: Re: Should fiction mention song names and iPods? In my novel, the protagonist is depressed. In the story which is in my mind... The autumn leaves were falling as I was sitting alone and

@Annie587

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I had the same reaction to your musical allusion that Wetcircuit did: I have never heard the song "Mad World", or if I have, I don't remember it. It does not bring any emotional state to my mind because I have no idea what it is about or what it sounds like.

I've had this conversation with many authors: They'll say, "I included this cultural reference to put the reader into a certain mood" or "to bring certain ideas to mind". But the glaring assumption is that the reader recognizes the reference. You're assuming that everyone who might read your book listens to the same songs that you do. But unless your book is focused at a very narrow market, this is almost certainly not true. I don't listen to the same music that my children do. Some people like hard rock, some like rap, some like country, some like classical, etc. I have literally no idea what the most popular hard rock songs today are or the names of the singers or groups who perform them. And when I have this conversation, the person will often reply, "Well, maybe you don't like rap, but you still know who such-and-such famous rap singer is of course, don't you?" No, I don't. 9 times out of 10 I've never heard of the person they name, and the other 1 time I may vaguely recall having heard the name but couldn't tell you anything about him.

It's very easy to leap from "all my friends do this" to "everybody in the world does this". No, they don't.

I'd say the same for references to movies, other books, and cultural events. Like if you tell me the hero "went to a Fwacbar Convention", if I'm not part of your group, I may have no idea what a Fwacbar Convention is.

And I just wrote "fwacbar" there because I often use that when I need a made-up word. But now that I've written it, it hits me: "Fwacbar" is actually a technical term relating to a computer technology that was obsolete decades ago. Did you recognize it and know what it means? I'm guessing not. But wow, all my 60 year old programmer friends recognize it. Doesn't everybody?

If you want to make a particular song central to your story, you'd better give the full lyrics of the song, describe the type of music, etc. And if you're going to do that, you'd better get permission from the copyright owner.

I think a far better idea would be to describe the person's feelings in terms that almost any human being should be able to understand. If you want to talk about him listening to a song, describe the song. You can say, "he listened to a melancholy country song, where the singer described his sadness at the tragic death of his wife" or whatever.

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