What, precisely, is wrong with song fics?

I hear that "people have a bad experience witht that". But the Song Fic page doesn't really give evidence fo it being bad stuff...

Back in the day it was generally indicative of a lack of creativity on the part of the writer. These days I dislike it because it usually throws off the flow of the narrative.

Much like Script Fics, there isn't anything inherently wrong with them. There are lots of bad ones, like in everything, but for the most part, someone at FF.Net unilaterally decided they were bad and unacceptable, and fandom began parroting that off.

So it's one of Sturgeons Tropes...

edited 16th Aug '12 6:07:51 AM by TheHandle

Basically, it's one of those things (like Script Fic), that's very easy to write, but very difficult to write well. As a result the ratio of crap to good material is higher than normal and they got a bad rap among writers.

I try to use song lyrics in the same way people use the i-ching: vague and emotional, they help trigger and direct my imagination by giving it prompts to build around. I suppose I should keep the verses that inspire me out of the fic itself...

The song lyrics interrupt the flow of the story for me. I can enjoy a songfic if the characters are jestingly singing it, or if the chapter is merely inspired by song lyrics.

I remember seeing a pretty bog-standard ATLA fic called I'd Lie, which had snippets of song lyrics before each chapter which said chapter was kinda based on. I loved it, but looking back... hoo boy. The [song-fic] concept is interesting, though.

Also of note is, unlike Script Fic but like MSTs, a whole bunch of Song Fic usually has the words of the song in it. Unless it's spaced out over the course of the work as the previous poster's example or it only contains a few lines and an "inspired by" credit without any further mentions, then you're looking at CopyrightInfringement.

edited 16th Aug '12 7:51:50 AM by DonaldthePotholer

The majority of the time a songfic is an invitation to attempt to evoke emotions you're not skilled enough to handle, and to disconnect writer from reader since the writer probably had the actual music playing and the reader probably does not. That is mundane badness, however, and probably why everyone thinks it could be done well.

It can't. It's not a Sturgeon matter. It's just bad. I've been knocking around for well over a decade in various fandoms and I've never seen a good songfic. I've seen otherwise skilled writers attempt them more than once and it's never worked out.

Any work that reaches outside itself for something so basic as tone or emotion, commits the dual sin of bringer the reader out of the story, and admitting openly it cannot tell the story. Songfic quite deliberately does this. The idea is that it can enhance tone and emotion; the truth is that it is an admission the story is incapable of conveying sufficient tone and emotion so the author is desperately trying to prop it up.

That... is incredibly cynical of you.

I think it crosses the line beyond cynicism and into the calm waters of being just plain wrong. Exhibit A: The Lord Of The Rings, and all the songs within. They provide: tons of atmosphere, worldbuilding, lived-in-ness. Thez are little more than fluff, but it's comfy, warm fluff you want to drift into. Exhibit B:

Italics ommitted because I'm exhausted.

And this is how you add a song in a fic and are brilliant about it.

The only problem with songfics is that there is no music. Really, what is the draw to a song? The music. Otherwise the lyrics could be translated into an actual story itself. The lack of music defeats the purpose of a songfic.

Well, the song would be more of a poem. But there are definite cases of people successfully adding soundtracks to their stories. I've been reading (yet) a(nother) Octavia/Vinyl fic where Octavia ditches the Classic Music thing and becomes a Jazz musician. I find myself learning a lot about Jazz, general Music Theory, and enjoying some very nice tracks.

This issue concerns me a lot because I'm writing an MLP/FLCL crossover, and music is pretty damn crucial to both shows, especially the second: the fight scenes were storyboarded after the songs were selected, and the synchronization is so tight it borders on reverse-Mickey Mousing. Example,

How to achieve such an effect in script, and what music or theme I should select, are questions that are bothering me a lot.

In particular, I want to do it in a way that works well for a written medium, not just "wannabe animation that doesn't have the resources and thus writes a bloated thing full of shallow physical descriptions as a cheap replacement".

Maybe I should just go full-on Troper-way and use the Standard Snippet list? Most of them have the double advantage of being instrumental and Public Domain.

edited 16th Aug '12 10:51:12 AM by TheHandle

Perhaps I should omit the desperately. Would that help?

But seriously it's not a matter for debate, no matter how much Handle here tries to push their nonsensical connection of a directly integrated part of the narrative with the concepts of songfic as it is actually practiced.

The fact remains that in reaching outside the story you are committing the Eighth Deadly Sin Of Writing, which is forcing the reader to acknowledge they're reading something. Other people have phrased it as flow, but it goes deeper than flow, because it not only interrupts the narrative, it forces the acknowledgement that it is a narrative and thereby damages suspension of disbelief.

There is never a valid reason to knowingly damage your chances of the reader buying into your work. If you have that, you have everything; if you don't, you have nothing.

I like when fics link to videos of specific songs. That's about as close to a songfic as I can stand.

I think it depends on whether the lyrics of the song can stand on their own without the melody, which they can't in the vast majority of cases. However, I think there are some songs that are sufficiently engrained into popular culture that they could be inserted into the fic either by means of using it as a part of the story (having the characters discuss the song) or using it as an epigraph. Not sure if it works when you interrupt the story with it, but I don't think it's an automatic black mark if it does, mainly because referring to a song that's outside the story doesn't necessarily pull the reader out of it as long as it makes sense for the music to exist inside the story.

I have heard of cases where authors insert prompts to listen to certain songs at certain points of the story in an attempt to give the story a kind of soundtrack. I suspect that it fails more often than not, but I think that it could be done well as long as they just start the chapter off with one and don't interrupt the story with it.

edited 16th Aug '12 12:11:02 PM by JapaneseTeeth

Song lyrics, at the most basic level, are poetry. If it is impossible to use song lyrics in a fic, then it is likewise impossible to use poetry in a fic, which is obviously not true. Given a good enough rhythm by the lyrics, a reader could extrapolate a melody in their head, or at least get a feeling for the music involved. I've definitely done it before, with things like Lord Of The Rings like Handle mentioned.

edited 16th Aug '12 12:39:02 PM by PerpetualLurker

Well, it could be that (like Mao Of The Deliverance) the fic itself is pretty darn good at doing all that stuff on its own, and the author is suggesting a musical score to enhance it even further.

I debate this statement!

Music is primarily an audio thing. It can be combined with visuals to express character, story, emotion, comedy, etc. This is a good example of music used in a scene to get a point across.

But this only works in certain mediums. Prose is not one of those mediums, because you can't hear the music. And that completely defeats the purpose of music. Slapping down song lyrics achieves nothing that can't be achieved through a better technique.

The closest thing to a Song Fic that I would accept is a story where the characters listening to music is important to the plot. For example, a character listening to a song from his youth that makes him start reminiscing about the past, allowing us to get to know the character better. THEN you can begin to justify adding in song lyrics if you're going to explore their significance to the character.

But just chucking song lyrics onto a page and expecting it to mean anything is bad form. It's extremely off-putting and creates some real negative prejudices about the rest of the work.

edited 16th Aug '12 9:23:22 PM by TheBatPencil

Saying something like a song fic can't be made in a good way only means you can't make it in a good way. This goes for most concepts in writing. There are practically no objectively defined concepts or constructs you can't use well in writing. Some may be hard, but there aren't really any black and white truths in writing.

I've read a few very good song fics, though I wouldn't be able to find them now. The songs were real, and the author recommended listening to them. However, the song text in itself worked with the rest of the fic. Since they exist, it's possible to write them.

The hard part is making the song text (you're working with text here, not a musical tune) resonate strongly enough with the rest of the story that it doesn't pull you away from it. Most of the time, though, the song is just one the author thinks is good and sort of fits the story. That's far from enough. The song needs to tell the same story. Exactly the same story, though not necessarily from the same point of view, or with the same tone.

One of the best ones had a story as happy as your average bubblegum pop song, while the song text was more akin to Cup of Coffee. The result was a happy surface that would crumble at any time.

Summa summarum, there's nothing inherently wrong with song fics, but they're very hard to write well.

That video is not allowed in my Land. Could it be that you are referring to that famous coffee cup poem by Jacques Prevert (comes with English translation at the bottom of the page.

No, the song ''Cup of Coffee'' by Garbage. Not that I never made the connection between that poem and the song, which is amazing in itself, since I don't really read poems.

edited 17th Aug '12 5:16:49 AM by AnotherDuck

—->There is never a valid reason to knowingly damage your chances of the reader buying into your work.

What about Medium Awareness? If songfics are bad because they rely on pulling something from beyond the fourth wall and violate Willing Suspension of Disbelief, shouldn't Medium Awareness (which never really seems to bug people) be bad as well for acknowledging there is a Fourth Wall and also violate Willing Suspension of Disbelief?

edited 10th Feb '13 3:45:24 PM by MsAmiClassified

How, exactly, is one supposed to avoid song-fics if they want canon-compliant fics of musicals? As a member of several musical fandoms, I've always felt shafted by anti-song-fic rules.