I think everyone out there has a favorite theme song or favorite couple of theme songs. Just hearing those first few notes, you recognize it and automatically think of the show it’s connected too. Many of you might know the Friends theme song by heart or the theme song to your kid’s favorite show. Maybe you just hear a song on the radio that you correlated to something, so you unintentionally gave that something a theme song? Maybe you have a theme song for your life?
The reason I’m bringing up theme songs is because I kept hearing one of mine over the past few weeks. Ok, so technically it’s not mine. I never assigned a theme song to my life, but I have assigned songs to some of my characters from my novel. I know you guys don’t know much about my novel except that it’s a medieval fantasy, so I’m hoping that by sharing some of these songs I have assigned to my characters, you get a little more insight into what’s going on with some of my beloved characters throughout my novel.
Now, I’ve got a lot of songs that I assign to characters and some characters have multiple songs for different points in their life. Last time I counted, I had 18 songs that reminded me of my characters. I’ll admit, I will sit somewhere and listen to those songs over and over again, because they play scenes from my novel like a music video in my mind. Some of them are heartbreaking and others are incredibly inspiring. I’m not going to list every song. I’ll only highlight my top favorites.
I mentioned earlier that one of my characters’ theme songs kept playing throughout the past week. Well, that song is Separate Ways by Journey, and it has easily become my favorite song by Journey just because it reminds me of two characters in my novel. I’m not going to give those characters’ names because I don’t want spoilers, but I encourage you to listen to the song if you don’t know it. It paints a good picture of some character dynamic in my novel.
Another one of my favorite songs for my characters is Fooling Yourself or The Angry Young Man by Styx. Again, because this song reminds me of one of my dear characters, it has jumped into the slot of my top favorite Styx song. For those of you who’ve read my novel, you can probably pick out which character this song goes too. For those of you still waiting to read it, I hope you give this song a listen too and think about what kind of character has a song like Fooling Yourself as the one that defines them.
A third song I designate to one of my characters is Monster by Skillet. I used to not like the style of Skillet, but I connect this song and a couple of their other songs to my characters and, well, I like them now. I feel like Monster is a very relatable song for most people, but it definitely fits well with one of my characters and each lyric paints a vivid scene in my mind. It’s enough to get my blood pumping. However, the main question is whether or not my character is going to let that monster inside control them.
The last song I want to share is Little Miss by Sugarland. This song makes me think of three of my characters and they’re all pretty inspiring female characters (if I do say so myself). The lyrics of this song are very inspiration to girls everywhere and I’m sure anyone could find one lyric they relate too. I correlate this song to three of my girls because each line in a verse just fits perfectly with them. I encourage everyone to give it a listen and see if you find a lyric that you relate too and if not, maybe you can guess which lyrics combine to form one of my three characters whether you know any of my characters or not.
Thanks for taking the time to listen to my theme songs for some of my characters. I hope you give each of them some thought on what kind of characters these songs are attached too and how these different characters could fit into a story. Yes, you caught me, I’m trying to get you more interested in my novel and eager to read it someday. Let me know if its working!
To finish off, why don’t you comment below some of your favorite theme songs? Or any songs that you correlate to something? I’d love to hear all your different stories!
nikki diekemper 