The essential jolt of the right playlist.
Imagine a writer at her desk, headphones on, eyes closed, breathing in rhythm with the music. For her, the act of pressing play is almost sacred: a ritual that signals the start of creation. The right playlist can electrify a writer's mood and focus the mind in ways that silence alone cannot. "Music sets the tone," novelist Liz Riggs explains, "it essentially puts me into a frame of mind to write; it establishes the mood, dictates the vibe."[1] Good writing, as Virginia Woolf famously noted, is about rhythm, and many contemporary authors treat music as the soundtrack that fixes that rhythm. Toni Morrison, for example, said she wanted her novels to feel like jazz: "Jazz has no final chord... I want my books to be like that, because I want that feeling of something held in reserve."[2] In her prose and in countless others', the right playlist provides that suspenseful, anticipatory energy.
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Science backs this intuition. Researchers have found that moderate background noise actually boosts creative thinking.[3] In one landmark 2012 experiment, people performed better on creative tasks in mildly noisy environments than in silence.[3] The clatter of a café or the hum of music can nudge the brain into a flexible "flow" state, where ideas come more easily than in an antiseptic quiet. And music does more than just mask silence: it lights up the brain's reward circuitry. A review in Psychology Today notes that listening regularly to music "releases dopamine in the brain... one of the factors that stimulate creativity," and that music activates the prefrontal cortex tied to problem solving.[4] In other words, your favorite songs literally prime your brain to make unusual connections. A 2017 Dutch study found that subjects who listened to "happy" music solved open-ended problems (a measure of divergent thinking) more brilliantly than those who sat in silence.[5] Even music that evokes sadness can have surprising effects: recent research showed that sad or "negative" tunes can actually bolster originality, challenging the old belief that only upbeat music helps creativity.[6]
Writers intuitively sense these effects. Music can cue memories and emotions that spill onto the page. Riggs, recalling how lyrics accompany her writing, notes that songs carry "implicit memories... emotional as well as durable."[7] Those memories infuse her fiction with feeling. Nichole Perkins, writing a memoir, put it simply: before starting, she listened to R&B and Southern hip-hop from her college days "to activate memories," then switched to classical music once she actually began typing, because "lyrics and movie scores distract" her.[8] In this way, music serves as a mnemonic bridge; different genres unlock different veins of recollection or emotion.
Music and the Muse of Creativity
Think of music's effects like lighting a fire under sleepier mental faculties. Just as coffee jolts the bloodstream, a surge of drums or piano can quicken imaginative faculties. "Music triggers the release of dopamine in both the dorsal and ventral striatum," notes one neuroscience summary: in plain terms, music is essentially a natural high.[9] A vivid melody or bass line raises our baseline pleasure level, giving the mind more bandwidth to play. Simultaneously, music's repetition and pattern-making coax our brains into an expectant mode: knowing a chorus is coming or that a bridge will shift our emotions teaches the creative mind to anticipate and innovate. Novelists often harness that impulse. The Lit Hub writer Liz Riggs likens listening to lyrics while writing to getting "a two for one special"; it feels like reading while writing, infusing her prose with rhythmic drive.[10] Her characters' scenes seem to march or sway to the unseen beat.
This phenomenon isn't new. Throughout literary history, authors have shaped their prose by music. Nobel laureate Toni Morrison drew more from Black musical traditions than any other influence, molding the cadences of her sentences like soulful improvisations.[2] Octavia Butler began writing at 5:30 a.m. with Motown blasting on full volume, claiming, "I listen to music when I write."[11] (One reporter once had to knock loudly at Butler's door before she responded, apologizing with exactly those words.) Butler let the pulsating R&B and soul rhythms carry her into her workday, effectively choreographing her language to the beat. Even genre giants like Neil Gaiman and Stephen King are known for their playlists. Gaiman, in interviews, cites film scores by Michael Nyman as a backdrop to his gothic worlds.[12] King spent years blasting Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde through the night as he spun out his early novels; he later confessed that for one book he had a single techno/disco song (Lou Bega's "Mambo No. 5") on repeat so obsessively that his wife threatened divorce.[13][14] (One amusing detail: King noted that he wore out an instrumental version of that track, underscoring how wordless loops can become a writer's mantra.[14]) For King, rock and disco became the engine that kept his fingers moving: "If you tried to write and listen to Leonard Cohen," he quipped, "how the fuck would you do that? But with some of the techno stuff... it's all good."[15] In other words, intensive soundscapes that drown out language help him keep his own words foremost in mind.
Not every writer likes every kind of music, but the key is deliberate choice. Pulitzer laureate George Saunders usually writes in utter silence, yet he found himself spinning playlists to re-energize during final edits of Lincoln in the Bardo. He explained, "I had read the book so many times... listening to certain songs helped me remember. Basically I was trying to tap into other people's creative energy and, in this way, raise my own bar."[16] Saunders treated music as a catalyst to rekindle the attention and imaginative flair he felt slipping away. When he hit a wall, a particular Wilco song or Jimi Hendrix solo could flood his mind with the intensity he wanted on the page.
For others, music is as much about mood setting and world-building as about neural chemistry. Author Karen Jennings said bluntly: "Each book that I write has its own emotions, its own rhythms, requiring its own playlist."[17] Her dystopian novel Crooked Seeds has its own sonic fingerprint: a carefully ordered suite of compositions by Philip Glass, Michael Nyman, and others, that she only listens to while writing that book. Once the novel was done, she deleted the playlist, knowing she "will never be able to listen to it again, since those emotions and rhythms have been written out of me."[17] This almost mystical approach treats music like an ingredient in the writing itself: once consumed (the writing complete), it is purged to make room for new inspiration. Such meticulousness illustrates how deeply entwined music and narrative can become for some writers.
Famous Soundtracks and Writing Rituals
In the age of streaming, many writers openly share the playlists they used on their books. In a series of Book Notes interviews, novelists from Celeste Ng to Roxane Gay have talked about their "writing soundtrack": the songs they curated during drafts. New voices echo the old wisdom. Anbara Salam, reflecting on her historical fantasy The Salvage, said that thinking about the music of the time of her setting was "a really useful texture to help ground me in the worldbuilding of the story."[18] By asking "what would my characters be listening to?" she taps into cultural details that make her fiction feel lived-in. Lisa Borders, another novelist, admitted that music leaks into her writing to the point that "I'm obsessed with music, and it's the main way I have shown my hand in all three of my novels"[19]; her books are infused with the rhythms and lyrics that inspire her own voice. And Laura Venita Green said she spent four years writing a novel on a playlist of Gen-X pop hits, the songs of her own youth, to evoke the nineties Louisiana setting and the women at its center.[20]
This trend has a flipside. Some authors caution that music can also derail concentration. Tamar Shapiro confessed, "The minute I focus on music, I can no longer focus on anything else, including writing."[21] For such writers, lyrics are especially dangerous, an intrusive secondary narrative. British novelist Ed Vulliamy put it colorfully: he "tends not to play music with words while [he] write[s]... I am unable to hear a song without listening attentively to the lyrics," so he saves "good music... for a drive through the desert or forest, intimacy at night, or just quiet reflection."[22] His stance: beloved tunes deserve full attention, not the status of unnoticed wallpaper behind prose.
The common guidance for self-editors echoes these points: if lyrics hurt, stick to instrumental or ambient sound. Many writers gravitate to classical or electronic "focus" music during actual drafting. Nichole Perkins, an essayist, described her own hybrid approach: she would "listen to music to set my mood" for a scene (often pop songs tied to memories), but once writing began, she put on "random classical music playlists... because lyrics and movie scores distract me."[8] This separation of roles (one playlist for fueling nostalgia, another for concentration) highlights that how music is used matters as much as what music it is.
For those who do listen to songs with words, the trick is often repetition and familiarity. The repeated bars of a known track can become almost trance-like white noise. Stephen King's example of "Mambo No. 5" is famous: by listening until no words remained in focus (one side of the record was all instrumentals[14]), he basically turned it into a looping soundscape. Many modern writers build similarly by shuffling long playlists or looping an album. Michael Chabon actually turned his playlist into a timer: he only played music on vinyl so that he'd have to stand up and change the record every twenty minutes, a built-in break recommended by ergonomics experts.[23] Even that pacing served the writing, preventing burnout on marathon screen sessions.
Crafting the Perfect Playlist
Given all this, how should a writer assemble their playlist? There's no one-size-fits-all answer, but a few themes emerge from the pros. First, align the music with the emotional palette of the scene or project. Is it tragedy, humor, high tension? A thriller's chase scene might pair with pulsating electronic beats, whereas a wistful family scene might ring to acoustic folk or a melancholic string arrangement. Karen Jennings's routine implicitly suggests that deep empathy with story mood comes first, only then select the tracks that match it.[17] Some writers even pick songs that their characters would listen to, which helps inhabit point-of-view more fully.
Second, consider lyrics carefully. Some novels practically are novels in song. Celeste Ng once said that, as a teenager, "music was [her] salvation," and she even wrote lyrics into the space of a journal around her stories (she initially drafted portions of Little Fires Everywhere in a notebook filled with Prince and Wu-Tang Clan lyrics).[12] Other authors swear by vocals-free playlists. The reasoning is neurological: lyrics can occupy the language-processing centers you need for writing. In line with that, psychological studies have found that music with words often interferes with tasks like reading comprehension or editing, while pure instrumental music usually has only a minor effect.[24][6] If you find yourself mentally sneaking song lyrics onto the page, stick to piano solos or electronic ambience. Conversely, if your subconscious craves narrative, writing your own prose to beloved tunes may forge unexpected parallels.
Third, use the playlist to structure your session. Michael Chabon's vinyl trick is extreme but effective: get up every so often. On digital platforms, one can simulate this by making a playlist of fixed length. Chabon keeps playlists divisible into neat work blocks (four two-hour segments, eight one-hour slots, etc.)[25] so that a finished album is a cue to stand or have a glass of water. Other writers simply press "shuffle" and let an endless mix carry them until exhaustion. The key is awareness: either plan the breakpoints in your playlist, or use the music as a continuous tail for creative immersion.
Finally, embrace variety. Writers in Largehearted Boy interviews mention everything from Bach to Billie Holiday in their work mixes. A creative brain can use light and shade: perhaps start the day with something easy and bright, switch to cinematic score for drafting, then end on reflective folk for revising. Or, as Stephen King does, load up on uptempo dance tracks at night to stave off fatigue. The essential rule: if it sparks an idea or clears the mind, it's worth a try.
Putting it Into Practice
The next time you face a blank page or a stubborn paragraph, consider curating the right playlist. Start by identifying what you need: focus, energy, mood, memory. Then experiment with genres and arrangements. Some writers find ambient noise (rain sounds, coffee shop chatter or so-called "lo-fi beats") can be as useful as music.[3] Others stream thematic playlists—writing to Hans Zimmer movie scores for grandiosity, or jazz for complexity, or film soundtracks for consistency. The goal isn't mindless distraction; it's a deliberate dance between sound and text. As one writer put it, a good soundtrack lets you "tap into other people's creative energy"[16] without losing your own voice.
Today, platforms like Spotify and YouTube even have premade "focus" or "study" playlists designed for just this purpose. Professional authors often build custom playlists tied to a novel's world or era—and those insights are shared online through interviews and articles. They testify that what you play during your writing hours can change your work. George Saunders found that certain songs reminded him "that intensity doesn't have to be wild-assed but is always associated with close attention"[26]—a meditation on style as much as a description of music.
Whether you pick quiet instrumentals to focus, or belt out high-energy hits to pound away on the keyboard, treat your playlist as a writer's ally. Let it soothe your writer's block or stoke your adrenaline. There's a reason creative people from Mozart to Morrison to modern novelists swear by it: the perfect playlist can turn writing from a chore into a groove. As Toni Morrison and many others suggest, your writing deserves the texture of music—no matter how unorthodox your soundtrack may seem—because sometimes the best words come when the music is just right.[2][17]
Here at Broken English Books, the right playlist is an essential tool for creating our stories. Check out Behind The Screenplay to learn more about specific playlists used in crafting each tale.
