Most songwriters start writing lots of songs every year, yet the number that they finish writing is typically much lower.
Some of this is due to the process problems we mentioned in the previous post—disorganization, lack of focus, etc.—but other obstacles arise because you’re genuinely puzzled by the song itself.
If you’ve ever struggled to finish a lyric, you’ll find something helpful in today’s post.
In case you’re experiencing what we call second verse hell: do you have a complete song section, at least? If so, what other sections might you employ to develop the lyric?
Free write around a topic related to what you’ve written so far. Free writing is especially useful for finding personal connections to the song at hand, generating lots of raw material and hopefully prompting some imaginative leaps.
Open a favorite book and point to a random word. This gets you out of your own head a bit and can produce some interesting collisions. Might you somehow use that random word as a suggestion for working on your lyric? Stretch. Make the word fit the project somehow. If you’re writing a love song and you open the dictionary to the word “coffee”, experiment with using coffee imagery; coffee as a metaphor… you get the idea. If you don’t like the result, just scrap it and try another random page.
If you have a high-impact phrase or title to work with, your job is to build up to it. Learn to recognize payoff lines and work to set them up—this is similar to the way you would set up the punch line of a joke for maximum surprise and impact.
If you have a payoff line that works as a refrain, try brainstorming a dozen different ways to set up that same payoff line. If you’re writing a song that revolves around a chorus, you’ll especially want to find several different angles of entry so that the chorus really pays off every time we hear it.
Research. Writing a nautical song? Read about the history of a particular ship. Read about a particular captain. Listen to sea chanteys. Wear a paper captain’s hat in the bathtub and add salt to the water. Anything you can learn about the subject of a song could potentially be useful. A trip to the library can be very fruitful, but a simple Google search can also serve the purpose sometimes.
Bring in a collaborator. If you want a totally new and different perspective on the material, try bringing in a trusted collaborator to finish what you started. Another songwriter might see connections
Rearrange. The first line you write might end up being the song’s last line. Likewise, the first verse that you write might not be the first verse. A song when it’s finished and recorded is linear, sure, but the process of writing can—and often should—be nonlinear. This is why I like to write lyrics in a word processor; it’s easy to experiment with moving sections around that way. If you prefer working longhand, try index cards.
Search your idea file. Keep an eye out for any fragments or ideas that can be used in your current song.
If you’d like to see an example of a lyric written slowly, with many obstacles and intensive problem-solving, check out my public songwriting experiment called Life Cycle of a Summer Song.
Impose structure upon the lyric. Try enforcing a rhyme scheme on whatever you’ve written so far. Many songs use the same rhyme scheme in each verse, perhaps using a different one for the chorus. You may also want to experiment with a set number of stressed syllables per line—this will make life much easier for whoever’s setting the lyric to music later on.
Take the lyric with you. Carry the lyric with you for a full day, either physically or mentally. Tape the lyric sheet to your mirror or to the fridge before you go to bed tonight. First thing tomorrow morning, read the lyric to yourself, jot down any ideas you may have, and try to keep the lyric in the back of your mind all day.
A satisfying progression. Perhaps the most important thing in a great lyric is that it goes somewhere. There’s some semblance of plot, development of an atmosphere, raising of stakes, shift in perspective, success or failure, etc. Ask yourself: “Then what happens? What’s next?” Some of the most satisfying moments for listeners are those in which there’s a reversal of fortune, a resolution, a realization. We like to be taken on some kind of journey—and even if we end up right back home, we want to be glad we came along.