has mixed reactions to music: the writer.

I know some writers need silence while they’re writing. Others are distracted by words more than the music itself, so it’s instrumental songs only.

Personally, I have music on whenever I’m writing. During the scientific writing of my day job, I’m not picky; usually it’s that meh pop music, or whatever the algorithms decide to deliver to my ears today. When writing novels, it’s different. I like to match the mood of the music to the mood of the story. For example, someone on Spotify created a 20-hour playlist inspired by David Lynch that has been a good fit for my recent writing. My novel Stars and Other Monsters was explicitly influenced by listening to Lady Gaga’s The Fame Monster over and over; it’s a very vampire-y album.

Lyrics are fine for me. Occasionally a line in a song will provide inspiration for a line in the novel, the same way passing strangers can provide inspiration for characters while writing at a coffee shop.

I know others (like friend of the blog Nilah) go so far as to create specific playlists for specific projects, and Mary Fan even wrote a song to include in her novel Windborn! I can’t help but think that a clarity of vision cutting across various media must help the end result feel like its own thing.

What about you? Do you (or your dog) write with music, or let only the tappy-tap of your keyboard accompany your writing?

A post by P.T. Phronk,
of Forest City Pulp fame

Interviewing Your Characters and GMC

Show of hands - who here has filled out a character interview sheet before they start writing? I definitely have not - yet. But I've been reading Debra Dixon's GMC: Goals, Motivation and Conflict (which is brilliant, by the way - even for someone 10 books into this whole writing thing) and she talks a lot about building the character interview into your writing process. According to Dixon (and I agree), it helps to give you a firm grasp the characters' goals and motivations, and how they're going to respond to conflict -- all of which help you build a great story.

The foundation of every great novel, regardless of genre, is conflict. If you have a weak conflict, readers feel like they're being led along a path for no real reason. Even in romance with its guaranteed happily-ever-after, your main character (MC) must face conflict - whether it's accidentally falling for her brother's roommate or an off-limits office romance.

Ok, I see you nodding and thinking, "But how does knowing whether my MC likes dogs add to the potential for conflict within my story?" Well, let's just say you're writing science fiction and your MC had a dog back when he was kid, which was a very long time ago. He and his friends are being shot at by rebel forces and about to board their space ship to escape the hostile planet, when MC sees a dog limping into a cave twenty feet away. MC makes a split-second decision to grab the dog and take it with them, but doing so means he's under enemy fire. And the crew now have a dog onboard - who's limping along and definitely worse for the wear. Imagine the conflict this can create amongst the crew! Now, the dog isn't the central plot point or conflict (it could be, but in my imaginary story it's not), but it can be used as a plot device to help drive the main conflict - which in this case might be something along the lines of: MC is a rogue and his superiors expect him to fall in line b/c he's putting everyone in danger otherwise. Case in point? You guessed it. Dog.

Here are 25 more great character interview questions:

1. It's Monday morning. Are you excited to go to work/school or sad?
2. What do you normally eat for breakfast?
3. Do you call your mother or text? How often?
4. Do you iron your clothes? Who does your laundry?
5. Do you exercise or are you happy to sit on the couch? If you exercise, what's your favorite way to exercise?
6. Have you ever played a team sport? If you no longer play, why not?
7. What is your favorite TV show?
8. How do you typically spend your Friday night?
9. What do you do when you're bored?
10. How many hours/day do you work/go to school?
11. What would you be embarrassed for people to know about you?
12. If you go to a party, do you prefer to talk to people you already know or meet new people?
13. What do you drink during the day? Water? Coffee? Ice Tea? Beer? Nothing?
14. What kind of books do you read? If you don't read books, do you read magazines, newspapers, or online content?
15. If a stranger rings your doorbell, do you answer it or do you wait in the kitchen until they leave?
16. What is your favorite food?
17. If you could meet anyone, living or dead, who would it be?
18. How many siblings do you have? Are you close or estranged?
19. Do you have a pet? If so, what kind?
20. What would be your perfect gift to receive?
21. What do you like best about yourself?
22. What do you like least about yourself?
23. How long have you known your best friend?
24. You're stuck waiting in an unexpectedly long line. How do you react? What do you do while you're waiting?
25. What is one color you think looks great on you and why?

These are only the tip of the iceberg of questions you can use to "interview" your characters, so I'm curious -- if you do a pre-writing character interview, what kinds of questions do you ask your characters?

A Focus on Dialogue

I recently read a book that had a lot of potential. The overall message of the book was very important and I think it’s something that could really help a lot of people. The issue was that it got lost in the endless internal ramblings of the main character’s voice. I think only about 10% of the book was dialogue. And most of that 10% wasn’t well executed.

A few ‘conversations’ were completed in one paragraph. As in—I said, “Hey, how’s it going?” And she replied, “Things are good.” So I said, “Great!”

Another example is a chapter that ended with the main character arriving at someone’s house, after having had a very emotionally difficult day. Instead of picking up that moment in the next chapter, we are told what happened when the main character tells another friend about the conversation. . . Um, why?

Sigh.

I’m one of those who has a very hard time dropping a book, so the result of this poor execution was that I just started skipping large chunks. The author effectively lost me, and I’m not sure I’m willing to give another book of hers a try.

Dialogue is not a requirement for every book, but it is when writing a fiction novel. It keeps the story moving, and it’s what helps you ‘show’ rather than ‘tell’. Below is an example. I’ve crafted two narrations—one without any active dialogue and one with.

Example 1:

Suzie has been my best friend for nearly a decade. Our dessert had just arrived (neither of us likes to admit defeat against temptation, so we decided to share) when she asked me about the book I read. We tend to like the same kinds of books, so we always quiz each other about our most recent reads. If one of us didn’t like it, there’s a good chance the other won’t like it either. The problem was I wasn’t sure how to answer her. The book had a very good premise, and the moral of the story was so important. The characters were diverse, which was a breath of fresh air. I knew she struggled with the same issue as the main character, so on one hand I definitely thought she should read it. But on the other hand, if she got frustrated with the execution and stopped reading, she might miss the message altogether.

I must have taken too long thinking about my answer because she asked me again. I told her, “It was good.” Her reply was, “That’s not very convincing.” And so I told her about my concerns.  

Example 2:

The waiter placed the dessert in the center of the table and disappeared after producing two fresh spoons. I snatched one up and dipped it into the creamy concoction without hesitation.

After a few bites, Suzie wiped her mouth and leaned forward. “Hey, how was that book you just finished?”

My mouth was full so I raised my hand and made the ‘eh’ motion.

“Darn. It sounded so good. What was wrong with it?”

I swallowed and took a sip of my wine before answering. “Well, it had lots of humor and diverse characters. And the overall message was wonderful. As your best friend, I know it’s something you’d connect with. But the execution was poor. It’s only about 300 pages but it felt like I was slogging through an 800-page psychology textbook most of the time.”

Suzie sat back in disappointment. “Now I’m even more curious about the book for the message, but I don’t really have the energy to force myself through a slow-paced book.”

“How about I give you the highlights?”

Suzie snapped her fingers and pointed at me before dipping her spoon back into the bowl. “Yes, perfect.”

I’d like to note that both examples above have the exact same word count and present the same information. Despite the same number of words, I’m hoping you found Example 2 much easier to read. The story flowed and there was interaction between the characters. I know I’d rather read novels that fall into the second example over the first any day.

Now, back up in my opening paragraph, I mentioned that the dialogue that was included in this particular novel was poorly executed. I could make this post twice as long by giving you advice on how to write excellent dialogue (since my critique group tells me I’m a ‘master of dialogue’ I think I’d have a few legit tips), but there are already lots of great articles on the subject. Below are just a few I found when I did a search for this post.

https://www.nownovel.com/blog/fantastic-dialogue-tips/

https://www.novel-writing-help.com/writing-dialogue.html

https://www.novel-writing-help.com/punctuating-dialogue.html

Now go forth and make your characters effectively communicate!

~Carrie