Make Them Laugh, Make Them Cry

Drawing on music to help evoke emotion in your writing

by Kathye Quick
Copyright ©2007

Make them laugh, make them cry.  How many times have we, as writers, been told that an emotional reaction to your work is extremely important to readers.?  And we all know that it is, but sometimes, the emotion we are trying to express with our words just doesn’t come out right.  That’s probably because we haven’t experienced the emotion we are trying to convey with our sense of life lately.

A sense of life is our emotional evaluation of the world.  It is formed subconsciously through a process of integrating one’s values and judgments on what is happening around you.  Each person’s life sense is different because it is based on their own personal life experiences.  While it is true that some people’s sense of life may be similar, none are exactly the same.  Because the facets of a  sense of life can almost be infinite, so also can the range of emotions and reactions to what we are writing be as exceedingly varied.

But how can we as writers put on paper an emotion or reaction to a situation we have never fully experienced and still make it viable to the reader?  Love, hate, fear, passion, sadness.  I think I can safely say we all have gone through something in life and have felt these basic emotions to some degree.  But we write about so much more – Revenge, betrayal, terror, unrequited love, abandonment, ecstasy, rapture.  How can we experience these at the time we need to write about them.

Enter music. 

Using music, we can experience emotion almost on an as-needed basis.

Music is a powerful medium to express and experience emotion.  It recreates aspects of lives that are recognizable and can be experience to some degree just be listening.  By recreating patterns associated with human emotion, it recreates the emotion.  Then listening, we are able to grasp the emotional content, and react emotionally to it.  As an embodiment of the emotion, we are able to perceive it directly.

For instance, a piece of music may be quick moving, expressing energy, purposefulness, or excitement.  When we listen to a piece like that, more often than not, we can feel the emotion.  And when we feel the emotion, we are more able to it down in a way that can be felt through our writing.

I know you all have a particular song that makes you cry, or gets you to remember certain periods in your life.   Now let’s take those songs and stash them in the USB drive in your mind.  When necessary, hit the play button and use them next time you get stuck in a scene that is flat and lacking the emotional response you need to get the reader to turns those pages.

I’ve listed a few of my favorite songs that help get me from blank page to emotional genius.  Well, maybe not genius; maybe just not one dimensional.

Here goes –

©      Abandonment - ­I Who Have Nothing by Tom Jones

©      Loving someone from afar – Invisible by Clay Aiken

©      Pain of Loss – Tears in Heaven by Eric Clapton

©      Love – Let Me Love You –Tim McGraw

©      Passion – Keep Coming Back  - Richard Marx

©      Intense Attraction – Touch of Heaven – Richard Marx

©      Despair – Unbreak my Heart – Toni Braxton

©      Lost Love - Even Now - – Barry Manilow

©      Questioning your Heart – Measure of a Man – Clay Aiken

©      Losing a Love – Somewhere Down The Road – Barry Manilow

©      The First Time – Somewhere in the Night – Barry Manilow

©      Unrequited Love - –   Melody for a Memory – Hall and Oates

©      Hopelessness – What About Now – Daughtry (Chris Daughtry)

When you have time, take one of your favorite song’s and listen for the emotion.  Tag it, bag it, and save it for an emergency.   You’ll be glad you did!