Personal Versus Fictional Songs

[john]

Hey gang

 

When you are writing songs, do you prefer writing personal, reality based songs, or fictional/imagined/projected songs? Do you find it easier to write one type over the other? How is it different for you to write one way over the other?

 

For me, I write a lot of personal songs, and for all I write a lot of fictional songs too I tend to take situations I know and I am familiar with and project those feelings and perspectives onto the fictional or distant scenario. It helps me to make some kind of personal connection with the song.

 

So, what do you do?

 

Cheers

 

John

[James Anderson]

I   write  personal   songs         about  people in  my  life     I  write  fictional  songs      but   try   to  have  them  that  you cant  tell  the difference     but   most of  my  songs have   a bit of  both  

[john]

 

"When you are writing songs, do you prefer writing personal, reality based songs, or fictional/imagined/projected songs? "

 

I added the bolded text to make it clear. My question was built upon the generally accepted literary categories. Non-fiction would include  "inspired by real events" or "based on a true story". A fictionalised re-telling is still inspired by real events. It includes biographies and autobiographies are, if only because they come from the writer's perspective and so nothing can be wholly true... It is not a firm line in the sand between fiction and non-fiction. Some re-tellings are more fiction than others. Some are only loosely based or inspired by, while others try their best to stay true to events.

 

@MikeRobinson, I moved our side discussion into it's own topic.

 

Here I am interested in the connection between the writer and the works they write. In "inspired by" there is a personal connection to events. In fiction based writing there is no personal connection to events. You are likely to have a different relationship with your song.

 

[Danidog]

I connect with songs and songwriting on a very personal, emotional level. I can't think of a single song I have created that wasn't either based on an actual experience, or drawn from firsthand emotions. 

Songs I like to listen to evoke emotion by triggering memories. 

Songs are healing.

[MikeRobinson]

Quote

John:  "understood... agree."

 

"Okay, me."  Here goes me ...

 

When I write songs, I try to make them "pure fiction."  I want to be a storyteller.  Even when I am writing about something that began as "my heartbreak," "my epiphany," "the most stupid mistake I ever made," I don't want to sing about me.  Instead, I want to try to turn it into something that is not longer about me:  I want it to be about you.  No matter who exactly you are.  I specifically want to "sing you a story."

 

To clarify – even if the inspiration is "reality based," the final song isn't.  "You aren't me.  If the song was about me, then yes, singing it might be cathartic, but the best that I could hope for from the audience would be – disconnected – sympathy."

 

Even if I sought to relate a directly-personal experience "directly," I would still draw upon "storytelling" to create a [now, "fictional" ...] scenario for the song that I felt would be most-effective for that song-story.

 

For instance:  a few weeks ago I attended an Episcopal memorial service where, at the conclusion of the service, the remembered-person's ashes were buried in a shallow hole ... but with great and comforting ceremony ... in a "memory garden" at the back of the church.    I'm still pondering exactly how I want to express the thoughts that came through my head as I watched ... the entire remaining mortality of a very complex person whom I knew very well ... being poured into a hole that could just as well and just as easily have contained two pounds of sugar. 

 

A cenotaph plaque will then be affixed to the wall ... to join the literally-hundreds of similar plaques already there.  The field was already elsewhere full of flowers ... how many of those flowers were nourished by people ... people long forgot?  I'm still pondering how an entire life ... yes, one day including my life ... can become an anonymous(!) piece of brass attached to a brick wall.  (And a few ten-thousand Internet forum postings?)

 

No, I don't yet know how I'm going to write a song about that.  But I know it won't mention any particular person, place, nor location, because for my purposes all of these things are irrelevant. 

 

My storyteller is still working on it.  Whatever it is, it promises to be interesting, and yes I will probably share it here.  But, I can't achieve what I ultimately want to achieve here except by storytelling.

 

 

[Cody]

On 5/4/2020 at 5:21 PM, MikeRobinson said:

 If the song was about me, then yes, singing it might be cathartic, but the best that I could hope for from the audience would be – disconnected – sympathy."

 

 

 

Bad audience! I wouldn't play there anymore

 

I completely understand your meaning though.

 

 

I try not to, but everytime I write something new it comes from a real experience, usually ends up word for word and I cant/unwilling to change it later....just never sounds right or genuine to me...any audience I've been in front of can tell(when not genuine)....but that's just me.  Good lier(when have to)just not a good actor I guess

 

Even if it's a song about some random thought/idea that line usually ends up in there

 

[snabbu]

I do both because to do one only is limiting. 

 

Cheers

 

Gary

 

 

[John W Selleck]

Hi John,

I write what my muse gives me. And sometimes she gives me some wierd and crazy stuff, and even things I don't want to write about but she won't let me rest until I do. LOL! But to be honest, the personal/true songs are slim pickin's. Everything I write is flavored by my life experiences, but I also write a lot of songs for women to sing, and since I am not one, and don't want to be, I have to base them on how I would feel if I were one and put in any of the situations I am writing about. So, truthfully, mostly fiction, but I think my best songs are from personal experience.

[MikeRobinson]

In my view:  "if the only thing that Stephen King™ could write was his own autobiography, then that autobiography never would have been interesting to anyone other than his wife."  Instead, Stephen perfected the skill of being a storyteller, who by-the-way could regularly scare the pants off of you. 😀

 

If the actual inspiration for your song is something that actually happened to you, such that you felt motivated to "sing it exactly," then I feel somewhat motivated to suggest that it once again might be interesting (if that) "only to your ever-patient spouse."  Because the rest of us are probably going to feel left-out.  There's no room in your story for anyone else but you.

 

To me, therefore, a really good song is "storytelling," therefore "fiction."  Because, it's never strictly about the storyteller – it's about the personal connection that a really good story creates, "even though there never actually is anything 'personal' about it." (The songwriter and the listener never personally met each other.)

[John W Selleck]

9 hours ago, MikeRobinson said:

To me, therefore, a really good song is "storytelling," therefore "fiction."  Because, it's never strictly about the storyteller – it's about the personal connection that a really good story creates, "even though there never actually is anything 'personal' about it." (The songwriter and the listener never personally met each other.)

Can't your story be interesting to others? If something happened in your personal life that was interesting/exciting/moving, couldn't others be interested enough to hear it in story form? Even if you got a broken heart, or fell in love, wouldn't others be interested in the story of how that happened, or have shared emotions brought out by your song? For me, empathy works, whether I am writing it or listening to it, or even reading it or watching it on TV or in the movies. I have had people cry at some of the songs I have written from personal experience, and had more than one tell me they wish they could have a man feel the same way about them that a personal song was talking about the woman that caused the song.

[swingset]

I write both, in equal measures.

[gradual]

Most of the time, I write from a fictional perspective. It's just easier. I'm much more interested in the craft than the catharsis. Occasionally, if I think something happening in my life would make a good song, I'll use it, but for the most part my life is pretty boring (not that I'm complaining about that). If I only wrote about things I was directly experiencing, I'd run out of ideas pretty quickly. If authors aren't expected to always write about themselves, why should songwriters be? That's a songwriting myth I don't quite understand. I think there are easier ways to process your deepest thoughts and emotions than trying to make them rhyme. But I've heard many songwriters say that approach works well for them, so to each their own I guess.

 

However I do think, that anything we write, fictional or true, gets filtered through our own personal perspective, so there can never really be such thing as complete fiction.