Writing fiction to music
Metal and fiction: two of my favourite things, so you can imagine my delight when I chanced upon Despumation Press. This is a new venture that 'seeks to champion writing that explores the diverse themes metal customarily addresses using language in such a way as to evoke the feeling of listening to the music'. Sounds cool, and they're seeking submissions based on your favourite metal song.
It turns out their favoured end of metal isn't mine (you may recall all that talk of 'hair metal' in the past, not a term I'd ever used but it seems to cover a big chunk of what I like. That and NWOBHM of course), so I guess I won't be offering them my efforts but I did want to have a go for my own entertainment. Or maybe even education.
Capturing the rhythm of a song sounds quite hard and I'm not absolutely sure how to go about it. I've read poetry with a definite driving beat to it, so maybe that could be replicated in prose. Could you vary the sentence length, the types of words; get all flowing and lyrical for the guitar solo? Even if you're not keen on metal you could get a piece of flash fiction from your favourite song (or a novella, if you're into Dream Theater). One to try I think, and if you have wide-ranging musical tastes the variety of styles could be interesting - maybe you'd have to detail the soundtrack in the introduction, if you released them as a collection. Of course, this assumes you can listen and write at the same time.