This last month, I’ve been grappling with one of the most confounding issues of centuries, the one writers have struggled with ever since we broke away from the story’s original oratory format: how to incorporate the essence of song and dance into words.
First thing, experience.
Let’s do Tolkien. Pub songs, rousing table dances, endless appendices. But what it comes down to is, even with quirky, authentic, relevant lyrics, the song lifts the reader out of the book and away from the story. (I swear on my high school Literature Teacher’s Baby Ruth this is a type of irony of reveling the author in prose, but for the life of me, I can’t find the specific name for it on the Great and Powerful Internet.)
So, then how do we incorporate music, something so integral to being human, into literature without the reader simply glazing over the song and skipping back to the story?
So what are the pitfalls of music in literature?
With minimal research, I came across this topic on Redit, which displayed a great range of literature song hatred to rolling eyes to the occasional reference to songs and lyrics in titles because the manuscript was about a band. Mostly I was looking for references where music was incorporated successfully into novels so I could study them, but what I came up with are the pitfalls. (Yes, Tolkien was both sighted for being good example as well as for glaze over irrelevance. Notably George RR Martin is referenced by providing good context before the songs so that you care to read them…)
Pitfalls:
- Disengages reader from the story
- The song does not move the plot at all, so why bother reading it
- Songs inherently need rhythm and sound, which a (traditional) book cannot provide
So then, how have song’s been incorporated well?
- Dropped into the title and lyrics referenced at the chapter beginning
- Song Title mentioned off hand by the character
- A descriptive song and dance scene vividly described
- Used to change a plot point
- Describes events that happened
These examples range from describing a musical event and atmosphere to to lacing the reader along as if it was a soundtrack. Either way, all these ruminations led me to purpose.
Why do we want to incorporate songs into literature?
As with every character or plot point, to include songs into literature, they need to have a purpose.
Frankly, trying to communicate a soundtrack to your readers isn’t really a good purpose. First of all, a soundtrack isn’t tied to the plotline, but tied to the author’s emotion output into the plot. And, as with any song, that emotion is tied to each individual differently. Your specific grunge or country song isn’t really going to stretch to all your readers, only to a specific reader who enjoys your music. Why limit yourself?
So then what are the lyrics trying to communicate? Is it a cute little offshoot story of the writer, or does the lyrics unveil a mystery in the plotline? Does it set the tone of the place and pub? Are the lonely pub crawlers celebrating something, or has their town been ravaged by war the last several years? And if so, why do you need to communicate this with a song rather than just showing the downcast mood of the pub?
So then why do we need songs?
Songs are inherent of culture. They’re one of the essences of being human. Any typical tea shop or pub or festival gathering can never really described completely without the songs embedded into every step. And we as authors want to unfold that essential element of that setting because it’s so integral.
So then back to the original question…
How can we songs be integrated well into literature?
So, it’s one thing to describe a setting to convey as scene. A description of dancing is much more engaging to read than the songs they’re dancing to. So if atmosphere is the intention, leave the lyrics out.
However, what if you want the poetry of lyrics?
If you want to have words, they need to have a purpose. Do the lyrics add anything worthwhile to the story? Does the story stand on its own if you remove them? If so, they have no purpose. If not, then how can we integrate the song into the prose.
To integrate lyrical prose well into the literature, songs should not disengage the reader from the writing. Unless done intentionally as a narrative devise, a reader should never emerge from the story and be reminded that they’re reading. Plot points, point of view changes, awkward words, shifts in tense, all these take the reader away from the words. So then how can integrating a song NOT do that.
First of all, even the form itself is visibly different:
The lines don't extend all the way 'cross the line There's margin in the front, the back and behind. Forced to read rhyming and pentameter too, Though sweet to the ear, blend in it won't do
And even then, if the lyrics don’t fit the typical pentameter, it fails to communicate the pulsing rhythm of the song.
But to remove all the song framework and place it into a single paragraph will draw the reader out as well…
By default, the visible addition of a song into prose pulls the read out of the story. This could be good or bad. It’s a visual page marker in a book. I think, if the poem/song is a story in itself that’s relevant to the plotline, like a backstory, then this can be intriguing to the reader. But see, then we’re breaking the song down into it’s poetic, communicative form, which will drop the emotion of the rhythm.
Song = lyrics + rhythm and pitch and beat + movement of the body & mind
Can we use mnemonic devices, like repetitive “k” or “t” or “ing” sounds, to establish a rhythm in the reader’s head? Here we’re getting into poetry. THink-ing and SHare-ing and WRit-ing and DO-ing. Some of us authors might do this intentionally in a sentence or two, but to sustain it across an entire song, a song that actually adds to the story, is a bit of a challenge. If you jump right into a new prose rhythm, you’ll pull the reader away, but perhaps, like a song, if there’s a way of slowly slipping into a rhythm of it so that only by the end does the reader realizes they’ve been lyrically assaulted, perhaps it might work.
It reminds me of Victor Hugo’s unabridged version of Les Misérables I once attempted to read during those sleepless nights of late pregnancy when my little Bup would wake up for a good hour the moment I laid down for bed. Hugo dedicated whole chapters to what I’d refer to as name dropping of events and things and words from that time period that I blazed over. I assumed those who lived in that era actually read that and recalled wtf he’s talking about. Of course, I only understood a fraction of the terms referenced, but I realize now I read the translated version of the original. To read those chapters in French, what if there was a rhythm to it, the rhythm of a popular songs from that time period that established a song in the reader’s head. Aye, this is all speculation, but what if…?
But this is digressing far from the point, trying to hit the lion in the teeth. This is literary art for art’s sake.
How much can we communicate to the reader in the realms of our other senses?
These days, we can literally slip in a YouTube link, and physically have them listen to the song, but I ask again, what is purpose of it and does it add to the story.
The Point
If you’re trying to create an atmosphere, you’re better off describing the atmosphere than recalling the lyrics to a song.
If the lyrics of the song carry the plot forward, is a ballade that introduces backstory, or is integral to the plotline, keep it and weave it in, but realize it mostly likely won’t create a mood and rhythm for the song.
And finally, if you’re mastered the art enough to play with the prose itself to create the rhyme of a song, good for you. Just avoid drawing the reader out of the text (unless you’re meaningfully trying to make a point).
And my personal manuscript dilemma, the reason for this rambling…
Like stories, songs can become embedded with the emotion that we give them. Songs take an emotion cycling around in our soul and pours them out in a form and a pitch and a tone we can share and communicate. Singing a song perpetually, pouring out an emotion into the world can summon up a healing or a spinning or calling out to other entities. There’s power in song and healing in chords. It’s fundamental to my universe, both in reality and the fictional universe I created. So then how can I communicate this effectively?
Having ruminated for far too long, I will now take these questions back to what I’ve written…
Good bye.
