My Honest Opinions On Writing Music

Hey friends! As you can see from the title, this post is all about your writing soundtrack, and what you can do to get the most out of it. Or at least, what I do. 

Now, I’m going to be honest here. I am one of those people who has a handpicked playlist for literally every mood and activity, writing-related or not, so I’m far from an unbiased source. 

But really I think that’s okay. So back to writing music specifically, what aspects do I consider when making all those playlists? 

First of all, genre. Personally, I like the genre of my writing music to at least somewhat match up with the genre of whatever I’m working on. My general go-tos for sci-fi are electronic music or K-pop because they both have that sleek, artificial quality to them. For fantasy, it’s usually folk music of some kind, epic orchestral, or pop with an otherworldly feel to it, like AROURA, Florence + The Machine, or Hozier. I’ll often use rap or rock when writing fight scenes of any genre, though. It’s just better at conveying those hyped, aggressive vibes. 

Another thing I try to keep consistent is whether the songs have intelligible lyrics or not. I love listening to lyrical music while writing. I know some people who can’t write while listening to songs with lyrics, period. It’s purely down to personal preference. The main thing for me is that I can’t mix lyrical and instrumental music together in one playlist. The transition between the two is really jarring and breaks my concentration. I don’t need any help in getting distracted from my writing. I do that well enough on my own, thank you very much! 

Of course if the songs do have lyrics, those also affect the mood and general tone of what I’m writing. The most obvious example I can think of here is love songs. If you’re writing a couple, finding songs you would do romantic edits of them to is my favorite way to nail down the details of their relationship dynamic. (Healthy? Toxic? New? Established? Have either of them been in love previously? How did that end?) 

I do use this for other character dynamics too. Although they’re harder to find, good songs about familial or platonic relationships are out there! As someone who values those things much more than romance IRL, developing a mental database of those songs has been an ongoing project. 

That just about wraps up this post. If you’re interested in me sharing my mood writing playlists on here, find me on socials and let me know!