To Sing or Not to Sing

Hey Gynn,
interesting question. In G.G. Kay's "Summer tree," the MC sings a song of his own composition, which begins with

" Love, do you remember my name? I was lost
In summer turned winter
made bitter by frost."

That was a very touching song, and entirely appropriate, and stuck with me for years. If you can achieve that effect, that's a good reason to include a song in your book. On the other hand, if you think you might do better just with a bit of telling, go for it. In short, do what you think is best

You can always workshop your poem in the Poetry Critique, too. Some of us over there are into spec. poetry.

IMHO, it would depend on the length and the relevance of the song to the plot.

In Lord of the Rings, I admit to reading the songs the first time I read the books... and never again on subsequent readings. I'm not remotely poetically inclined so I was forced to slow down, read the songs, figure out what they were about and try to see the "beauty" in them.

None of the songs helped further the plot. I'm sure they're wonderfully beautiful. But to me, they felt like Tolkien wanted to show off how much world-building and character-definition he had done and what an accomplished poet he was.

Now if one or more lines of your song ends up being used at a later time in the book, whether as a theme or quoted by someone, then definitely put it in.

Alternatively, put it in and see what your beta readers think!

Perle_Rare said:

IMHO, it would depend on the length and the relevance of the song to the plot.

In Lord of the Rings, I admit to reading the songs the first time I read the books... and never again on subsequent readings. I'm not remotely poetically inclined so I was forced to slow down, read the songs, figure out what they were about and try to see the "beauty" in them.

None of the songs helped further the plot. I'm sure they're wonderfully beautiful. But to me, they felt like Tolkien wanted to show off how much world-building and character-definition he had done and what an accomplished poet he was.

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I was about to make this exact same post! My feelings EXACTLY when I read Lord of the Rings as a kid! Those songs all just fell so totally flat on me. I guess I'm just not a poetry kind of person.

And the one song I recall the most was the song that Frodo sang at the Inn at Bree. I remember it only because the song had the audacity to have a footnote in it! The footnote explained the romantic relationship between the Sun and the Moon, and how Hobbits regard the gender of one to be female and the other male, and yet the Elves have the reverse opinion of their gender assignment. How silly for Tolkien to even bother!!

Now I totally love LotR --one of my all time favorite books and quite seminal to my becoming a writer. But THAT was going a bit too far.


I guess it's ultimately very silly to put a song in a novel because there is no way to also include the melody in the novel, just the lyrics. So in the end you're not really putting a "song" in your novel, just a poem.

I guess a happy compromise would be totally dicth actually listing the words themselves, and then to instead delve into a generous paragraph where you DESCRIBE the song, and it's tonal feel, and its meaning to the singer, and its accoustical impact upon the physcial place of whatever venue it's being sung in, and its imapct (emotional or otherwise) on anyone who can hear it.

Perle_Rare said:

Now if one or more lines of your song ends up being used at a later time in the book, whether as a theme or quoted by someone, then definitely put it in.

Alternatively, put it in and see what your beta readers think!

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Yeah--this is also a good way to go about it.

No song or poem verse in novels for me, thanks. General terms only.
Otherwise they get skipped. If I can't read it in Tolkien's, I can't read it in anybody's. Now, it's different if they stand on their own, as collections. Not exactly into poetry but the imagery is almost always potent and can set the mind into working new angles.

We all agree then: singing doesn't even work in LOTR, where it should indeed work (if it'll work anywhere) ...

I like the idea of quoting a very few lines of verse, just to let us know there's singing in the scene, and then dramatically describing the song's content or emotional impact in prose.

Unless you're just a hammeringly strong poet.
Which few people are.

But then ... I read books of poetry and think "What is this crap?"

True that.

It can get even worse if the songs are cheesy/sappy/unintentionally humorous to the point where your readers burst out in laughter. I know I did at the songs in Dragon Champion, they just had me howling in laughter.

I'll agree with everyone here, and second Gray Rose's suggestion that if you choose to include lyrics, post them in the poetry forum for crits & suggestions. That ought to avoid any unintentional hilarity.

Unless the poetry is REALLY well done in the book, I'd say avoid it. In the books, LoTR's poetry got a skim from me. In the movies, I absolutely loved how Peter Jackson handled the songs (particularly the 'Where is the Horn that was blowing' bit from Two Towers).

If you've got a particularly good couplet or two, you could probably show the START of a song, and then focus on the reactions of the audience.

Good luck with it, whatever you decide to do.

Gynn said:

Do you guys tend to skip over songs/poems when you find them in a novel?

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Is the song entertaining? Is it relevant to your plot or a major story theme? Does it provoke or challenge a character?

Only include it if at least one of these is true.

I liked the scene where Legolas sang the song of Nimrodel very much...okay, it was absolutely superfluous for the plot, but it was beautiful. I was a bit disappointed when it didn't appear in the film.

As I am not Tolkien, and cannot write a decent poem, I don't do it. I just describe roughly, what the song is about and that was it.

(I am not sure wether or not Tolkien was an accomplished poet...I know nothing about poetry. But I liked the songs)

Emma Bull, who is a musician, included song lyrics in War for the Oaks, in which the main character is a musician.

But importantly, she only ever gives us a few lines at a time. Like, three or four. Doesn't pull us out of the story for the songs. I think right at the end, where there's highly plot-and-character-relevant song lyrics, she has like 8 or 10 lines, and that almost didn't work for me.

(Incidentally, for anyone who adores War for the Oaks, she has performed some of those songs with the rest of the band Cats Laughing, and I think CDs are available, though not in a normal way. I think Will Shetterly has a blog post somewhere talking about how one can order them)

I was about to say I dislike poetry and songs in a novel because it's crossing styles you may not be good at, but then something struck me - I use excerpts from fictional academic texts.

I guess for me, if it adds flavor and isn't totally extraneous, then it can fit well in moderation. I will never read a block of poetry that's more than 3-4 lines, but that much can sneak in quite well.

No one would expect to be given the text of a song which appears in the novel?
Cool - I already worried if it was too much of "telling, not showing" if I only described the songs without writing them down.

Just adding to what everyone else is saying. Unless you know you're a good poet, I wouldn't do it. Maybe a couplet or two, but most lyrics are like bad poetry - they work to music but without the music, blech.

My current MC is a singer, as well. The coupe times I make her perform in the story I simply say she sang, then get in her head. For her, the singing conjures memories of her old life and also stands in as a bit of a weapon she can use against her new companions. To me, showing that is far more important than what she's actually singing about.

Gynn said:

Do you guys tend to skip over songs/poems when you find them in a novel?

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Usually, depending on the story and the writer. But some of them really suck. (Was it Rebecca Brandewyne who used to put poems at the beginning of her romance novels?...)

I've created a character who is a mage whose spells are all sung. He also sings to his friends and lovers (and lovers and lovers) often. So I'll probably have to write songs for him. Sigh. And I suck at it.

In my novel WIP, I use a song written about one of my MCs to illustrate his character, but I never use any of the lyrics. I haven't written them. Instead I refer to the song as being a cheerful dance tune, I describe some of the events related in the lyrics, and I describe my MC's reaction when he hears it.

Gray Rose said:

Hey Gynn,
interesting question. In G.G. Kay's "Winter tree," the MC sings a song of his own composition, which begins with

" Love, do you remember my name? I was lost
In summer turned winter
made bitter by frost."

That was a very touching song, and entirely appropriate, and stuck with me for years. If you can achieve that effect, that's a good reason to include a song in your book. On the other hand, if you think you might do better just with a bit of telling, go for it. In short, do what you think is best

You can always workshop your poem in the Poetry Critique, too. Some of us over there are into spec. poetry.

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Kay was a professional poet before novelist.

Let's see...I have a couple of instances where characters use songs to pass messages.

The first one, I did introduce the song ahead of time -- a character singing it around a campfire to a group -- and I think I had snippets of lyrics, interspersed with other characters' reactions and descriptions of voices joining in. Then later on, a different character sings a verse of it, and I included just enough of the lyrics to show that this is not the version sung before and to get across the time/place of the meeting he was trying to set up.

The more recent one, the song isn't actually in the scene. One character tells another character about overhearing it, remembering snippets of phrases, and she recognizes it and sings the first line. One of the phrases he remembers (not realizing that it's not in the original lyrics) tips her off to what's going on.

These characters are also not known as great singers/poets, so I don't have that pressure.

Shweta said:

(Incidentally, for anyone who adores War for the Oaks, she has performed some of those songs with the rest of the band Cats Laughing, and I think CDs are available, though not in a normal way. I think Will Shetterly has a blog post somewhere talking about how one can order them)

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Cool!

I have a CD of someone else who did this too -- don't remember the author offhand, but the musician was Heather Alexander.

JBI said:

Kay was a professional poet before novelist.

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JBI - what do you mean by a "professional poet"? Not self-supporting, I don't think. I doubt one can live off poetry in this country; it's not Russia.

Kay was published, surely. So was Ursula Le Guin, whose poetry is truly superb - yet I do not remember her incorporating poetry excessively into her work, except in "Always Coming Home," which is a highly unconventional book and published when she was already established and revered. And yes, there is some amazing poetry there.

I think a person can incorporate poetry in their work without having poetry sales to their name, and vice versa. It depends on how good it is, and I wholeheartedly agree with Shweta that shorter length is better for novels. It is actually the opposite in speculative poetry markets: editors seem to prefer longer poems these days.

If you're a good poet, then absolutely do it. I think The Hobbit poems were beautiful, fun, and did a good job of describing the backstory. As to describing the tonal qualities of the music, that's even harder than just writing a poem. But I remember in the Hobbit, the song the dwarves sang about Smog taking over was described along with the lyrics, you might want to look at that one.

There was an animated version of The Hobbit (and later LOTR) where they created music for all those songs and did a fantastic job. The "That's what Bilbo Baggins hates" one was especially fun.

I have to admit, I sort of loved it when Susan Cooper put prophetic poems into the Dark is Rising books. And some of them are long. But they're not just plot-specific, the plot centers around them.

But I only really liked Tolkien's shorter poems. Except the one that was supposed to have "degraded into" hey diddle diddle; that made me laugh my ass off. Footnote included.

I'm not so much a fan. I usually just skim them. But that's just me.


I should hang out down here in SF/F more....

I have to confess that I set most of Tolkien's poems to music, and so I often sang them during my annual re-readings (which stopped some years ago...not sure why).

Gynn said:

Do you guys tend to skip over songs/poems when you find them in a novel?

Thanks!

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I skip it.