How Can Music Shape Storytelling? by Jac Dulski
As a writer who is constantly engaged in an academic setting, I sometimes find myself burnt out. Now, that doesn’t mean I lose my passion for writing—rather, I take these opportunities and search elsewhere for inspiration besides just on the page. When summer rolled around, I noticed that a few of my favorite artists were set to release new albums over the next few months. Now that it's fall, these releases have allowed me to explore the perfect dynamic that storytelling has in music, and how music can truly shape your own story and characters.
I am such a fiend for albums that illustrate stories through lyricism. There are so many ways to go about this as an artist, but prominent works like Ethel Cain’s Preacher’s Daughter and My Chemical Romance’s Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys really master this idea. While these two albums are drastically different in sound and genre, they blend lyricism and writing with different elements—such as emotion and noise—to appeal to their audience. Each track is chronological; there is a set beginning, middle, and end for the audience to experience. The way storytelling is captured in music made me wonder: “How can I capture the essence of this type of storytelling in my own writing?”
One way I do this is by—yes, you guessed it!—listening to these types of albums while I write. One piece that has been my biggest inspiration as of late is Olivia Rodrigo’s recently released album, You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love. Her thirteen track setlist takes the listener on a journey through love, self-realization, and hurt. Themes evident in albums like these can play a huge role in your own storytelling and can fuel ideas for what kind of emotions you want to provoke in your story. Setting yourself up in a cozy environment with your favorite tunes can always get that creativity flowing—it just depends on your own experience with writing and what you choose to do with that force of lyricism.
Another way I capture storytelling in music is by creating playlists for my characters. Creating a playlist of songs that encapsulates the overall “vibe” of your character can be such a fulfilling and enjoyable task, especially if you’re a lyric listener like I am! There are no bounds to what you can add to these playlists, which gives you as a writer so much room to be meticulous about how your character is perceived. For instance, the main character in my very early stage novel is quite moody and dark. When I made my playlist for her, I tried to dive into genres that tied into those themes. I selected songs that would not only express who she was as a person, but genres she would enjoy if she was real, too. I even sat down for some of the tracks and picked out lyrics I found she would relate to. This is such a lovely way to humanize your fictional characters. The best part of characterization is that it is your oyster: you can create whoever you want! And when different mediums of art are mixed together, it makes your character so real.
Writing and music have always been things that are cathartic to me. Finding ways to enmesh these two mediums and using them to my advantage is one of the best things about writing to me as a whole. Connecting your fictional writing to real world concepts is such a gratifying thing!
What’s the next song you’ll be listening to when you write? :D
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