Music in novels

If you’re anything like me, you’ll have a song playing in your head on a constant basis, sometimes automatically and unnoticed, until it has focus again. This is especially true when I listen to a song in my car on the way to work on the morning I actually still make the trek to the office (hello, working from home), as the last song I hear will almost certainly be playing in my head for most of the day. So much so, that I now switch the radio or my phone off after a particularly good song before I get there, so it would be the main soundtrack of the day.

If you’ve read either or both of my first two novels, you’ll also know that I aim to incorporate music in some capacity in my writing too. I like the idea of my characters (you know, the ones I spend hundreds and hundreds of hours with, through the course of writing a book) having music in their lives (or existence, depending on how you choose to look at it).

But having music playing in these story worlds of mine is a challenge.

Some songs are quite distinct and I sometimes have a go at describing the melody in words alone (it really is as hard as it sounds).

In reality, song titles and the name of the artist are generally the easiest references to include, but unless readers know the song you’re talking about or are invested enough to look the song up offline, this may not be very impactful. On a side note, one reader did let me know that they listened to a song that was mentioned in Words for Anna, online and loved that she could do that.

It makes it worth it.

By the way, my latest novel is progressing well. I’m currently editing it again and have incorporated music in some ways already, but I may sneak in another song title or two. Perhaps my protagonists already play a musical instrument.

But will either of them have songs playing in their heads, at least some of the time? To honest, I hadn’t actually thought about it until now, but it’s not the worst idea I’ve had, depending on how you look at it.