Since getting myself an iPod for Christmas I’ve managed to put together a few mini-playlists that remind me of my characters.

 Previously I would listen passively to the radio and whenever one of these songs came on I would have to scribble down any idea I happened to have- which isn’t really convenient on the highway. Now I can find them whenever I want them, and they can inspire me as needed.

Music, however, isn’t perfect for characterisation. Every song has its own mood, and you can’t expect a character to be in the same mood through the whole book. As such I find myself writing along to the playlist for one character and suddenly skipping songs that are too happy/moody or just wrong for the scene. It’s not perfect, and I’m not going to make thirty different sub-playlists like “Jesse-happy, Jesse-sad, Jesse-angry etc”. That would be obsessive.

But if I had to pick one song to represent my characters through most of the book, these would be it:

• Jesse - “Suddenly I see” KT Tunstall
• Detra - “Mad World” Gary Jules & Michael Andrews
• Trill - “Sweet about me” Gabriella Cilmi
• Veltra -”Boulevard of Broken Dreams” Green Day

Mind you, there is a lot of overlap between characters and songs. Viva la Vida can make me thing of any of these four characters, though less so with Trill.

So, writers, any songs you play to get ‘into character’?