How can your favourite songs help you write to attract attention?

Music often plays a part in creating an effective atmosphere for writing. 

In the How to Write a Book Workshop we looked at different types of music that people might use to create the right mindset for starting to write.

But there’s another way that you can use music.  Think about some of your favourite songs.  What is it about them that you like?

Maybe you like the beat, the rhythm or the fact that you can dance to it.

Or maybe it is that you like the story the songs tell.  Have you ever thought about the skill it takes to tell a whole story, create a mood and leave the listener feeling satisfied… all in about three minutes?

As writers, we can learn from this skill because songwriters are achieving what we need to do especially if we write for the web. 

Within seconds they’ve hooked you in and told you a story and you want to listen until you hear the end.  Yes of course the music is important.  But the songs you like often you relate them to what’s happening in your own life.

For example, if you hear a song on the radio that talks about the breakup of a relationship at a time when that’s happening to you, you’ll connect to it.  And the same is true if you’re just starting a relationship.

So constructing a song has a lot to do with direct response marketing:

1. Know your target market.
2. Make an immediate connection.
3. Satisfy a need.

In the case of songs the need often is emotional comfort. The sense that someone out there has been through a similar pain and while it can’t be exactly like your pain you still feel that you’re not quite so alone as you thought.

How about Ode to Billy Joe by Bobby Gentry.  Or the Boxer by Paul Simon.

Another by Paul Simon Homeward Bound.  That always takes me straight back to travelling around as a student.

And to get away from our British summers – there’s California Girls – a whole lifestyle in a few words:  California Girls