Using Music To Connect With Your Characters

As a fantasy writer, listening to the appropriate music while writing can really get you in ~the mood~ and set the tone for a scene, a situation, or the entire story.

Of course, when it comes to fleshing out your characters and really knowing who they are beyond just dialog on a page or a doodle on the canvas, one of the best tools (and possibly most underused even) is choosing the right songs for them.

I discovered this out of personal struggle. Since 2011/2012, I have been (very off-and-on) writing a story titled Beyond the Wall. To put it short, it's a POC Fantasy story, wedged somewhere between High and Low Fantasy (Middle Fantasy?) with elements of action, adventure, comedy, magic, and romance. It's set in my fictional world of Soren, an Earth-esque planet inhabited by elves (along with mythological animals and beasts). Based on my experience with writing this story and having to do all of the character development, music is the greatest asset a character creator (whether a writer or illustrator) can use when fleshing out a character and giving them a background and a life.

So, you know that magical feeling you get in the pit of your soul when an artist creates a song that perfectly captures how you feel about another person, situation, yourself, or your life, and they express it in their lyrics better than you could possibly could?

Take that principle and apply it to your characters. Finding songs that sound like your character could have created them is the musical key to connecting to them as their creator.

Once you get that song, or a playlist of 4 or 5 songs (or 20, or 30) that speak to the heart of your character and their personality, then you've got a strong and constant tool to use when trying to get in the head space and finding the muse for that character.

Where do you find music?

Sure, you can file through all the songs stashed in your music library and try to match them up with your characters. There's nothing wrong with that and it's fun and easier than music hunting because you're already familiar with the tunes at hand. The more broad your music taste, the easier this can be.

But, it can make things harder when you have a dark, broodish, and cynical character but most of the songs you know and enjoy are upbeat pop hits or electronic dance songs.
I had this issue a lot when I was younger and it made picking theme songs for my characters harder than ever. I finally found a way to combat this when I began to discover all of the amazing music tucked away in the hidden corners of the Youtube corn maze.

Youtube channels such as:

• Funky Panda
• ENM
• Elegant Sister (ES)
• MrSuicideSheep OR SuicideSheep (same guy, different channel)
• Indie Current
• Alrota Music 
• and xKito Music

all post songs by independent, up and coming, and hidden gem artists literally every single day (or close to it for some). Most, if not each, of these channels has playlists of dozens or sometimes hundreds of songs sorted by genre and make finding appropriate character songs so much easier than asking around for song suggestions from friends, on forums, hunting for songs with a certain sound or lyrics on google, or posting to Yahoo Answers.  I also have a habit of looking up songs I've heard and liked on tv commercials because they are often good and can come in handy for character stuff.

Think about your character's personality.

Imagine if Lurch's theme song was
 JT's Can't Stop the Feeling. Ill-fitting, yet oddly funny.

When choosing the right songs for your baby, you want to keep in mind who they are. What is their personality like? Are they brash? Tactful? Shy? Charming and charismatic? Sarcastic and cynical? Perhaps an odd mix. Find whatever adjectives describe them. If your character is a shy brooding type,  for example, then it might fare well for you to search for songs with lyrics that portray this sort of mentality and lifestyle. Of course, if you want to make a statement about your character keeping their true personality hidden, or them pretending to be someone they really aren't, then choosing a song that represents the real them and not their chosen persona would be best.

Lyrics might be dandy, but instrumentals can be handy.

Naturally, lyrics to a song are the most fun and easiest thing to match up to a character and storyline. However, you cannot ignore instrumental music either. The great thing about choosing instrumentals for your characters, is that they can help you to really get a feel for your character's presence and how they carry themselves, without having to worry about what the lyrics are saying.

Personally, when I choose instrumental songs for my characters, I don't ask myself what type of music would [character] listen to? so much as I ask if [character] was a genre of music, what would they sound like?  The token idea here is that you are finding your characters aesthetic through music. 

For example, my character Roland is an overthinking ISTJ who loves horticulture, schedules, and occasionally singing when no one's around. Instead of choosing music that is dark and heavy or slow and dragging for him, I decided on acoustic and indie folk, since he is a "Donny Downer" type, but also a nature lover with a off-kilter since of humor. 

Really think about the essence of your character.

Music make you lose gain control.

When choosing songs for your characters, it's important to remember the impact that music can have while you are writing. There's tons of articles you can find online that talk about how influential music is to writers. How it can help you focus, inspire and encourage you to continue working on something you started to get bored with, or motivate you to finish things that you've neglected. I've heard the best is lukewarm ambient instrumental (not so great sounding it distracts you, but not bad to the point it also distracts you), but here's more to it than that, I believe. 

While I write, I either listen to the songs I chose for the characters that are in the scene I'm writing, or I listen to Epic Score/Cinematic music that I feel fits the scene. Writing without that foundation of music in the background has actually proved to be more difficult to me. 

Having music with a perfect fit to your story and characters to listen to as you write can totally immerse you into the scene you are writing. 

I'm an illustrator and visual person, so when I create stories, I usually think up the scenes in terms of screenplay, camera angles, and staging at the start, so having the actual audio of score music (that isn't associated with a movie or tv show that already exists) to the hypothetical movie I'm creating helps to make it feel more real. 

This helps to keep me mindful of not only the aesthetic/atmosphere of the scene I'm writing, but what the characters are doing, how they are acting in the scene, and interacting with each other. simply because it forces me to imagine how they are going to be moving and staged throughout the scene in tangent with the music. 

As a sidenote, I think there is absolutely nothing wrong with listening to songs that are in the "so great sounding it distracts you" category, if they are songs relating to your characters/story. That way, if or when you are distracted by the music, you will still be thinking about your characters/story and keep your focus on that.

And there you have it. Some ideas for how to get started finding the perfect songs for your characters! 

Remember that songs can have multiple meanings and just because the lyrics of a song sounds one way, doesn't mean it can't mean something else. And that something else might be something that your character can relate to. 

That perfect song can come from anywhere, you just have to be willing to listen.

Happy Writing!

What I've Learned About Making a Fantasy World

I've been working on my story/fantasy world of Beyond The Wall since 2011 and I've learned a lot through trial and error and being in classes. I'm still learning how to do things, and this is in no way a list of tips or advice, but rather, a list of the things I tried and failed at, that might help someone else struggling with the same issue with their fantasy story or world. 
I'm just gonna jump right in, and get started!

CHARACTERS NEED A PURPOSE

Although, it seems like a no-brainer, sometimes it's actually easy to neglect your character's personalities. You end up making them extremely one-sided or just shallow. Many times, this can be due to making self-insert characters. I know, because that was the origins of my story. My main character, name Carmondy at the time (now Carmandy because it looks/sounds better) was a self-insert of me. Meanwhile her love interest, an owl-turned-elf character named Fukuro, was modeled after Adam Young/Owl City. When it comes down to it, I was just telling the story of how much of an Owl City fangirl I was in the most intricate way possible. This might of worked, if I was any good of a character creator and writer, but both Carmondy and Fukuro ended up flat and basically had no purpose, other than to fulfill my fantasy of smooching Adam Young. There was no real meat to the characters and it was basically just me and Adam in cartoon form. 

BE INSPIRED, BUT DON'T BE A THEIF

The artist Mark Crilley talks about this in one of his videos, and it's something I had to learn to understand. When I first created my fantasy world, I used anime as my key inspiration..namely, Hiiro No Kakera and Fresh Pretty Cure. Using the anime as inspiration isn't bad, but I just began pulling things straight from the anime world and injecting them into my world and characters. I had male characters that I posed as bishies (anime version of a pretty-boy), I had weird outfits that were weird for the sake of being weird, every character had some strange, unnatural hair color (some still do, but not like they did) and there was a lot of Japanese influence, in a world that wasn't Japan-based. This is what I mean.. here is the some of the character of Hiiro No Kakera, while here and here are two of the first characters I made. These characters just weren't me. They simply just looked like what I thought a bishie would look like. Being inspiring by something mean you us eit as fuel to create your own thing, but it doesn't mean you copy every little thing you see. You can start with what you know and add your own details to it.. make it unique to you! ....but speaking of unique...

DON'T GO OVERBOARD WITH THE UNIQUENESS 

I think it's just an automatic thing to do when you're just starting to create your own fantasy world. You want to make sure it's uniquely you, that it has names and cultures and languages never before seen...but all too often, it can go overboard. I tried too hard to be "unique" with my character's names and it ended up making things weird. Honestly, I think the line should be drawn when you have to provide a “guidebook” for how to pronounce character and location names, or it looks and sounds awkward. Having one or two that are strange and quirky isn't bad, but try not to give every other character a mystical fantasy name. Originally, I had characters like Valintive Valeos, Paradox Safecaster, and even Orange Mcapple. While these are all interesting sounding names, and definitely say this is a world unlike our own, some of them are weird to pronounce, awkward to put in dialog, and/or sounds just plain silly in context. To fix this, I think taking real-world names and spelling them differently or mashing them together (Rani+ Vanilla  = Ranilla, or Lisa = Leasa), using names for things in a specific language(while Gaelic and latin are common, or elvish, there is also Hindi, Swahili, French, or whatever you like!), or swapping out letters (like replacing all the i’s and e’s with y’s, Ken might become Kyn) can help. 

USE NAME GENERATORS DELICATELY

I think we've all been there. There's a myriad of name generators, specifically for oc's out there, and some just for fantasy. However, while it helps get your creative juice flowing, many times these names aren't the best to use as official. To make my point, my character Paradox Safecaster got his name completely from a name generator without editing...and while there's no harm in giving a character a name of two words mashed together (I mean, Luke Skywalker, anyone?) it just didn't fit the world I was creating. The word "paradox" comes with such a strong image, it would make sense to use it as the name of a spaceship or a futuristic robot... but for a neo-victorian elf world, it wasn't working. While name generators are great to help you get ideas, don't be so ready to take the suggestions word for word, letter for letter. Try changing up the spelling of a prompted name from a generator (which is what I sometimes do now) so that everything lines up and it feels like one solid fantasy world. So all of that being said....

KEEP ALL YOUR FANTASY NAMES/LANGAUGE CONSISTENT

First off, if you're trying to create your own fantasy language, then MORE POWER TO YOU because that is pretty admirable. Good on ya!
Of course, most choose to write in their native tongue (or just English) but the point in what I'm saying is still the same. Try to keep consistency with the names of nouns and also, if you use any words for the character's language. For example, I use a lot of "iq", q's, and z's in my names, having places like Venziq Port, Windchestiq Woods, Port Westiq, and the Gravroq Tunnels, while the elf races are Afari, Lunari, Dokari, and Vulpelves. Originally, though I just named things and characters based on if I found the name cool or if it sounded "fantasy" enough.  In being conscious about names, I feel it helps to establish the culture/s of your world and helps you get a grip on naming other characters and places in the future because you will have a sort of pattern to work from. 

KEEP ALL OF YOUR CHARACTERS CONSISTENT AS WELL

This is something I still have to work with. Of course, when you are making a comic or a series of illustrations for your characters, you always have to be mindful of making sure the characters look the same from every angle (thank God for character model sheets!) but you also should keep them consistent in personality/aesthetic as well. For example, all of my elf races wear some sort of neo-victorian/steampunk fashion, but each have specific colors and symbols/objects pertaining to them. The Lunari live on and around the water and wear mostly (pastel versions of) silvers, greys, blues, greens, tans, or white. Meanwhile, the Vulpelves live in treehouses and wear colors such as reds, oranges, greens, browns, coppers, cream and black, with metals, machinery parts, and local flora as fashion accessories. Key characters of these elf races will pull from these "guidelines" to get a sense of consistency among my characters. 

DON'T FOCUS ON UNIMPORTANT DETAILS EARLY ON

I'm a very detail-oriented person when it comes to my art. While not a perfectionist, I do like to put thought into the details of a drawing or story, so that the viewer/reader can have a little fun experiencing the art. It's very good to have even the most minute of details ironed out. I mean things like... what material your character's pants are made of, their favorite toys growing up, types of armor used by the army, what specific type of guns, swords, etc weaponry their military uses, down to the brand of bullets or metal. It's true, people will ask questions and you want to at least TRY to provide the (canon) answer. However, when you are planning out the answer to all these details...and your main story still has characters or places without names, plot points or holes that don't make any sense, and a lore/culture that is underdeveloped, try to focus on these things first. People will ask questions, but they will ask the big ones before they can ever get to the small ones. Readers/viewers are more likely to ask "How did they get all that treasure from there to there?" than they are "What does [character's name] use as make-up?" It took me a while to realize that no one is going to care about the intricate colors of my character's hair, as much as the story itself... until they begin to fall in love with the characters and plot. Once you have people hooked on your creations (or have them fully fleshed out), then I think then you can try to jigsaw all those little details together. Which reminds me...

DON'T LIMIT YOUR FANTASY WORLD TO REAL WORLD LOGIC

The first thing anyone will tell you, when you create a fantasy world, is that consistency is key. If you want your world to be completely otherworldly and say, have no gravity and a permanently purple sky, then this better always be true (unless the story itself is about changing one of those things).  However, this can also work the other way. I mainly did this when creating the nobles who lived and worked in the castle, but I've noticed a lot of other world-builders do this with weapons or fashion. Basically, when I was creating my castle characters, I looked up real world castles, and the jobs one can have working in a castle. While it's always good to be inspired, I took things too seriously and tried to match up the real world jobs with my characters. Eventually, I realized it is okay to make up my own jobs and job titles, especially because this is fantasy. I've seen someone specifically say "OH my character’s culture is based off of Greecian and Roman culture, so, historically, they can’t have X-type of weapons" and I think that's just so limiting... unless you are doing historical fiction. It's a fantasy! Don't be afraid to make up your own things.. as long as everything is consistent it should work. This is why Steampunk is such a successful concept. It's Victorian or Edwardian inherently, but a steampunk character can still have a computer or a television or a car, simply because of the steampunk aesthetic and in how the object is designed/put together.

 (APPROPRIATE) MUSIC CAN REALLY HELP

If there is one thing that I love to do, it's use music as a tool for/with my art. Naturally, I would find songs as I created my world, but I found out it actually helps a lot. Now, I don't just mean turning on the radio to the local pop or r&b station and listening to just anything while you work. I'm talking about having a specific type of music to listen to, one which helps to capture the feel, aesthetic, setting, and atmosphere of your world and your characters. For me, it's all about electronic music, or the action/adventure, romance, fantasy, and steampunk-ish sounding songs. Two great sources to go to for music inspiration is Two Steps From Hell and Audiomachine.  Both artists have albums that capture a certain atmosphere (there is an album for a hypothetical romantic movie, one for a dark fantasy movie, one for a horror movie, etc) and pretty much all of these songs on any album can be found on their site and on Youtube. Other recommendations I would give is Sizzlebird, Port Blue, or AYoungScores.  All of those can be found on youtube as well as others like FutureWorldMusic, Ivan Torrent, and official scores to movies/video games/tv shows. In any case, I really believe listening to the right music really helps. Try writing an action-packed pirate ship chase scene in silence.. and then try writing the very same action-packed scene while listening to this. If you're a good writer then it might be the exact same either way, but I believe music helps those like myself who have to be completely immersed in the scene and situation in order to write about or draw it. As a sidenote, I know I used pop and R&b as an example, but if that matches the aesthetic or atmosphere of your world or a certain character or something, then go for it! Find the genre that matches your world!

LASTLY

DON'T BE AFRAID TO EDIT, ALTER, SCRAP, OR RETHINK YOUR IDEAS AND DESIGNS.

 I rarely have a clever idea, so when the moment does happen, I make sure to capture it and never let it go. However, my clever idea, might not be as clever as I once thought. In the 5-6 years I've been working on my story, it's gone through 3 different titles, has lost and gained perhaps 10 or so characters altogether, character's names have been changed dramatically, and even the entire direction and plot of my story has been heavily edited 2 or 3 times. My main character, Carmandy, had a name change as well as a redesign twice. This is one of the things I've been doing right, that really helps me in world-building and character development. You can't get too attached to a story, especially in it's beginning stages. Things evolve the more work you put into them and you'd be surprised to see how many of your favorite characters and/or movies first started out. Ie, Disney's Tangled was first titled "Rapunzel", then "Rapunzel Unbraided", until Tangled was agreed upon. The character Eugene/Flynn was also heavyset with broad shoulders and a thick core in his original concepts.  Even after stories are published and movies are released, characters undergo redesigns and wardrobe changes all the time.  

And that's it!
All of the things I've personally learned so far from doing my own world building, and/or learning about character creation in illustration class. Hopefully it helps and is useful! 
Happy world building!