Blog Tour: Domination (C.H.A.O.S. #3) by Jon S. Lewis (spotlight, guest post)

Why Music is Critical to My Writing Process

Music is a critical part of my writing process for two very important reasons:

1)      The right playlist draws out emotions that help me set the tone for a scene

2)      Songs trigger memories that are so real it’s as though I’ve traveled back in time

How Music Draws Out Emotion

You’re in a car with your friends flying down the highway. It’s been a long day and you just want to go home and veg out, but suddenly your favorite song plays through the speakers. Your eyes light up, you reach over and crank up the volume and it only takes a few notes before all of you are singing at the top of your lungs.

See what I mean? Music can change your mood in a split second. But conflict is the fuel of good storytelling, which means creating a playlist of the songs that put a smile on my face isn’t going to take me very far. There are times I need to take my emotions to a dark and frightening place. Or a place of sadness and despair. Anger. Frustration. Elation. Relief. And I use songs as the prompts to take me there.

How Music Triggers Memories

I might not be a teen any longer, but anytime I need to I can travel back in time to remember how nervous I was to ask someone to the prom, or the despair I felt when my girlfriend broke up with me because I moved to a different state. I can trigger memories of long bus trips after a basketball game, the last day of school or waterskiing with my friends all summer long.

Every time I hear “Where the Streets Have No Name” by U2 I get taken back to the tiny of town of Waconia, Minnesota. My buddy got a convertible Mustang for his birthday and we loved driving through the winding country roads despite having nowhere in particular to go. The top would be down and we’d turn the radio turned all the way up. I can smell the fresh cut hay, remember the looks on the girls faces as we drove by, and I can still remember the exact hue of the sun as it set in the horizon.

Domination started out in a place of abject despair, so the playlist consisted of soundtracks from movies like Shutter Island and Children of Men. To trigger fear, I’d listen to the disturbing soundtrack from 28 Days Later. When I wrote the cadets training to fly using jetpacks and hoverboards, I’d listen to the soundtrack from Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. But when I wanted to remember the strange but invigorating feeling of having a crush on a girl, I listened to songs like “Always Something There To Remind Me,” by Naked Eyes, “In Your Eyes,” by Peter Gabriel and “Don’t You Forget About Me,” by Simple Minds.