Novel Soundtracks 3: Action Songs and Sad Songs

Post 3 in this series! Only one more to go! This one is about the songs for the action-packed parts of the story and for the sad parts of the story. Honestly, I get my best writing during these parts of the story because I just put on an HDSounDI playlist and the writing goes like:

But more on HDSounDI later.

I have mentioned this probably in MULTIPLE other posts, but I'll say it again because I can never remember if I've said something before: If the writer doesn't feel it, the reader won't. If you don't feel sad, no one else will feel sad. If you don't feel the adrenaline, the scene'll come off as flat.

And I now have proof!!! I recently sent off a novel to my beta readers, and one of them (my sister) said that she really couldn't see one of the settings in her head. AnD GuEsS wHy ThAt WaS. Because yours truly couldn't really see it either. Writing it I was just kinda like, "There's like some vents over here... uh.... a table over here..." So she couldn't see it clearly either. So I was right!!!

Getting past that point, though, for a novel soundtrack, you need songs for the fight scenes and songs for the sad scenes. Even if you don't have a ton of sad scenes, you at least need one (for the Dark Night of the Soul™).

For this post, I'm gonna have two different bullet point lists for the music, because I'm handling two different types of music.

First bullet point list! Emotional music.

• Now we get back to HDSounDI. They are a YouTube channel that basically just post songs that are perfect for writing. I don't know what other people use the channel for, but it was made for writers. They have playlists for Emotional Music, Beautiful Music, Epic Music, and Most Wondrous Battle Music (I'm not kidding. The playlist is called that.)
• If you're just looking for a super sad song, my specific choice would be Silhouette by Owl City. That song can make me cry easily every time.
• Look through movie soundtracks for the songs from the Dark Night of the Soul (it should be 3/4 of the way through) or the songs from when a character dies. They should all be good for the sad parts of the story.
• Lindsey Stirling has some pretty sad songs on her albums, especially Brave Enough. The last song on Brave Enough is actually one she wrote for a friend who died, so... yeah.
• Just keep looking through your favorite albums. There should be plenty of sad ones to keep the mood up.

Second bullet point list! Action/Fight Scene/Epic music.

• Again, HDSounDI. Like I said, they have an Epic Music playlist and a battle music playlist.
• If you just basically want an Epic Music radio to listen to while you write the battle, go to this website. Once you hit play, it just plays continuous epic music. It's great for writing in general, even if you're not writing a fight scene. It just makes the writing go faster.
• Nirvana. Actually, any rock song or a song with a nice thumpy beat. They're great for this bit.
• And again, movie soundtracks. There are some great ones out there, like basically any song from BBC's Sherlock. You can also try Marvel movies.

That's all I can think of for these two lists. Like I've said before, if there's anything that should be added to the list, let me know in the comments. Don't forget to check out the other posts in this series, too.

In addition, you can visit me and my writing humor on Twitter and Instagram, and do me a favor and follow my blog! See you next Monday! (by the way, sorry this one was a day late. I completely spaced yesterday and forgot to write it out)