What's your opinion on songs?

I'm thinking about writing a song halfway on my wip to develop both the character who sings it and the world, I just wanted to know what you guys think about songs (or lyrics really) in the middle of a book and how to incorporate them naturally.

 

Oh, that's tricky. I've seen it done well, and I've seen it done badly ...sometimes within the same story. (LOTR is an excellent example. Tolkien's pages of airy-fairy glimmering-shimmering stuff was basically unreadable for me, but the short little ditties, like The Road Goes Ever On and On? They were memorable, and seemed to fit the mood of a scene very well.)

I don't know. I think it depends a lot on how the song gets used.

Without seeing what you're actually doing, I would not use more than a verse or two without some narrative to break it up. Unless it's very simple and easy-to- follow story-song, with its own sense of intrigue.

Hard to come up with a blueprint for how to pull it off successfully. But maybe look at it from a reader's standpoint. Try to forget how you feel writing the song, and think of how they're going to react to having a song plunked into the middle of a (presumably riveting) prose story. And go from there.

I'd say it should move the story along, not be an 'interlude.' But again, it depends on your story, your characters, and why you are including a song. Just get it written, fitted into the story, and see how it works.

 

I read a book once that did this, but for the life of me can't remember wh... Ah! It was The Hobbit. I didn't mind it, although I'm pretty sure I skipped the songs as just knowing they were singing was enough to set the scene. Unless knowing the lyrics is vital to the plot, I'd avoid it. But then even if they are vital, how do you let your reader know this?

 

Ah yes, the song of Eärendil is way too long for a book, I like the lyrics but I do remember skipping every song my first time reading LotR and that specific one my second time too. Hearing them from youtube while you read them is kinda cool though.

It's a lullaby so I was thinking that five small verses wouldn't be too long to disrupt the pace and enough to do a little bit of world-building.

It's not vital to the plot, just a world-building song that will give me a good (I think) way to develop the character, at the very least it will be better than just writing "he sang a lullaby"... probably.

 

This is what happens. I don't think many people are so turned off that it hurts the book, but some readers, maybe a lot of readers, will skip over what amounts to a poem in the middle of prose. So many people hate poetry so much that they haven't given it a second chance since the eighth grade and can't be bothered to read ten lines in the middle of a book they're enjoying. Also remember that most people won't have a melody in their head when reading it, so make sure it works without one.

All that said, I put a song of sorts in a story I would like to finish someday. In the chapter, the MC's have an encounter with a serial killer, so I opened the chapter with a gruesome nursery rhyme about the killer and what will happen if he catches you. It was loads of fun. In fact, I'm more proud of that little ditty than almost anything else in the book.

 

My honest, non Obligatory Cheerleader answer is that they are an author-oriented indulgence that is often even harder to explain or justify than an explicit sex scene, and I say that as someone who thoroughly enjoys a right-good rogering in a novel.

• Are you a song-writer? That's an art unto itself, seperate from prose.
• Does it really, actually, genuinely develop the character or the world? It certainly can, but does it in your case? We tend to make statements like that, and even believe them, without ever checking to see if the empirical evidence matches the intent.
• There will always be skimmers and skippers like me. I cannot be paid to read a song in a novel and it tends to serve as a huge strike against the story for me. Anne McCaffrey's songs were the worst, most trite, most twee little doilies you ever did see in a book, and insult to injury, she plopped them in sooooooo many of her books. She literally has a novel called The Ship Who Sang. So, for readers like me who already have a well-worn opinion on these matters, is your choice worth it to include the song? The answer may well be yes, because we are always making choices that include or remove readers, but you should know that this certainly is one of those choices.

 

Of course not, just a writer with fancy aspirations.

Well, I think that the mere existence of a song talks about the culture behind it; I do understand what you are saying though and since I've yet to write it all I can say is "that's the idea".

Damn, you hate them that much??? I mean, I did skip every song on my first reading of both "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings" but it never occurred to me that someone would find songs (or poems) so off-putting, it is something to consider though.

Indeed, I say song because of how I'm thinking it but I guess for most readers it would be some kind of poem.

 

I agree that this is the only way you're going to guarantee someone reading it (and upfront that fact, is possible). One example most people will know is the HP "sorting-hat" song - people are familiar with it because it's clearly world-building and rhythmic in the extreme (even if that world-building is clearer AFTER the song itself, prompting people to go back and re-read). Sure, it's basic in this way, and such ambitions won't shake the foundations of the literary world, but it's much easier to guarantee engagement.

Of course, if you're after something that's simply enjoyable to produce and runs the risk of both alienating and impressing respectively, I'd just go for it. But don't make it twee(!) If it's not going to develop the plot, at least make it a poetic feast... xD