Silversun

shazaam - thanks for the link. I quite like that story (not only because it's short - damn my short attention span! [img]smilies/biggrin.gif[/img] ), and I liked how only a couple of lines of lyrics were inserted at any one time.

I do when I first read a fic, but I usually go back to it. If someone found the lyrics to be important enough to include them in the story, I think it deserves at least some contemplation.

I don't know about other people but I make a really big effort not to break up my songfics in a jarring manner. I try to insert lyrics only when there's a natural gap to the flow - and there often is, because I've found that many songfics are monologues. A person does not think in a linear fashion, their thoughts spin off on tangents, and a change in music could reflect a change in thought very well.

Also, I tend to slot lyrics in, not because of the words themselves but because I want to pin the story down to the music in certain places. In my head I hear this drum loop or this guitar solo kicking in at this particular part of the fic, and it adds something - a lot of things to what I'm trying to say.

"What we cannot say we must pass over in silence."
I believe music sometimes bridges that gap between what cannot be said in words, and what can be thought or felt. The only way I could even try and bring this to my readers is to put lyrics within the fic, so I could fix the story to the pace of the music.

That, to me, is what's most important. Not the song, not the words - it's what you're trying to communicate through this crude mixture, certain scenes of beauty and/or emotion that may not be reached otherwise.

[ 11-21-2003: Message edited Silversun ]