I was reading Harlan Coben’s new writing guide/memoir this past week, and he talked a bit about how writers should watch movies and television and listen to music. How they should explore art outside of writing. He goes on to list numerous songs that are, in and of themselves, short stories. They are narrative theater in song form.
This got me thinking about some of my stories and how they originated from songs. This may expose you to some of the music I listen to, but you’ll be okay. You might even like it. There are three short stories I can think of that were directly inspired by songs. I will link to them where I can and I will link to my collection where there’s not an online source for you to read (you should buy my collection anyway!).
Broadway Summer
This story started after I listened to Three Days Grace’s song Expectations for the ten millionth time.
The idea behind the song is a girl that is looking to make it big and can’t wait to escape her small town and small life. On her way, she takes some wrong turns, meets some bad people, gets arrested. And then she meets a guy who turns out to be abusive. While he’s drunk and passed out after buying lotto tickets, she realizes he hit the jackpot. She steals the ticket and the car and takes off.
For some reason, on that ten millionth listen, I realized I had to write a story about this girl. I gave her a name and placed her in the desert. I made her every bit as fucked up as she seemed in the song, but made her more real. I gave her a life and dreams. She wanted to be a Broadway star and was set on making it to New York.
The story is gritty and violent. I kept asking myself what drove this girl? What made her want to leave? What made her human, even if fractured? And that’s what filled the pages of my story. All from a single song from 2012.
Unfortunately, this story isn’t available online but it is part of my collection.
Miracle Mile
This next story was a risk. I wrote it while I was going through my MFA program. I wrote it knowing it would be read and critiqued by my cohort. I wrote it knowing the content was sensitive. And it all began with Sick Puppies’ song Howard’s Tale.
The first time I heard this song, I was blown away by how raw and real it was. It’s a story of a young man who was sexually abused as a child. Abused for years. As he got older, he was confused about himself, his sexuality, and in the end confused about whether or not he might also like young boys.
I knew I had to write a story based on this song. In Tucson, there’s an old road that used to be the epicenter of cool in the desert. Miracle Mile was neon and hotels and restaurants and celebrities. Anyone passing through Tucson in the 1950s would stop off on Miracle Mile. Over time, the neon faded and the businesses shut down. Drugs and prostitution took over. When I moved out as a teenager, this was the first place I lived. I lived in a house that had just recently been shot up in a drug deal gone bad and the previous tenant had been hit in the back while she slept.
THIS is where the main character of my story would spend his time. And my story follows the song closely. The difference between a song and a short story is you have more time to spend in the character’s head. Which I did.
You can read this one here.
You Can Only Drown As Long As There’s Water
This one is a little different from the others. It’s not entirely based on a full song. Instead, it’s based on specific lyrics in the song. Bring Me The Horizon’s Can You Feel My Heart has a great line:
I can’t drown my demons, they know how to swim
I got hung up on that lyric and though about what someone must be going through to think that and how they might try other ways to drown their demons.
My story takes the concept of drowning demons and applies it to a brother and sister who are trying to live their lives after growing up with criminal parents who were eventually arrested while the siblings were teenagers.
The sister uses drugs, the brother uses adrenaline rushes of increasing intensity and risk. It’s a short one. It’d been almost a decade since I wrote flash fiction, so I used this as an opportunity to give it another spin. I’m pretty happy with the result.
You can read it here.
I doubt these will be the only stories I write that were inspired by songs. There is so much storytelling in music and if you explore it with an open mind, the creativity begins to flow.
Oh, and P.S., Harlan Coben’s Plot Twist is really good. Whether you like his writing or not, I think the book is entertaining and useful.
What songs inspire you? What are your favorite narrative-heavy songs?