If your characters are listening to a song, just say something like, "She was listening to [insert song name here]." Then you can add that she was affected by the lyrics without actually quoting them. This is a lot easier. There's no need, in my opinion, to quote lyrics and ask for permission and all that mess. It can cost you over $1000 just to use one line from one song. It's not worth it.
When you do contact them, don't hold your breath, I've been waiting for over a year for an answer to my query to a certain record label enquiring about permission to use 8 lines of lyric from a song. And it's not even a song in the charts. I ended up re-writing that particular scene with a workaround instead. So even if you're not done yet, and (as it sounds) the lyrics and titles play a big part in your story, you might want to start enquiring now. Good Luck x
But then you need to get the information and the facts about this all sorted now. It would be such a shame to do all the work involved in writing the story with so much popular culture that the story is all about, to have to shelve it at the last hurdle because you were denied permission or couldn't - for whatever reason - get it.
Luckily I haven't written most of it yet - even if I've outlined the roles that certain artist and songs play. So I will probably avoid massive lyric quotes and just reference the songs and artist names. It's a story I'm going to keep writing regardless, so I'll be careful but at the end of the day my focus is on producing a good narrative.
If the speech was recorded in any tangible form, it's still copyrightable--and I believe that that includes the speaker writing it down before they speak. It would be safest to assume that speeches are always copyrighted. Fair use would generally allow news reporting and some other uses of a speech, but I would suggest getting expert advice before depending on fair use.
You'll probably confused what I mean by this, so let me try to clear it up a little. Basically in a story I'm planning to write I'm going to feature somebody singing a song; so would I use quotation marks around the song lyrics, a colon, or something else. The reason I ask his is, because there's a section in a Harry Potter I believe the first one where they're singing the Hogwarts song (sorry I can't remember too much about it I haven't read it in awhile) and I believe the story used a colon for the song. Anyways could someone possibly explain what I should use?
Don't trust me on the grammatical stuff but this is what I'd do... If you put it as one long chunk of text I'd use a colon and no quotes, just offset and maybe italicize with appropriate line breaks. blah blah blah blah they began to sing: _______Song song song _______sonngy singy song _______this is the song lalala _______more song more song _______falalalalala _______you get the idea... If you want to break up the song into bits this is where i'd use quotes (and maybe italics) blahblahblahblah Bob began to sing, "LAlaLAlaLA, song song more song" John and Joe looked at each other and smirked at his off key lyrics "Over the river and through the woods too grandmother's house we gooooooooooo" "Bob?" asked Larry "Song song song song more song song more song singing forever" "Bob, could you please shut up?" "Hogwarts Hogwarts Hoggy Wortty Hogwarts Teach us something please- weather we be old and bald or young with scabby knees-" "BOB! If you don't shut up I'm going to stuff this sock in your face! Anyway, on a totally different note, do you really really really need the song? I tend to get bored reading songs in books. I don't know the tune and it usually just comes across as a mess of pointless rhyming... Whenever I see huge page long chunks of song my first instinct is to skip them. If it's crucial to plot or something, maybe see if you can work it in in bits and pieces? Take a look at the Hobbit for song references, Tolkien includes a bunch and you can check how they are formatted.
It's crucial to the character's personality, but don't worry it won't be like Stairway to Heaven I'll make it reasonably long.
I'm debating the same thing, putting singing in my story, but my first attempt was so hokey I haven't revisited the idea yet.
I've already got ideas about how my song will go and how it will fit in, but yeah it is a bit hokey if you don't play it right.
I made the horrible mistake of getting a musical education*, so I just write the music into the text. Nothing fancy, nothing ground breaking, but I like to think some special reader will get it. Edited to add: But everyone singing is a baritone or bass, because I learned bass clef, and never got around to treble. *It will ruin the radio for you. All I can think when some song comes on in b-flat 4x4 time (the McDonalds of signatures) is: What a talentless hack this song writer is. Blink 182 can send me into a rage.
I don't mind singing in the books provided I can catch the tune in my head and it fits with the plot/characterization. Haven't we all sang something a time or two? Whether it be in a group or in the shower? That said, I'm not a good song writer by any means, so most of my characters don't really sing and if they did, I wouldn't be writing out the lyrics.
