Hi All, greetings from very raining Seoul Jeebus, when do you all sleep. I'm gone for five days and you all have ten pages of discussion going. It took two airports and 16 hours to catch up with it all. New topic, songs in stories. I'm not talking about songfics but the use of songs to get into and out of a story. Who uses them and what is your reason for doing so? And as a reader does it distract you when an author uses a song but doesn't understand the songs meaning? Discuss

I have used a song and random lyrics in the context of the character(s) listening to the song and feeling some emotion because of the song (not in House-verse though). I think that a few lyrics can be very moving, but putting an entire song in is dangerous. Song-fics are often B.A.D. in that they may rely on the song lyrics to tell the story. There's a certain amount of realism that comes if you have a scene where a character recognizes a certain band on the radio or a certain song, but I don't think most readers want to read all the lyrics as part of the storytelling process. Songs should be used only sparingly and, if you're going to use a song in a fic, choose wisely. But having Chase singing kareoke to "You Give Love a Bad Name" while pointing at Cameron at the hospital talent show benefit would be horrendous. Know what I mean?

I do a lot of titles from songs, and I've sometimes had music playing in fics, but I would never splice lyrics into a fic. If a fic has random lyrics in the middle, I backbutton. IMO, a couple of lines as an epigraph are okay, but not random lyrics if the song isn't supposed to be playing, or if the character's not hearing it in their head.

I don't tend to use lyrics because they're usually distracting and not everyone will know the song. But. There are a few songs threaded into the Aftershocks stories in the ways y'all have just described, as parts of various scenes. On two occasions -- the first is in Rude Awakening -- we even allowed House to (*gasp*) sing. Badly, and not for long at all, and it had to be stuff you'd believe House actually likes. Personally, I won't even click on anything that's labeled "songfic." I have an immediate allergic reaction.

If I'm bored and trawling for a distraction, I'll read stuff with song lyrics; but my eyes always slide right over them. In that sense, they're completely pointless, because they never add anything to the story.

Speaking of fic and fic writing, you should all go sign up for Fic Writers Anonymous, a little challenge that zulu and I are running. Short and sweet, we promise! Just write around 500 words, post it anonymously through one of our socks (we'll assign it to you), and then there will be voting to see if pieces can be matched up with their authors! Panfandom, pan-pairing: just write who you are. What's this got to do with fic discussion? Writers have voices. We can all acknowledge that. Think of it as a blind taste test: can you tell your favorite authors apart? Come one, come all.

With a "karaoke" prompt, I did have song lyrics in one fic - the fact that the character was singing that particular song was critical to the plot. I still feel vaguely ashamed that I've written a songfic, though, because most of them are just not good. The "best" was the songfic that had the Super Six plus Stacy singing and dancing at a club to Nelly's "Hot in Herre." With random slapping!

Ages ago I was listening to Very by the Pet Shop Boys and it stuck me that three songs on there echo stages in House and Stacy's relationship. I mean the first song on the album is Can You Forgive Her! Lyrically they aren't exact, but when I tried to write a House/Stacy fic, I had them playing to keep the mood and I found it helped. There's a song on there, Liberation, that I think it describes a plausible change that could have taken place in House when he first met Stacy. Then Different Point of View when things have taken a turn for the worse and finally Can You Forgive Her. Here's a link to the album's lyrics if anyone wants a look, http://www.mrsneeze.com/petshopboys/lyrics/very.html I don't stick lyrics on my fics though (except once, to title an intentionally bad fic, but the song was so obscure no one would have noticed). Occasionally a few lines really fit a fic and I have been tempted, but generally, as much of the mood and emotion is in the vocal and the music, the words alone tend to look a bit sad and empty.

Since I just wrote something in which House remembers a song from a dream, then repeats it on the piano, I'll tackle the music question. I've often placed music in some way within a story, but done it to set a mood or an emotion ("Cross Road Blues" would be the biggest example of it) -- and it's not typically a popular song or lyrics, but rather that I think that House sometimes thinks in terms of music. The show, I think, often uses music the same way, setting an external mood to show House thinking. Having him playing blues tinged gospel in "House V. God," or at the Bach at the end of "Skin Deep," as he tries to concentrate on something else complex, but yet the pain interrupts those thoughts. I've been reading Walter Isaacson's biography of Einstein, and he notes in there that Einstein not only loved music, but played violin to help him think. He said playing connected him with the cosmos. It freed his mind to get out of his math problems, and instead think beyond those issues. The same is true for House, I think, so using music -- and using it carefully -- is appropriate. For fic purposes, I've had House at the piano after a fight with Stacy post infarction in which he decides to play "something Russian, something dark," or had him refer to Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb," by noting that the drugs made him numb, but not comfortable. But that doesn't mean that he listens to Evanescence.

Like some other people here, I too tend to gloss over lyrics posted at the beginning/end of a fic - either skim over them or not read them, but in either case, I never give thought to them, give enough time to let the meaning sink. I have a hard enough time with poetry and songs I don't know, and it's twice as hard trying to figure out what the author os trying to convery through the lyrics without the context of the fic. Sometimes when I finish a fic and I'm moved enough, I'll go back and read the lyrics and go "ah"; otherwise, I won't make the effort. Part of it for me is that I have a very good ear for music, but can hardly remember lyrics - so when an author is quoting the perfect song that perfectly sets the atmosphere of a fic and I don't reognize the song, it means nothing to me. I do enjoy spotting references to songs I know in dialogue (and it fits House's character well, although "You can't always get what you want" is starting to wear a bit thin), either in jest or, if done well, in all seriousness. As a writer, I personally keep finding myself inserting lyrics from musicals, of all things, into the characters mouths, even when I assume only a handful of readers will get them. And despite what I said earlier, when it comes to my own fics I just think, "hey, it's making me laugh, it'll make the readers who know the reference laugh, and it's my fic so I'm allowed to put it in." As long as someone doesn't c/p the entire lyrics of a song into the body of a story, a couple of lines of lyrics won't put me off from reading, even if I don't read the lyrics themselves. That's what the scroll down button is for.

Music plays a significant role in a lot of my fics, simply because House does seem to obtain solace from it (either listening or playing). HL has said that music is an emotional language for House, and I believe him. But citing lyrics at the begining of a fic, or writing a fic around a song's lyrics is something that I shy away from. Like namaste, I'll have House playing a piece that might evoke a mood he's in. I imagine that he plays Monk, Bill Evans (who was one of the most melancholy of jazz pianists)--or play something classical thats very intricate like Bach or moodly like one of the Russians. I actually did title story "Pictures at an Exhibition" but it was a play on Mussorgksy's title. At some point in the story, I did have House playing that piece, because it fit the mood and he'd just come back from an art showing, so he was being ironic. I rarely read the lyrics posted at the beginnings of fics, FWIW.

So as I said, I don't read lyrics in a fic and find them extraneous. During writing, on the other hand, I find music incredibly helpful. Keeps me focused. When I was writing Brass, something a bit angstier than I usually try my hand at, I found that my attention would drift unless I was listening to some very specific (and angsty) songs. They were mostly instrumentals and classical music, though, so no song lyrics for the story. However, I did end up liking the the music so much that I uploaded a few of the songs as a fanmix. I offered it with the story, but in a completely optional way, so readers could choose whether or not they cared about my writing atmosphere or the musical atmosphere I imagined the story had.

During writing, on the other hand, I find music incredibly helpful Me too, but ti depends on the fic. Lifeline was and still is a complete quiet no tv, no music gig. I tried to write a chapter once while House was on in the background and it was a no-go. I guess it is hard to torture a guy when you are hearing his voice. A Better Place to Be OTOH actually got its title because of music. I was writing and stuck for a title and that song came up on my Itunes playlist. It just fit and I am eternally grateful for Harry Chapin for that. Writing environments. Who works best when it is quiet and who works best when it is noisy? For me, it again depends on the fic. Lifeline is a quiet environemnt int he middle of the night type of fic. ABPTB had had a chapter written in the middle of a plane trip. So who perfers what type of environment and why? Damn, VA Tech is down by four.

I need relative quiet when I'm writing -- well, usually. I prefer to paint with music going, but writing's different. I can be inspired by some song or other but I have to turn it off in order to get the words to flow. If I'm hearing other words -- whether from the TV or in the form of lyrics -- it'll usually interfere with the words I'm trying to write.