Writing Tips 24: Listen While You Write

We writers are always told to picture ourselves in the place of our characters. What can they see, hear, taste, touch, smell or even just feel? That’s straightforward to say, but more challenging to accomplish in a realistic and engaging way.

One shortcut, for me at any rate, is listening while I write.

This is a topic of contention in the writing community. Quite a few writers say they can’t listen to anything  while they write, as they find it distracting. Some neuroscientists even go as far as to say that attempting two processing tasks at once can cause brain damage, because of the rate the brain is burning glucose to try to process two streams of information. I’m sceptical about that – cars have audio systems, after all, and I think we’d see a much higher incidence of brain damage if that was true.

However, on the few occasions I have tried to concentrate on writing something while listening to, say, a newscast (when I was a journalist), I’ve found it’s impossible to focus on both at once, and the attempt to do both quickly becomes physically uncomfortable.

I always listen to music when I write fiction, though, and find that it gets me to the exalted place many writers refer to as the Zone, or into ‘flow state’ as I prefer to think of it, better than anything else. And not only that, but into the specific zone where whatever I’m writing lives.

I can’t listen to the radio. It’s unpredictable, with presenters, adverts or both breaking in at regular intervals and saying who knows what, even on ad-free stations. I’d add to that playlists which are too random. For me, what I listen is about flow, consistency, regularity.

Whatever I’m I listening to, I quickly tune out whatever I’m listening to but the atmosphere sticks with me. Sometimes I’m taken out of the flow by a great track, but into a place which is even more intense, and which sparks even deeper creativity. If I hear a track I don’t like which pulls me out in a bad way, I simply delete it from my playlist.

Some writers I’ve spoken to say they can only listen to instrumental tracks, and if I’m writing science-fiction, fantasy or horror, for instance, I find that is the case. There, I often choose film soundtracks (great for horror especially) and playlists of music from TV or games.

But if I’m writing in a particular period, the ‘80s say – which covers my teenage years – I find that a playlist of tracks from that decade, invariably vocal tracks, actually helps the writing. Music is a powerful memory sense (occasionally uncomfortably so!), but it helps me get into the mindset of the characters, remember those little stories which bring a narrative to life and also remember features I took for granted back then which can add specific colours and tones to my piece.

The same would go for almost any decade, and you can be specific within your decade. For a piece set in the ‘80s I might pick New Wave, post-punk, goth, funk or any number of variations to suit. If I was writing something set in 1814, I’d be looking for classical music from the period, or maybe folk music, depending on the characters.

You can build playlists yourself or, if you subscribe to a music service such as Spotify, you’ll find that there are thousands of extremely specific playlists compiled by enthusiasts to suit almost any need. I just searched for ‘Vampire Writing’ and found five playlists dedicated to exactly that task, with plenty more for Readers, which perform exactly the same function. I even have a playlist entitled ‘Ancient Mediterranean Mix’ which my music service compiled for me and I used to write a piece incorporating Greek mythology!

If you’re a sceptic, or have found listening to music while writing distracting in the past, try a little exercise. Think about your setting, and who your characters are. Think about what they might hear or about the icons of their age, and go hunting for some music to fit the bill. Make yourself a playlist of around ten tracks, pop on some headphones and write a simple scene while listening. If it makes absolutely no difference, you’ve not wasted any time. But if it does make it easier to imagine what’s happening, then you might just have discovered something which brings you a little closer to your writing. 

Contributed by Mark Brandon