 All right. Hello, everybody. Everybody can hear me. Okay. Hopefully I Can get going here in a second just administrative stuff Um, I can't monitor the chat and kind of focus and talk at the same time So hopefully Lauren will be so kind as to help me out with that if I have you all Throw something in the chat So welcome nano RIMO. Huzzah Um So a couple things first, hopefully you're here because you saw that it's about music and about literature And you're trying to figure out kind of how does all of that stuff connect Uh, so hopefully it'll make sense and there are a lot of different ways to think about this So I'll kind of dive into it. Um, there'll be a little bit of writing in the middle And then I'm going to try and save about five minutes at the end for a little q&a if anybody has any questions Or if you want to yell at me or curse at me or whatever No, please don't do that. I love everybody. Okay so First things first, uh, just a little bit about myself Um, so there's some pictures of me talking into microphones much like i'm doing right now So my name is michael ovara. I'm an instructor at shoreline community college and edmunds college Uh, most recently I've kind of taken on a role of the as the director of The honors college at shoreline, which is awesome. Um, I also have an mfa in creative writing from holland's university in virginia Uh, and I've done a lot of creating writing over the years Including working as a writer in residence with the seattle public schools So the wits program and i'm a current fellow with the jack straw program So if you don't know what that is, uh, go look it up It's a fantastic program and if you are a writer, I think at this point in time. They're accepting applications for the next cohort So I've written a lot of short stories I think i'm up to almost 50 public short stories and two collections of short stories. So lots of writing. Um, so Let's dive into it because you're not here to hear more about me We're here to talk about writing So the first thing is and you can go ahead and put your answer in the chat If you have one or some ideas, but the first question and i'll shut up here in a second and Wait and see if people have things in chat But what do we consider when we're creating characters new characters and in particular? How do we convey a particular character trait to our reader? Anything coming up in the chat or we just have crickets We got some shy people some shy watchers That's okay. That's all right Uh, we'll I'll I'll keep going and maybe something will come up and if if you do have an idea Questions all in the way feel free to jump into the chat So, you know a way to think about this is how do we show that somebody likes being outdoors or how do we show that? somebody likes computers Uh, you know, how do we show those specific character traits or habits? Now one of the things that I would say is it's probably something on this list Um, and I'm gonna unpack this a little bit So we might talk about what a character wears or what they carry with them, right? What does it say about somebody who always carries a notebook and a pen with them like I do, right? Um, what they read if they read what they're doing at a particular time Where they're headed or where they're coming from who their family is who their friends are maybe what they eat and drink And I want to kind of differentiate here And it's not at all to cast dispersions upon dungeons and dragons because I love some dungeons and dragons But it's not quite like creating a character sheet, right where we're just going through this list A lot of the time what happens is we're actually Creating a character or revolving a character as we're writing So as we write a scene we think oh, what kind of tea would this person drink or do they drink coffee or What kind of car do they drive because all of these details help develop a character and make them a very real person So even though you're all shy and you can jump in on this um The next question is because it's not on this list, but it should be obvious because it's the title of this talk Is how many of us listen to music while we're writing? right Man, I'll give a second. Let's see if if anybody has it anything Or if there's just like yay or nay Maybe you can do that thumbs up A little happy face in the chat something like that I would say that probably a lot of us at some point listen to music while we're writing I know that I do and you can think about kind of how that might influence your writing I know that if I'm writing A sad scene if I'm not listening to sad music. It's not going to be that Effective, right? So we're kind of influenced by that So a lot of us listen to music while we're writing and that's going to go to our tastes and our preferences But kind of when else do we listen to music? What might be some occasions And again, don't be shy. We're all friends here. It's a nice supportive environment Feel free to share Maybe you sing in the shower. Maybe you listen to music while you're biking to work So Anything in the chat? No, I didn't notice we have a little bit of a delay Yeah, I'll shut up for a minute. So yeah, the the the current Thing you're saying right now is when else do we listen to music? Okay Hold on nice. I do see that there's some technical difficulties with Maybe Some audio problems. Let me see if I can fix that. Okay I just got one user saying that he can see you Michael talking but not hear him and then another user says he can hear you so But no comments about music so far. Okay Can we turn on or do we have on the captioning? Oh good point Let me do that There we go. Thank you Always forget about that as an option. Thanks for mentioning it. It looks like it's working Okay, so it sounds like we had a little bit of technical difficulties because zoom and technology and life um, so I'm gonna give a just a second for folks to catch back up, uh, and for me to kind of You know go back to this the idea is kind of The fact that most of us probably listen to music at least sometimes while we're writing And and you can throw it in the chat, but when else do you listen to music? What other occasions? What other events? When do you turn on your music? Or when do you turn it off? I guess that's another one too. It depends on who you are as a person Yeah, we got quite a bit of a delay because your question just finished getting asked just now Okay But let's see. Let's see if we get anybody. Oh, yeah, we'll give it a minute I got kitty who says I listen to music sometimes Thanks. Yes. Thank you Give it another 20 seconds or so here Kitty adds it depends on my mind space what I'm writing what I'm listening to and where I'm writing I listen I listen to music non-stop pretty much right And there's that too, right that sometimes we're you know, we've got that sort of soundtrack to our lives going on And that's something that I want to dive into a little bit more so Kind of what I want to think about is when we think about music and literature There are two kind of directions that my mind goes one is To the musicality of language Just what language sounds like which is tough the other one is What I've been kind of really exploring over the last couple years With a novel that I'm working on which is How do we bring? music into a piece of writing so oops Let's talk about kind of the connection between literature and music So this is kind of that that English instructor in me. So we're going to do a little little history lesson little you know background so I think a lot of the time we think oh writers listen to music while they're writing or they don't But what I wanted to point out and it was kind of fun research to do and you should totally go check these things out If you're interested But there are perhaps not surprisingly a lot of books that are actually inspired by songs And you can think about this for a minute and think about if you know any And maybe I'll pause and let the delay catch up And if you have one if you can think of a book inspired by a song Go ahead and put it in the chat I also see uh Steve answering your previous question. I listen to music while driving or doing housework I don't multitask well, so I can't listen to music and do an activity that requires much concentration Very interesting comment Because that's really what this is about is multitasking literature and music, right? exactly exactly and I'll be honest. There are times that I don't Listen to music while I'm writing because it is a distraction And I am not very good at multitasking So what I've turned to is I will listen to songs To get me in a mind frame and then I will turn the music off and use white noise My daughter has an opinion too When we can keep going so if you if you can think of another one a book inspired by a song go ahead and put it in the chat I'm going to go ahead and give you four that I found Two of which I've read I'll be honest and two which I haven't but they're now on my list to read So books inspired by songs Girlfriend in a coma by Douglas Copeland inspired by Morrissey In fact, I'm geeky enough that I knew this song and because I knew this song I read the book um Hiruki Murakami Norwegian would of course uh inspired by the Beatles Joe Hill's book inspired by nirvana, of course, and then uh Hopefully everybody can I can close this here, right? Yes, uh Jennifer Wiener Hungry Hart, uh, and that one is inspired by Bruce Springsteen. So there you go a little bit of everything uh So it should be pretty obvious, but music can kind of pull a story out of us or even inspire us And kind of make us expand some ideas And so it's kind of this Source of inspiration, which I think is how we generally view these things Do we get any other ones in the box and the uh chat I was going to say in the box Suggestion box. Um, we did get uh kitty saying listening to music will help me task usually But no uh No books based on music. So this is actually great. We're all discovering this together cool, uh, so Perhaps not surprisingly, right? This is not a one-way street That you know Songs are inspiring books because the opposite is also true So I'll give you some examples and One of two of these are probably pretty obvious Uh, at least one should be super obvious If you're a steven king fan at all or watched movies during the 1980s, which means i'm dating myself, but that's okay um so a lot on the sort of symbiotic relationship here, so nirvana Inspiring the book heart shaped bucks, but also nirvana song sent less apprentice was inspired by patrick susskin's book perfume the story of murder the rolling stones were inspired by bulgakov's the master in margarita Ramon's inspired by steven king and another none other than the beetles inspired by Alice in Wonderland, right? Lewis carol. Um, and maybe other Substances, I don't know. I'm not going to guess, but I'm you know, somebody else knows more about that than I do so we get this kind of like symbiotic nature where we have songs or albums inspiring books and books inspiring songs or albums Um, in fact, I think if you go and do some research on douglas copeland who wrote girlfriend in a coma There was a symbiotic relationship there between copeland and moracy for at least a little while Um, so Let's take the next step forward and then I promise we will do some writing and I will answer questions and and all of that fun stuff so this next one you've probably kind of seen before and maybe not but If we were in person, I do have a question about some of the quite the titles you were just talking about Other than the titles, how are how connected are these books to the lyrics themes and tones of the songs? So Pretty closely. I think the closest is probably pet cemetery Um, where we're taking kind of as raw material Um, but that's a good question. It would be interesting to go and look. I don't think that it's like word for word, it's inspiration in both directions Um, and I think maybe that's easier to see Oops, go the opposite way on in these ones where it's really more of just a song or an idea from a song inspiring something Um, whether that is that the song plays a role Uh, I believe mirakami starts with a character hearing a specific song on a plane Um Copeland's girlfriend in a coma is really just that title. I think they got him thinking about it So it's a good question. I I don't think it's like, uh You know a one-to-one direct, um, you know musical version of I did get somebody saying rush 2112 is inspired by ann ranz anthem, which I didn't know Also true. I feel like I'm saying that is it rush 2112 or is it 2112? 2112, okay And whoever said that is like my new best friend because I love that album That's awesome. All right. And then kitty says there are two books I'm writing right now one of which is my nano novel Which have been helped along by music quite a lot and I haven't read anything of that nature And I love that because you have to write the thing that you have never read If you know if it doesn't exist yet, you have to write it You go kitty cool Yeah, and hopefully maybe there's something else in here that will kind of speak to that because That was kind of how I got into this. I decided that I wanted to write A book So essentially the novel that I'm working on takes place in the early 1990s in Seattle and follows as sort of inspiring punk band or aspiring rather And so I went out and I read every book that I could that was About music or how to healthy dose of music and You know, try to figure out how to make it work. So You want to compare notes? Let me know So one of the ones and one of the first books that I read that had That was similar to what I was trying to do was Nick Hornby's High Fidelity Which Is now Hulu original with Zoë Kravitz and of course, there's the John Cusack version And you know, this is one where If we think about it and we're thinking about this from a writer's perspective There's a lot of work that we can do With music. I think that sometimes music is a shorthand for things where we think about Oh, this is the type of person who likes x y or z music and then they kind of become a caricature But for those of you that aren't super familiar with high fidelity I'm going to go with the narrative from the book And I will say if you haven't read it Rob Gordon the character in the book is way more of a jerk than he is In the movie or you know, the character is in the tv show So he owns a record shop and he's a former dj And essentially everything he else everything he does relates to top 10 lists, right? How music helps him understand his life, especially since he's kind of looking backwards, especially kind of Relationships with other people. So for Hornby, it is also this way that Rob interprets his world And I know Also from the research I was doing That hornby is also a guy who really loves music and has this sort of massive music collection So he was drawing on his personal experience And at least from what I understand while he was writing high fidelity He was going through a really bad breakup or divorce or something like that. So also kind of drawing from personal experience So what I want to do is go through just unexcerpt from high fidelity to look at How nick hornby uses music so And again, if you have questions chunk them into the chat So, uh excerpt from the book The other people I like are the ones who are being driven to find a tune that has been troubling them Distracting them a tune that they can hear in their breath when they run for a bus or in the rhythm of their windscreen wipers When they're driving home from work Sometimes something banal and obvious is responsible for the distraction They have heard it on the radio or at a club, but sometimes it has to come it has come to them as if by magic Sometimes it has come to them because the sun was out and they saw someone who looked nice And they suddenly found themselves humming a snatch of a song they haven't heard for 15 or 20 years and a guy Once a guy came in Because he had dreamed a record the whole thing melody title and artist And when I found it for him It was an old reggae thing a happy go lucky girl by the paragons And it was more or less exactly how it appeared to him in his sleep The look on his face made me feel as though I was not a man who ran a record shop But a midwife or a painter someone whose life is routinely transcendental So I'll let that kind of sink in and let the the delay maybe catch up Uh and as we do that What I want you to kind of think about is how How is music being used here? Um, how is this helping? Develop the scene or the character? We don't have any comments in the chat, but I do want I want to comment Go for it. I love the rhythm of the the windscreen wipers because it's not just When you're reading it out loud it sounds like a sound because of the alliteration kind of Actually creates a sound that sounds like it could be windshield wipers or something So it's not just we're hearing we're hearing something, but we're also being told we're hearing something So I really like that A little bit of that onamana piya type feel right? um I I also really like the fact that it's this He's so passionate about music That when he meets somebody who has that same sort of moment He feels this connection with them um And we also like I think it's masterful the part that's in parentheses here The way that he refers to this I found it for him. It was an old reggae thing. I happy go luck girl by the paragons That's a really important detail. It's as if he can't help but say exactly what it was he found because it's important It's not an insignificant detail So he's this sort of collector of songs and albums Um, and even if it's something he doesn't necessarily like listening to he's going to point it out Um, and it's also a little bit arrogant, right? He feels like he's a midwife because he found somebody in the album Uh, but this is also connected to his passion, right? okay, so Let's Let's keep going in the interest of time Um, and I already kind of I already kind of asked the next question So I'm going to give you this little gem of things to think about for a second So reflect on this, right? I don't know about you. I have definitely been One of those people in that crowd at some point and it's okay If you like if you're like, I've never been to a concert concerts scare me or it seems like a waste of money. That's fine But look at like the faces and body language of these people right They're pretty stoked. Uh, it's this sort of like transcendental like religious experience um, and I will readily admit I have been to No joke hundreds of concerts in fact fun fact at one point I worked as a music journalist in a freelance capacity so I've been You know all of those people it's Michael I actually want to interject because we had a couple of late comers and somebody says Would you they say when you have a moment Would you mind introducing yourselves again for the late comers? And I felt like that was a good segue because you were about to say something about yourself Um, fantastic. Yeah. Yes, you should and I'm just gonna say I'm lauren bryant. I'm a librarian at shoreline community college and I'm a big supporter of the writing community And I'm michael ovara. I am a writing instructor at shoreline community college A current jack straw writing program fellow, uh, which is a program here in seattle Which is fantastic. It takes a small cohort of one year And we do a bunch of readings. In fact, uh, we'll be reading this saturday at the seattle public library Um, and I think later this month, uh, there's another reading. I can't remember where it's at And I'm also an author So I've published about 50 short stories at this point and different venues and two collections of short stories that were put out By a small press, uh, not not a boutique press. I will say but a small press called unsolicited press and There we are. Do we have other questions? That was the one for right now. I'll I'll interject. I see more. Okay. Yes If you want to know my birthday because you'd like to buy me a present I will let you know and uh, you know, I can share my amazon wish list with you. Um, but one thing Here again that I kind of Want to think about is As a writer and I'm sure that most of us do I'm always sort of mining my past for Experiences and I felt as though I've with the novel that I'm working on right now um Which full transparency I'm not working on for nano rimo Unfortunately, I'm too busy to do nano rimo this year, which is I think the first time in about eight years, but um It's a novel I've been working on for a couple years and it's really drawing on my experience Going to concerts being fascinated with music so Whether or not we're at a concert, I think all of us have had Some sort of experience like this a song comes on the radio at the right time Uh, a friend plays the right song You hear a song you haven't heard for years walking through the grocery store And it just changes your mood um Or maybe you have a really crappy day and you plug in your favorite music as you're driving home from work so kind of the question that comes from that is Sort of why are we so Borderline obsessed and some of us are obsessed with music But why are we so like infatuated with music and it goes back to this earlier question of when do we listen to music? right, so There are chores or activities that somebody said I think doing dishes or you know when they you know can't really multitask Going for a jog Going for a walk driving um You know when you're supposed to be studying and your or your instructors droning on and you put in your pods because or air pods because he won't notice um But I would say that part of this is Music is really directed and affected by our mood and vice versa, right? So if we listen to music While we're writing or listening to music to inform our writing I think that the takeaway is we can also do that with Our characters, right? Our characters don't have to be The biggest rush fan ever right or a musician Although sometimes that's the case Rob in high fidelity Is not a musician. He's a dj And sorry djs. I don't mean to offend anybody If that's a musician, but What I want to look at real quick before I move into the example of how we can actually use this is An example from daisy jones and the six and so if you haven't read this book It's interesting it is uh by taylor jenkins read and I believe it's being turned into a tv show or miniseries And it's all told kind of like the old vh1 behind the scenes documentary where there is a fictional band And we're getting the whole story every bit of the story through interviews With members of the band like 20 years after the band broke up So it's all coming in bits and pieces And this was very close to kind of how I initially was writing my novel. So I was like great I'm interested because I have a little bit of a background as a musician and as a music journalist Where's taylor jenkins read coming from? Glad you all asked because I found this little Thing from entertainment weekly and I'll just read it out because I find it interesting It that is this story all started Says best-selling novelist the seven husbands of eval and hugo with her fascination with the band the civil wars the indy funk duo Who released two critically acclaimed albums and won four grammy's before abruptly mysteriously parting ways in 2014 Quote they wrote these incredibly romantic and intimate songs and they would perform them so beautifully and so intensely and quote says Read tells ew from los angeles where she lives with her husband and now toddler daughter Quote they're both married to other people and one night. They just break up the group and quote That anecdote combined with reads enduring love for former fleetwood mac bandmates and longtime paramours stevie nicks and lindsay buckingham Led her to the bones of the book's plot despite the fact that she felt drastically under qualified at least to start Quote I didn't know anything about music. She says laughing quote. Why would I tell that story? But I couldn't get it out of my head So I think This is fascinating for a couple reasons right one again. We get music inspiring a book But also it doesn't it's a good reminder that We don't have to be experts about a topic at the outset. We can become experts Um Now when you're already a best-selling novelist, I'm sure you have access to more people than You know the rest of us who will be a best-selling novelist in a couple years, right? fingers crossed so, you know again, I think the idea here is Mining details looking at something and looking at how We can bring the experience of music into flushing out relationships because the book is really about the relationships between people And less about the music Okay, so Let's get into um How music can change scene because this is kind of the the What I've been heading towards all of those things said whether it's rob gordon in high fidelity or Daisy from daisy jones and the six or whatever I think it's important to think about how Music can change scene so I want to give you an example. So you just picture this in your mind's eye for a moment so Let's say we have a scene where there's a single mom She's got two teenage boys one has asthma and It's the middle of summer. So she sends them to the community pool for the day And she's kind of stressing because she's behind on bills and you know, she's not getting her child support and things like that Even though she's just working her butt off And the kids leave and she starts Doing chores around the house Which is completely silent So we would have a scene where nothing is happening And that character is completely silent And you can kind of think of it like a movie right We have something and there's something to be said for when something is silent But We can change this In a number of different ways. So hopefully this point makes sense because I think music Within a scene can convey something really specific So let's say that character starts humming mother goose's lady bird right So some of you might be familiar with this lady bird lady bird fly away home Your house is on fire and your children are all gone. I'll accept one and that's little Anne and she's kept crept under the warming pan and You can chunk in your comments in the in the chat might go pretty quick just because we're I think we're going until 645 was the original time. Is that right? Yep 45 Okay, can we go a little bit over? Absolutely. Okay, let's do that So You know the thing here if she's humming this First of all from a writer standpoint We can use a little shorthand right because we're giving a little bit of insight into something because there's a parallel between her experience And the experience in the song maybe But also it's a character whose mind goes to mother goose even though Her kids are teenagers right Now for the sake of argument Let's take the exact same scenario exact same setup kids leave She's doing her thing whatever it is Doing chores and she starts listening to 500 miles or she starts singing 500 miles by Justin Timberlake Hopefully Most of us would agree There's a change there Right There's a shift from Mother goose to Justin Timberlake at least I think so and we can disagree on that I guess So let's do one more So let's say instead of Ladybird ladybird or Justin Timberlake Let's say instead she Begins humming Leonard Cohen's I'm Your Man These are all very different songs with very different feelings and very different messages and There might be any number of reasons that she's humming in those songs And there's a little bit of a gamble that we have to play as writers which is to say We have to either assume that our reader knows these songs Or we have to hedge that they'll look it up if they're interested And if they look it up because they're interested though That scene will broaden out But for us in the meantime That intentional choice of that song tells us a lot about that character So last couple of things so fun fact, and I don't know if any of you are theater folks or cinema folks But in cinema, this is called Diagetic music so It's music that is heard Both by the audience and by the characters Right, so you think of a music score. Usually there's the music that is playing That only we hear is audience members And then there are scenes Like baby driver is a good example if you've seen that movie Where the music is actually something the characters are hearing Another good example would be the movie basquiat Which is well worth watching for a lot of reasons one of which being david bowie plays andy warhol But if you watch it, you can very quickly see there are places where characters are listening to music with headphones on You hear the music as a soundtrack and they take the headphones off and the music slowly like fades away as if it were connected to those I think that that is How we can use music as writers because we can't necessarily do it By having a soundtrack So I was going to do this as a Exercise where I was going to give you all a little bit of time But since we're coming up on the 645 mark and since I still want to give time for q&a if people have questions And things are catching up. I will go ahead and just walk you through How I would do this writing exercise So I would suggest you take a scene An existing one that doesn't have any reference to music They're not listening to music on the radio or in the car. They're not singing or humming something And try and introduce music somehow and I would suggest thinking about it as though you're passively Introducing it that is that it's diagetic. It's emerging into that scene They're hearing it at the grocery store. They are humming it. They don't realize it There is you know The drip of water in the tap reminds them of a drum beat Something like that So a good exercise to go through especially if you're thinking about What music would affect that character? Because there's a big difference between the character who is affected by Leonard Cohen and the one who's affected by you know Justin Timberlake or whatever Musical artists you choose. I'm showing my clear bias towards some music here. I apologize. That's okay So that's pretty much it Especially as we're coming up on the end of time here. So Um, obviously we won't share because we don't have time and there's a little bit of a leg uh And really quickly. Okay. I said there was one more thing but now I realized there's one one more other other thing so Because as I said at the outset musicality is another way to think about this and I have three examples here But I'll just read the first one um, and it's about The musicality of language. So this is from michael and dodges the english patient and it's the very first paragraph She stands up in the garden where she has been working and looks into the distance She has sensed a shift in the weather. There's another gust of wind a buckle of noise in the air and the tall cypress's sway She turns and moves uphill towards the house climbing over a low wall Feeling the first drops of rain on her bare arms. She crosses the logia and quickly enters the house So to me at least that is Beautiful like just the writing of it. It has some of the things that we talked about before with some alliteration You know something like cypress's sway is I think really evocative But as I was thinking about this and thinking about the difficulty of talking about musicality What it reminded me of is what some of you might have heard before which is hl mankin's famous comment Which is also in the movie donnie darko that cellar door is the most beautiful phrase in the english language I don't tend to agree with hl mankin Which to me was the reminder that When it comes to musicality or language that we find beautiful I think as writers the best thing that we can do is find something that we think is beautiful and figure out why and then Emulate the hell out of that thing until we sort of absorb it Okay That's the last last thing I think There is a conversation going on in the chat So We have a comment that says this isn't really applicable when the setting is high fantasy And then she says it could apply but no familiar songs that a reader could recognize an inference from could be used organically And then somebody else says in tolkin. There's a lot of singing although the author did have to create the songs And michael i'm sure you have something to say about this, but I also want to say In lord and um, sorry in game of thrones when the red wedding happens I don't know if you've seen game of thrones, but there's a song that's associated with um There's a certain song that comes up and they actually use it as the theme song in the tv show But when you're reading it it's also really creepy Because you know something has gone wrong because that song has come up previously And people were singing the lyrics of that song and it's just super creepy because It would be It would be similarly creepy if it wasn't a song if it was just like a phrase they used but You get the hairs stand up on your arms because they're singing it And it has all this meaning in it. So yeah, I'm sure you have something to say about this as well Yeah, I mean I I think that it I mean If we think about so going back to sort of diagetic that idea There's a there's a sort of broader definition of diagetic, which is things that happen kind of within canon, right? So there's a great youtube video on this um that I will you know if we can link it somewhere I will or I'll send it to lauren you can do it, but what he talks about is you know, whatever that You know, if you say you're writing about vampires there's certain things in that Canon in within that story that become diagetic that is organic to that step world that you've built whether that's Hey, there's sparkly vampires that can live in forks washington, right or whatever it is So I think when we think about high fantasy um Music must exist in that world, right? So I think that there's definitely a challenge there um and I would say Perhaps the the kind of beautiful challenge in my mind is you can figure out how do I convey what this music would be like? um Because you know as per like the idea of token or Game of thrones, right music is there and it helps us further understand the world um You know who is singing? What's the the first thing that I would wonder is like, what's the role of music within that world? um, you know, is it a world in which You know, I don't really get a whole lot of music or is it a world where? um as with some other fantasy um Music is a way to enhance the story by helping with the mythos of the world, right? um the the Bards or the people who are sharing that culture so it becomes like a cultural thing but I think in your world building Especially because I think a lot of high fantasy Books tend to be a lot longer. I mean you might talk about a A literary or commercial fiction book being 50 or 60 thousand words high fantasy might be twice that easily so you've got a lot more space to build that world and You know, if you're trusting your your reader Is going to understand a song and understand how characters react to that song um Then that I think will help build your world. Um and maybe that that means reaching out to uh a time if it's a you know In the past or in the future whatever but something like token or um, george r r r r however many rs he has um You know They're they're building a world that's you know based on the past but if it's in the future you get a lot more freedom to kind of play around with I don't know. I hope that makes my case Kitty says that depends where in my world you are which makes it sound like there's a very rich world Yeah, um and she says one of my characters surprisingly can play a lute rather well And you also mentioned bards. So I feel like you guys are on the same page there Yeah, absolutely. And I would say, you know, again the the your readership is going to know what a lute kind of sounds like They're going to they're going to feel that that vibe, but I think also You know how people react to it. Um, you know, if this is a situation or a part of of your world where uh There is these these are the people that use a lute or a pan pipe or you know, a certain type of drum Uh, that's one thing. Um, if it's A different group where they tend to be more aggressive in their music that might be reflective of culture. Um, You know, you think about like ancient Greece and ancient rome versus, uh, you know the visigoths or something that came in two different parts of the world Had music And they would have reacted viscerally to each other's music, right? Just like when my parents used to yell at me for listening to punk rock music So maybe not exactly like that. Josie interjects and says jar jar marten, which I loved jar jar marten um We I do want to say I want to read everybody's novel because everybody sounds like they have a lot of music at their novels So everyone should share back when you finish your novels For sure and I'll say too if um, you know, your members of the community your fellow writers, um I I think at present I don't think there's like way to contact me through my personal website But that is all my to-do list Uh, so just michael over a writer dot com Uh, and I think that's in the nano description too. So Um, you can let me know there. Um, always happy to talk to folks and you know Tell tell me stuff teach me something Or tell me what I should listen to or why I'm incredibly wrong All of those things are good We got a heart I will make sure to put the if you send me that youtube that you suggested I'll put it in the description and I'm going to post this video as a static video to watch later So check back to see michael's suggestion for that video that he said that was awesome Awesome. Thank you all so much Have a good night. Happy nano wing I think yeah, happy nano And uh, thank you for doing this michael My pleasure my pleasure Have an abundant nano