Will Sing for Plot

If you're like me, coming up with a good plot is one of the hardest parts about writing. I appreciate anything that can help inspire me, and here is an idea I thought of about using the music in your iTunes to get a plot.

It's a simple idea, really. Just put your iTunes on shuffle and click play. Every song has its own characters and situation, right? So the first song you here is the way things stand at the beginning of your story or novel. Listen to the song, get a feel for how the characters are feeling and why. After you've gotten a feel for it, go to the next song; that song is your novel's end. The way your characters and story ends up. Again, listen to the song and get a feel for the how and why.

Here's an example, from my own playlist:

First song: 'Thank You for the Music' by Abba
Second song: 'You Can't Always Get what you Wan't' Glee Cast

So you could make a story from those like this: Maybe there's a shy, very unconfident girl who doesn't feel like she can really do much, except she's brilliant at the piano and she actually has small, but piercingly good voice. Maybe she was even abused by one of her mom's many boyfriends or something, and she's kind of given up on ever finding love in her life, and basically devotes her existence to music. She even gets in to Julliard. Then maybe she gets hit by a car or something and gets damage to her brain such that she loses feeling her left hand. Obviously this means she can't play music anymore, and this devastates her. So then what happens is she decides to teach music at a local private school, and becomes close with the widowed father of one of her students. At first she obviously has trust issues with any guy, but eventually they realize that they can heal each other by loving each other.

Anyway, you may not have gotten that story from those songs, but work it out however it works best for you. I'd love to know what you come up with!

Sarah Allen

Genre Exploration: Cowboy Poetry

Yesterday in my American Folklore class we talked about cowboy poetry. My professor showed us some clips from the cowboy poetry gathering in Elko, Nevada. It was actually some great stuff, and definitely worth looking into.

As a beginning, general thing, here is a great cowboy poetry site with a big collection of poems.

I wanted to highlight a couple of my favorite poems, and put them here for easy access, but to keep safe from any copyright issues, I'll just have to link to them. Here are my two favorite:

The Pearl of Them All by Will Ogilvie

Anthem by Buck Ramsey

(On each of those pages there are several poems, so you may have to search for those specific ones).

Much of their poetry is put to music, so here is a link to The Riders in the Sky website, a very fun band who I think sang Woody's Roundup in the second Toy Story movie.

Other poet recommendations are Badger Clark, Baxter Black, Joel Nelson and Gwen Peterson. See if you can find something you like.

So why cowboy poetry? Well, its rhyming and often sentimental, which usually aren't good things in my opinion, but much of this poetry shows how sentimentality can be done well, and that is a good thing. I believe its good to read in tons of genres to round out your own writing. Plus cowboy poetry is just fun. I really enjoyed, and was moved by it, and that's the point of art, right?

Anyway, let me know what you think of this. I hope it will brighten your day as much as it did mine.

Sarah Allen