There’s much discussion among songwriters (and creative writers in general) about using sensory details to engage the inner senses of your audience.
Sensory details work so well because they appeal to the listener’s emotions. Sensations tug at our desires and fears; joys and sorrows.
For starters, you can use sensory details to evoke a world that we’ll want to step into. If a lyricist describes heavy red orbs dangling just beyond reach in an apple orchard, I want those apples. I want that orchard. Describe it well, and mentally I will let you take me there.
Your selection of details determines the scene’s emotional tone: describe baskets filled with round apples and ladders leaning against trunks, and you create an atmosphere of wellbeing that really comes through to the audience in a natural, visceral way.
But if you were to describe a fallen apple swarming with pests, that’d change the tone a bit, wouldn’t it?
Imagery can also create lifelike characters that your audience will empathize with. If you describe that moment when a baby’s face begins to twist into a Greek tragedy mask and howl, it pains us.
Scenes of pain, suffering, joy… don’t underestimate the power of describing human emotion. People around you constantly reveal what they’re thinking and feeling without saying a word; you can use these nonverbal cues in a lyric to reveal a character’s thoughts and feelings.
- Body posture
- Facial expression
- Clothing
- Hairstyle
- Gestures
- Movement
- Interactions
Show us these things and allow us to draw our own conclusions about a character’s inner being. It’s much more powerful that way–we humans are quite biased to trust the evidence of our senses, even our inner senses.
Assuming that your current lyric is descriptive or narrative in nature, does it use enough imagery to keep us involved?
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