Friday, December 6, 2013

Music and Writing

At 103,644 words, my tenth draft of TBW is finished. Reward: my favorite chocolate and Laini Taylor's latest offering, NIGHT OF CAKE AND PUPPETS, await.

But today, I want to discuss finding inspiration in music. There are a lot of people who listen to music while they write. I am not one of those people. However, over the course of writing TBW, I'd occasionally hear a song that would remind me of a character and flood me with insight into who she was, and it was always the same character. She isn't the POV character. In fact, she started out with a minor role, but over the course of many drafts, she's become my favorite of the three main characters.

As I hadn't experienced this musical phenomena while writing any of my other stories, I'd attributed it to the character and let it go at that. Having access to music that drops me into the story has been great for revision.

But then, yesterday, I heard a song and thought, "That's HIM. He doesn't have a name yet, and I'm going to kill him off, but THAT is my character." This character had a minor role in my first draft of Nightingale (so minor that I didn't bother to name him), but now I'm excited to see how his story evolves. :o)

And now I'm curious. Does music play a role in your creative process?