Why Music Lives Inside Every Story

I've often been asked why music finds its way into so many of my novels.

The simplest answer is that I don't think stories and music have ever been separate. Long before we remember the details of a particular moment, we often remember the song that was playing. A melody has a remarkable way of preserving what memory alone cannot. It carries us back to people we've loved, places we've left behind, conversations we've almost forgotten, and versions of ourselves that still exist somewhere beneath the years.

Music doesn't simply accompany our lives. It quietly archives them.

Still Here did not begin with a song. The story came first - the characters, their relationships, and the emotions waiting beneath everything they weren't yet ready to say. Music found its way in later, as it so often does in my writing, becoming part of how those characters remembered, connected, and understood one another.

Sometimes music opens the door to a story. Other times, the story is already there, and the music helps me hear what has been living inside it all along. It doesn't dictate what I write, but it can deepen the atmosphere, reveal something about a character, or give shape to an emotion that words haven't quite reached yet.

I don't think that's unique to writers. We've all had a song catch us off guard, one we haven't thought about in years, and found ourselves somewhere else entirely for a few seconds: a childhood kitchen, a long drive at sunset, a conversation that changed everything. Music collapses time that way. Stories do too. They remind us that who we were and who we've become are never as far apart as we imagine.

When I write, I'm always chasing that same feeling - not the song itself, but what it wakes up. The memory just beneath the surface. The emotion that refuses to be explained and somehow makes perfect sense once it lands on the page.

Not every story begins with a soundtrack, but every story has a rhythm of its own. A tempo for each character, a cadence to each conversation, a silence that means something every time.

The longer I write, the more convinced I become that stories aren't built from words alone. They're built from atmosphere, memory, and the quiet echoes of everything we've felt but never quite knew how to say.

Music simply helps me hear them.

Until next time, may you always find beauty in the quiet places where stories begin.

Warmly,
Sheridan Laine