Music to stories? · 5:27pm May 8th, 2015
I've noticed a lot of writers add music to their stories, some of them do it to show what type of music the MC likes to play on his phone or MP3 player or show ponies Human music while some use music to set the scene of their story. Some of the stories I'm currently reading use music to set the mood of a scene, but I rarely click the link to listen, mostly because I need silence to read and enjoy the story.
Lately I've been listening to music while writing, nice calming music that helps me focus properly and some of the music I've discovered would sound good as my story progress. It would help set the scene, portray emotions and general mood of the characters.
However, I worry that adding music to the story will break the immersion. So I'm asking what you think about music in stories. Is it good? bad? Don't care?
Launch debate!
I for one love adding music in my work. Its in a number of ways inspired by it. When these authors introduce the music, do they usually play it before or after the scene? I'm curious about this subject myself whether its bad, good, or don't care either.
In the beginning of my fanfiction reading, I never gave it much thought. Sure, some authors would put in referrences, but I never really pursued them.
But after I came here and started reading the stories, one of which was Arrow 18. Turned out that Admiral Tigerclaw linked some music for the story--took me a while to figure out it was his own shit. It turns out he's a professional musician doing scores for games & such
Then I started getting interested in doing my own stories. Researching Ryuu's characters that he's allowed me to work with showed me just how much they were involved with music in dealing with their activities. As a result, I started paying attention to those pieces referrenced and needed to look up similar genres to be appropriate with my work.
I've found that listening to music certainly helps set the mood and pace of the writing. Ryuu confirmed that for him, some songs helped generate certain scenes or even whole stories, just by themselves. I've come around to believe it's true what some have postulated, that a film's score is as much as, if not more so, an important character in its own right as anyone who has a role in the film because the music is the emotional voice of the movie.
Of course, there will be people for whom it doesn't matter. And there will be people who have their own preferences as to what they wish to listen to. There's nothing wrong in either of those--it's their choice. But for those who are willing to immerse themselves deeper into the experience as presented by the author--why the hell not?