Writing is hard. In an ideal world, you'd be able to seamlessly transfer whatever scenes you're imagining in your head right onto the page without issue, but most of the time, it doesn't work like that. Sometimes, you get stuck so hard that all you can imagine is a big, blank expanse of nothingnesss...or something completely unrelated to your book, like a mountain of potatoes or the ending of whatever reality show you watched yesterday or an annoying jingle from a commercial. It's super annoying.
But among other things, this need for focus is one of the reasons that so many authors create a playlist for their manuscripts! Music is irreplaceable when it comes to writing--it can help you imagine scenes, develop characters, and even set the tone for your piece.
Even though Collateral Damage won't be out until next year, I thought it would be fun for you guys to see my own curated playlist that I used while writing it! Yeah, there's a lot of Fall Out Boy. Don't judge. They did the soundtrack for Big Hero Six for a reason; they're a perfect accompaniment to superhero/action scenes.
This is a select twenty of a playlist that actually included something like sixty songs--songs about feeling stuck and wanting a different life, songs I thought my characters would listen to, and songs that worked well as an underscore for some of the more action-packed, superpower-heavy scenes in the book. And for your convenience...the order of these songs actually corresponds to scenes throughout the book, IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER! (No spoilers--the exact scenes won't be revealed until next year, but the songs are still pretty great.) Enjoy!
Bonus: Want to see the instrumental soundtrack-style cheat sheet that correlates to all the songs on this list? Yeah, I pretended my book was a movie and this was the official song list. Doesn't everyone? Here you go!
1. A Typical Saturday
2. Not Dead Yet
3. Oliver
4. Eavesdropping
5. Meg Meets Three
6. Fire
7. Juniper
8. Meg Undercover
9. School Attack
10. An Offer/A Discovery
11. The Hideout
12. Confrontation
13. Plot Twist
14. Juniper and Meg
15. I Have an Idea
16. A Two-Person Job
17. Not All Heroes Wear Capes
18. I Did Warn You
19. Epilogue
20. Credits
Collateral Damage is now available to add to your TBR list on Goodreads!!