Soundtracks Are Not Just For Movies!
- Alissa Yarbrough
- Sep 27, 2023
- 2 min read
Updated: Sep 29, 2023
Plain and simple, I am a soundtrack addict. I love the flow of strings, pulling you into the currents of sorrow. Or feeling the drive of drums in an animated composition corresponding with the beating of my heart. Whatever the mood the composer is trying to convey, music has a way to spur my imagination more than anything else.
As for my writing process, I find setting the mood with music similar to the emotions running through the scene helpful in maintaining my focus.
Does the scene call for a sense of loss? The low, mournful resonance of a cello gives the grief I need to fuse the same emotion into my character. Check out the later part of Darcy's Letter by Dario Marianelli.
Or perhaps determination with a dash of mystery as the heroine makes the decision to take the risk and go through with the life-threatening plan in order to accomplish her objective? A measured rhythm accompanied by an oscillating wind instrument provides the atmosphere as in No Interest in Dominic Greene by David Arnold.
This is, however, purely for my writing pleasure, and I never thought to actually create a soundtrack of miscellaneous songs to follow my novel until my sister introduced the idea by creating one for hers.
Soon I was collecting my own songs, more often than not those with lyrics that matched a character's thoughts and feelings or events playing out in my novel, and some I could just see playing at the credits if my book was made into a movie.
And here is the compiled, but far from exhaustive, playlist for the novel Safecracker, some old, some new, and very varied in genre (but, hey, that is me):
X-HZT - Hans Zimmer (Not keen on the last five minutes, though. Too discordant.)
You Belong – Francesca Battistelli (Totally credits song here!)
Even if you are not a writer, have you found songs that fit perfectly with a book you have read? Tell me about it in the comments!
(Disclaimer: I have not watched most the movies I listen to the soundtracks to. I pull them out by composer and give it a try.)
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