Recommended Reading Request

[AgathaRaine]

I find myself starting a new project involving musical productions and a protagonist singing on stage.

Now, I suck at writing poetry and lyrics. I openly admit that. I'd rather leave the lyrics up to the reader's imagination as opposed to strutting my lacking composition skills across the proverbial stage.

That said, I'm looking for quality suggestions on stories, articles, and even videos on YouTube or the like for some reference material. With or without lyrics, both work. Fanfiction works great as well, though I'm not looking for a song fic.

I'm not looking to copy anyone else work, but I do draw inspiration from what I read and see. Writing out a musical production is something that's outside my normal scope, so I'm looking for examples of how it can be done right and wrong.

Also, if anyone has any suggestions or tips to offer, they'll be most welcome.

[Cogent Dream]

This isn't something I pay attention to but I just wanted to give my opinion.

In all honesty, books that feature songs and have their lyrics written out are lame. Seriously, there's too much against you to pull it off well unless you're a demon for lyrics. Keeping the lyrics in context to your story but still appealing to a modern audience AND unsupported by rhythm or melody beyond the reader's own imagination makes for a bad read. If memory serves, Lord of the Rings had a lot of song in it and every time I reached one I skipped the lyrics. They mean nothing, detract from the pace of the story and just don't fit well into a story.

Unless your readers have the same emotional nuances as the context of your fiction (which is hard if you're writing fantasy or scifi) chances are no one will even connect emotionally to the song, and that's ignoring the fact that people don't even connect to the same modern songs.

I think it's a lot better to focus on the sound, the meaning and the emotion rather than specifically writing out lyrics. The whole point of the lyrics is to instill the above factors anyway.

[AgathaRaine]

Thanks for the tip. I agree, which is another reason why I've decided to forgo writing lyrics for the story.