Making a Playlist For Your Totally Awesome Novel

NaNoWriMo is in full swing! For the uninitiated, it’s short for National Novel Writing Month, where a bunch (meaning thousands) of people attempt to write a novel during the month of November. This will be my fourth year doing NaNo, although my third year attempting the full 50,000 words.

I am so far behind it’s actually quite amusing: I just hit 10,000 words, when I should be at the halfway point. But I’m okay with that. The whole idea of NaNo is to make yourself write, and these are 10,000 words that I didn’t have last month. So I’ll be happy even if I don’t win. My novel is called “How to Breathe in Space” and it’s my first attempt writing science fiction, which is a lot of fun!

I tried something new this year: many writers talk about writing to music or creating a playlist for their books, and I was intrigued by this concept. I love music, so I thought it would be fun to give it a go. So I present to you a Beginner’s Guide to Creating a Totally Awesome Playlist For Your Equally Awesome Novel.

1. Decide what sort of playlist you want: Brainstorming or Writing.

I feel that there are two categories for this. I am an introverted person who requires complete silence to concentrate. (To prove this point, I had to take a “what’s your learning style” assessment today, and it said mine was “Solitary.”) So it’s hard for me to write to loud music. I also find it difficult to concentrate to music with lyrics: I either end up writing the lyrics or just getting so distracted with the song that I don’t get anything done. So I tend to use playlists more for Brainstorming, rather than the Writing Process. So I will be discussing that in this post. If you’re looking for nice writing music, I recommend looking for “studying” music.

2. Discover the theme or mood of your novel!

I’m not going to go all English major here and start talking about the themes of novels. But every book has a distinct feel to it. A romance novel would have a different soundtrack than a murder mystery, in most cases. My NaNo novel is space-themed, so I’m looking for songs that feel space-y. (Definitely a precise description.)

That being said, sometimes I like to have songs with a different feel in the mix to represent different scenes. Sarah J. Maas, author of the Throne of Glass series, is known for her super long playlists for each of her books with songs that symbolize each chapter. It’s pretty neat!

3. Curate a long playlist so you don’t get bored

The more songs on the playlist, the less likely that you’ll get bored of any of them. I am definitely guilty of making super short playlists and listening to the same songs over and over again, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but it isn’t the most sustainable practice. Once I liked a song so much that I set it for my alarm clock every morning for a few months. After being woken by it every day, I developed a conditioned response to feel angry whenever I heard the song. You probably don’t want that for you and your novel.

4. Spotify is the novel playlist creator’s friend

I discovered Spotify about a year ago, and it’s helped me discover quite a few new artists. It’s a free app where you can stream music for free. There are a fair number of ads, but it is free, after all. My favorite thing about Spotify is that you can create playlists, and you can add pretty much any song for free. This keeps me from going broke with buying new music. One thing I don’t like is that you can’t choose which song to listen to – it shuffles your music automatically – but once again, it’s free. It’s definitely worth checking out if you haven’t heard of it!

5. The Music-Fueled Brainstorming Session.

This is just what it sounds like. I listen to music when I take the bus or go on a walk, and listening to the Novel Playlist puts me in a brainstorming mood. I figured out the plot for this year’s NaNo novel over a month’s worth of walks and bus rides. It’s often helpful to have something to get you in a certain mindset. Just be careful not to zone out so completely that you miss your bus stop – not that I’ve come close to doing that or anything. 😛

6. Share your playlist with the world!

This is definitely just an excuse to share my playlist with the world. 🙂

• Paradise – Coldplay
• Breathe – Seafret
• No Time For Caution – Hans Zimmer (Interstellar)
• New Constellation – Toad the Wet Sprocket
• Sky Full of Stars – Coldplay
• Dead Man – Dia Frampton
• The Loxian Gate – Enya (this is my favorite of her songs it’s so awesome)
• Not Today – Imagine Dragons (Me Before You)

There’s a lot more, mostly Coldplay, but I’m still finding new songs. 🙂

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Have any of you tried making a playlist for your novel? What kind of music do you like to listen to while writing? Or are you a silent kind of writer? 🙂

Thanks for reading, and have a great day!