Young Writers Society

I want to write the story of a violin player who expresses his feelings only by playing the violin but the problem is that I never understood how to include music into my short stories. I mean to say, how do I make people actually feel the music and the feelings it covers?
Does anybody have experience with something like this?

"The music, a mixture of sadness and guilt, makes a low melody as it drifts off, replaced by new notes. Only heard by one, the music tells a story of life and what it means to be alive. Of course, the one who heard is the player."

Lostthought, that was incredible. How did you manage to come up with something like this?

Experience. Plus, I was in band so I know a bit about music.

Fun topic!

Have you ever tried to describe something without actually describing it? You have to broaden your scope of things.

No song is sung twice

A common mistake eager writers make is that they imagine something in their head and want their reader to perceive it in the exact same way. This never happens, people are just too different. To one person, a red cloak might represent the flow of blood and indicate that a person is a violent warrior, to another the same red cloak might represent romance and lust and that the person is physically attractive.

No matter how clearly you think of something it will never sound the same in your readers mind, so the best thing you can do is give the impression of what it's supposed to sound like and let their imagination do the rest.

Go back to basics

Words have sounds, whether they're read aloud or in the mind, and some words have more vivid sounds than others. Onomatopoeia, for example- splash, heave, tinkle, thud- is a great technique for giving noise to black and white words. Alliteration- the soft, smooth sound seduced his cold and bitter soul. Rhythm (a skill best learned from poets rather than novelists) is something that once you've gotten the hang of it, is easily conveyed through writing and can be used in all kinds of situations, whether it's to change the pace, to increase tension, describe, or in your case create a musical effect.

Personification

I'll be honest, personification is my answer to everything I don't know >.< The aching, creaking floorboards bend to the will of a mourning violinist, and for one time only lend their groaning voices to a more solemn chorus. This says very little about the music, but the fact that this grumpy old house has stopped to listen means something- something rare and beautiful has come from something old and decrepit, which in itself indicates the mood and tone of the music.

Hope this helps!
Let me know if you post your work online, I love reading that kind of stuff.

I'd say just employ really really detailed descriptions of the music scenes. And although it's usually a poetic device, careful diction could also work wonders towards conveying the emotional complexities of a musical scene. I think it's really all about how you describe the sounds that come from the instrument. You could also use very musical syntax (sentence structure) too. Try to use very fluid sentences that flow together to convey softer emotions or sharper and more stop-start-y sentences to convey more intense/angry or passionate emotions. Hope this helps. And let me know also when you post this work. I think this is a very interesting idea you've got here.

Thank you all for the ideas guys. Actually what I have in mind is more of a novelleta because I don't dare to call it novel It's about a guy how falls in love with the ghost of a young girl he meets in very hard times for him, emotionally speaking. I really like the impossible love thema for some reason.

I will most certainly post the first chapter or the introduction, I don't really know what format the story will have just yet. I might also post some other chapters along the way. The problem is that now I have to read Mary Stuart by Schiller for university so I won't be able to write anything until Monday or Tuesday because I never managed to focus on two stories at the same time.

Dude, that seems like such a cool idea! I'm so excited to read this.