Level Up Your Lyric Writing: A Creative Guide to Songwriting Like a Pro

1. Introduction: [MUSIC] Have you ever listened to a song and wondered how on earth the songwriter was able to come up with words that were so creative, clever, or even surprising? Hi, my name is April. I'm a singer-songwriter and music teacher. In this course, I'm going to be giving you all of the tools you need to write amazing lyrics. I've been a professional musician, songwriter, and educator for the last 10 years. I'm a graduate of Berklee College of Music, and I have a YouTube channel where I talk all about the ins and outs of songwriting. Throughout this class, we're going to be learning how to create characters who feel real, and emotionally compelling. We're going to be learning how to create elaborate, colorful worlds. We're going to be learning about how to use clever turns of phrase in order to come up with lyrics that are unexpected and really clever. If you've always felt like lyric writing is the hardest part of the songwriting process. If you've been writing for awhile, but right now you're just in a rut or if you've really love writing and just want to learn some cool new techniques, this class is going to give you all you need to write like a pro, whether you feel inspired or not. I am so excited to share all of my songwriting knowledge with you. I can't wait to see all of the amazing things you'll create. 2. Project Overview: [MUSIC] We're going to be kicking things off in our very first lesson by talking about two distinct songwriting styles, plotting and panting, and then we're going to figure out what type of songwriter you are. Lesson two is all about setting the scene and getting ready to write your lyrics. So we're going to be figuring out who is singing, who are they singing to, and when all of this is taking place, by figuring out the point of view and tense of your song. Lesson three, we're going to be diving into character. How do your characters think, act, and speak.. We're going to be looking into your characters points of view and how they see the world in order to write really great first person narration as well as dialogue. In lesson four, we're going to be discussing one of my very favorite things to teach, the five S's of songwriting. We're going to be basing our lyrics around simplicity, story, senses, specifics and subtext in order to create multi dimensional characters and scenes that you can really immerse a listener in. A common struggle that I tend to see with students who start with lyrics first, is figuring out how long each line should be and figuring out how all of those lines should relate to each other. In less than five, we're going to be taking a look at stresses, beats, and breaths. Metaphor is one of the most amazing tools to use in songwriting in order to make your story clearer and in order to help your listener to really latch onto what it is, you have to say, so in lesson six, we're going to be diving headfirst into Metaphor. In Lesson 7, we're going to be playing around with listener expectations. When to do exactly what your listener expects, and when to change it up and do something completely out of the blue. Knowing what your listener expects is really important because it can help you to craft something that feels comfortable or something that has a lot of tension and keeps them on the edges of their seats. Some of the most exciting things in great lyrics are clever turns of phrase. So in Lesson 8, we're going to be diving into wit, irony and double meanings. Sometimes the way you say things can be just as important as what you're actually saying. So in Lesson 9, we're going to be talking all about word sounds and by the time you get to Lesson 10, you'll know so much about lyric writing that we're just going to be adding ****** on top of everything, including a ton of really exciting rhetorical devices. These are really amazing tools that can take your song from good to great and really elevate your listener's experience. In our final lesson, we're going to be tying up all of the loose ends and finishing our songs. We'll be editing things, making sure that everything flows beautifully, and then you're done. [MUSIC] You'll have written an entire beautiful song and successfully leveled up your lyric writing, so let's get started. 3. What Kind of Lyric Writer Are You?: [MUSIC] To get us started on our lyric writing journey, we're going to be talking about what kind of lyric writer you are. There are as many different ways to start a song as there are songwriters. But today, we're going to be focusing on two specific styles of lyric writing. A plotter is somebody who starts by creating an outline and basically plans their entire song out ahead of time. Plotting is really great if you're the type of person who tends to get stuck halfway through a song, or if you feel like you just need a little bit of guidance as you're writing. I tend to recommend the styles specifically for people who are more analytically or visually minded, or for people who are brand new to songwriting. It's really useful to be able to have something to keep going back to. That way you don't feel like you have to keep coming up with new ideas as you're going. Plotting is awesome because you get all of the hard work done at the beginning of the process, and then you can really focus in on crafting the actual language. It's also awesome because you're way less likely to get stuck halfway through. Plotters are often great at writing really meticulous, really thought-provoking lyrics, and they're also great at genre-specific formulas. Take, for instance, Leonard Cohen or Max Martin, both of these artists really spent a lot of time thinking about the themes and formulas of their music ahead of time, which really shows when you look at the final products. Pantsers, on the other hand, fly by the seat of their pants. Meaning that whatever comes up during the process goes right on that page. There's no outline whatsoever and the pantser is able to just come up with stuff on the fly. This is really great for people who don't really like following an outline or who just feel like they're creative enough to just keep going. Pantsing is a great way to surprise yourself by coming up with unexpected twists or plot turns. It's also perfect for people who write from a really emotional place and want their songs to just be an outlet in the moment. Freestyle rappers like Snoop Dogg, Kendrick Lamar, or Busta Rhymes are really great examples of people who can just spit stuff on the fly and come up with great pants lyrics. Both of these writing styles take time and practice to master, so if you're not perfect right away, that's totally okay. You also might find that the style you've been writing in for a while might not exactly fit who you are as a writer, so go ahead and switch things up just to see what fits for you. When choosing whether to plot or pants your song Here are some things you might want to consider. If you tend to get stuck halfway through writing a song, have trouble thinking of ideas, or have to be inspired to write, you're probably a plotter. Since plotters do best with a little bit of guidance, I've included my outline in the description of this course below. If you're a plotter, you can get started by just clicking on that and taking a look through it. You might also benefit from bullet-pointed lists or writing prompts as you're trying to get your ideas on paper. If however, you finish an outline and you no longer feel like writing the song, you start with a writing prompt but wind up writing about something completely different, or you come up with tons of ideas, but if you don't write the whole song immediately, you tend to forget it, or you decide that you don't like it, you're probably a pantser. Pantser tends to do best without an outline. Don't bother with clicking that link in the description, instead, you can write in a more stream of consciousness way. Just remember that you're doing all of your work at the end of the process. That means that while the plotters are writing their songs, you're going to be primarily focused on editing. Personally, I like to take a little bit of time between the writing and the editing processes, just because it makes it a little bit easier to detach from my artistic self. I can take off that writer hat and put on the editing hat. That way my emotions and my ego don't necessarily get bruised by any changes or edits I make later on. As we go through this course, tried to find the best style for you as a writer. If the answer is both, or neither, or a mix of the two, that's also totally okay. You might find that you don't fit neatly into a box, or you might choose one and then decide later that the other might actually fit you better, and that's totally fine. This is your song and your writing process, so you can be whatever kind of writer you want to be even if it doesn't fit neatly into one of those categories. Right Right now you have my permission to change up your writing style, to deviate from your outline, to color outside the lines. There are no wrong answers; this is about finding what's best for you. Let's get started with our next lesson in which we're going to be talking all about point of view and tense. 4. Point of View & Tense: Now, that we know you're writing style, let's talk about tense and point of view. Point of view or POV refers to how your narrator and your listener are related to the story. There are three major types of POV and each one does something a little bit different for the story. We're going to be going through all three of them and figuring out which one you're going to use in your song. In songwriting specifically, the most common point of view is by far first person. First person just means that the narrator is speaking from their own perspective. I think this is really popular because songwriting tends to be very personal and emotional unlike say, a novel or an article. In order to use first person in your songwriting, you're going to be using words like I, me or my. Here are some examples of first person. In first person you also get to decide whether or not your listener is part of the story. Your narrator can either be singing, "I love you," or "I love him." Either way totally works and they're both really valid ways to use first person. If you want to speak from the heart or really let your listener know what's going on in your narrators head, definitely start with first person. First person is also really great for people who are just getting started with lyric writing because it feels really natural and it's nice and comfortable to get started with. Second person means that the listener is going to experience the song through their own perspective. You can accomplish this by using words like you and your and imagining that you're speaking about your listener. By putting the listener in the driver's seat you're able to influence the way that they're thinking and feeling, which can be both a little bit uncomfortable and also really powerful and intense for a listener. Second person is a lot less common than first person, but you can find it in these examples. Finally, third person means that the narrator and the listener are nowhere to be found in the story. In order to use third person you should use words like he, she, they, him, her, their or his, hers, theirs. You can also name your characters. You should use third person if you want your listener to be able to see multiple different perspectives. That way you can bounce around from one character to the next. It does however, make you feel a little bit more removed from the story. Keep in mind that it's a lot less intimate than some of the other points of view. Now, some songs might actually feel a little bit less clear cut. For instance, in Eminem's Lose Yourself, we go on this journey from being really passive participants to active ones because our verses are in third person, whereas our chorus is in second person. I wouldn't recommend doing this switcheroo all the time. But in this particular context I think it works really well. Because the song is all about seizing the day and taking a chance, so in going from passive to active we're doing exactly what the lyrics are telling us to do. Avril Lavigne's Sk8er Boi does something really similar in that it starts in third person and then at the very end when you least expected she switches to first person, bringing herself from a passive participant to an active participant, which is really interesting and it creates this unexpected twist ending when we realize that Avril was part of the story all along. [MUSIC] Once you've decided on a point of view you can start thinking about the tense of your song. We're going to be focusing in on the three tenses, which are past, present, and future. Tense is similar to point of view in that it can make you feel closer or further away from the story. For instance, when you use past tense the things that are happening in the story have already happened. They're in the past. We don't have to worry about them anymore. We're just finding out what happened. We're being caught up. There isn't very much tension in past tense, but it does feel very comfortable. It allows us to feel like we're having a conversation with the person telling the story. We're just listening and taking in what happened. In present tense there's a lot more tension because everything in the song is happening right now. We're on the edge of our seats figuring out what's currently going on. I think present tense is really great if your character is writing a letter, if they're talking to someone about what's happening right now or if they're telling us how they currently feel. Writing your song in future tense is going to make everything feel much less real and much less grounded. Because the future hasn't actually happened yet, everything in future tense is purely speculative. It's all very dreamy and far away. It's also a great way to give your listener a sense of anticipation, hope or even suspense. Just like we talked about with point of view, sometimes we can decide to use a mix of tenses. We might start in one place and then move somewhere completely different. Using past tense and then switching to present tense, for instance, can give your listener a really good sense of where your character was and what originally happened, and now how they're dealing with it. Switching the tense can allow us to see where our character has been, where they are, and where they're going, as well as their aspirations, hopes, and fears. It can also help us to switch to another point of view. For instance, in Billy Joel's Scenes From An Italian Restaurant, he switches between vignettes, each one in a different tense. The first is in future tense, the second is in present tense, and in the third section he switches from past tense and the narrator actually switches to third person. This technique helps us to differentiate between all of the different stories within the story. Now that you know all about tense and point of view, I want you to start thinking about which one you're going to use for your story. In our next lesson we're going to talk all about characters, how they speak, how they behave, and how they think. 5. Character Voices: [MUSIC] Now that you've thought a little bit about the tense and point of view of your song. This is a great opportunity to start thinking about characters. Different people speak and think and behave in different ways. This is a really fun time to start thinking about how you want your characters to sound. When you're writing dialogue and first-person narration, there are lots of things to consider, including, what voice does your character have? What words do they use? What's their accent or dialect? It's also a great idea to start thinking about things that they might talk about. Colin Meloy of the band, the Decemberists really likes to write about folklore and history. In his songs, you'll notice that his language is very complex and verbose. It's also dense. You might also notice that there are lots of historical and literary allusions littered throughout. Lin-Manuel Miranda, on the other hand, also loves to use literary and historical illusions, but his language tends to be a lot more current and he likes to punctuate it with lots of slang words. His use of language makes his characters feel both relatable and intelligent. It gives us a lot about the inner worlds of these characters. At the same time, the weekend, for instance, really likes to use modern language that feels very conversational. This makes it feel natural while still being exciting and clever. Here's some things to consider, whether you're writing from your own or somebody else's perspective. What are the norms of the genre you're writing in? Hip hop, jazz, rock, country metal, each one of these, and every other genre under the sun has different norms when it comes to character voices. If for instance, you're writing in rap or hip hop or even country music, it makes a lot of sense to use modern language, probably with a lot of slang words. You can use words like y'all or yoh in these genres in particular, these characters tend to be coming from very honest raw, truthful places. It's okay, for instance, for them to talk about DMing someone on Instagram are putting in their AirPods. It's also totally normal in these genres, as well as in rock or metal, to use swear words. Contrast that with adult contemporary artists like Josh Grubbing or Celine Dion. I really don't think that those artists are going to sound their most authentic if they're using swear words or even modern language. How old is your character? The age of your character can determine a lot about the way they see the world and about the way that they speak. For instance, a character who was a teenager in the eighties is much more likely to use words like fly and gnarly whereas somebody who was a teenager in the 2000s like I was, is much more likely to use words like sweet or sketchy. Your character's age is also going to determine a lot about what they'd like to talk about. For instance, if your song is about childhood nostalgia, the age of your character is going to determine how far away they are from the events of their childhood, as well as the things that they focus on within that perception of childhood. For instance, a millennial like me is much more likely to think about childhood as a time before responsibility and student loans. Whereas someone who's maybe in their eighties or nineties is going to think a lot about how much has changed in the world since they were in their youth. Where and when do they live. As I mentioned before, the age of your character can do a lot to determine how they see the world and how their actual speech patterns work. Basing your story in a different time or a different place is also going to determine those things, as well as the actual environment surrounding your character. Are they making a call on their rotary phone? Are they using words like thee, thou and thy? Or are they taking a ride and they're flying car? Also pay attention to the fact that different places around the world or around the universe, if you're writing an alien song, are going to have different access to technology and resources, as well as different accents and different dialects. Finally, if you speak multiple languages, your characters totally can too. It's very common in various Latin genres, as well as in K-pop to switch back and forth between two different languages. This technique can be used in any genre and with any combination of languages, just keep in mind that the different languages that a character speaks can determine a lot about their speech patterns and how they see the world. If you're a plotter, try answering these questions on a piece of paper. For pincers, it can help to practice speaking aloud as your character. Think of it like theatrical improv. It's also totally okay to write from your own perspective or to use your own daily conversational language. Once you've had a moment to think about how your [MUSIC] characters are going to speak. Go ahead and move along to the next lesson, where we're going to be diving into what I call the five S's of lyric writing. 6. The 5 S's of Lyric Writing: [MUSIC] In this lesson, we're going to be talking about my five S's of lyric writing, which are simplicity, story, senses, specifics, and subtext. The first S is for simplicity, so you should start your song as simply as possible. Think of a main idea, a moral, or a message that you want to get across to your listener, just one simple thing, and then you can build your entire story from there. Any message can be a great main idea, but it's really important here to think simply. Here are some examples of simple main ideas. Notice that each of these ideas starts with an emotional core. I love you, is happy, I'm angry about politics, is angry, and I miss the old days, is sad. If you're feeling stumped for a main idea, start with how you're feeling right now and then just work backwards, what's making you feel this way? Great songs can come from any emotion under the Sun, so don't worry if you're not feeling particularly sad or anxiety, or if you don't have a beautiful love story to write about. That's totally okay. No matter where you're at, just start from a place of authenticity and your song is going to be better for it. If you're having trouble thinking of what emotion you should write a song about, you can also check out a helpful chart like this one. Too many conflicting emotions can make your song feel unfocused or even confusing, so make sure that you're sticking to one thing to start. Then it's always easier to add more stuff in than it is to take things away. [MUSIC] In order to write a compelling song that your audience is really going to latch on to start by telling you a story. All you need to do to tell a story is start with a beginning, go on to a middle, and then end your song. In the beginning, introduce your narrator, your setting, their motivations or goals, and any other pieces of information that help you to set your scene. The middle of your story is where the conflict happens. Why isn't your character getting what they want? What standing in their way? Finally, the end of your song is the resolution. What does your character do to get what they want and does it work? Do they get the thing that they want? For this example, I'm going to be plotting my song using pop song form. Now you can use any form that you like. But I really liked this one because it's really super common. I'm going to use I love you as my main idea. If you've decided to pants your song, you can either just kick back and relax or you can take some notes, anything that's really going to help you jog that creative voice in your head, because in just a moment you're going to start improvising. If on the other hand, you've decided to plot your song, we're going to start by filling in all the spots that say chorus with your main idea, and then we're going to fill in our verses with simple short explanations of the beginning, middle, and end of your story. Once you have that basic skeleton of your story figured out, it's time to start using your senses and getting specific. Using your senses and specificity in your lyric writing can take your song from good to great by making your listener feel like they're part of the story. The five senses are sight, smell, taste, touch, and sound. But you can also include other senses like movement and balance. Once you've started thinking in terms of your senses, it's really crucial to get specific. Specifics in your songwriting can really allow your listener to feel like they're inside of the story. For instance, it's not very compelling to just say, I read a book, but it's much more interesting if I tell you what book I read and what chapter I'm on, and what's just happened to the characters. Let's say I want my character to be swimming in a lake, I'm going to start using senses and specifics by picturing my setting and then writing down what each sense would be experiencing. Notice that these images are super detailed and specific. By telling you these details, I'm giving you the ability to envision the story in your own mind, instead of me just saying, I fell in love at the lake. When I go to actually write my song, I don't necessarily have to use all of these images, but it can be really helpful throughout the process to just have an ongoing list. Take this moment to pause the video and write out some bullet points for your own song. The final S is for subtext. Subtext just means that you're making your listener read between the lines of everything that you're saying instead of outwardly saying it. My favorite use of subtext isn't Bob Dylan's song Most of the Time, which is a stunning breakup song about a man who's trying to convince himself that he doesn't love his ex partner. With every verse of the song, the narrator is telling us about how most of the time he's totally fine. He wouldn't change anything about his life, he is doing great, but the subtext is that most of the time is not right now. Right now, he's totally miserable and he completely misses this other person, but it doesn't matter because most of the time he is good. As the verses go on, his language gets more and more specific and sense driven, giving us more and more reasons to doubt him. To write great subtext for your song, start by thinking of the opposite of the emotion you're feeling. For instance, if you're writing a song about how sad you are, start by thinking, I'm doing completely fine, and then work throughout your song to try to figure out exactly why it is that you're not doing fine, and try to get your audience to guess. From my love song, I might want to use the phrase, I'm not in love, or I can even go with, I don't want to be in love, and then it becomes my listeners job to figure out that I'm lying. If you're plotting your lyrics, take this moment to start outlining. Write down your main idea, plot out the beginning, middle, and end of your story, and if you're still working on it, that's okay. I'll be giving you even more tips for finishing that outline later. If on the other hand, your pantsing your song, go ahead and write your first verse and chorus. Have fun improvising and don't worry about the quality or the form of your lyrics, this is just a first draft and we'll get into the nitty-gritty a little bit later. You hereby have my permission to write silly or overly dramatic or even bad lyrics. It's all totally okay. Just make sure that you keep going, because otherwise, you're going to get really good at not writing songs. [LAUGHTER] As you work through all of the stuff we just outlined in this video, make sure to be nice to yourself. In our next lesson, we're going to be talking about beats, stresses, and breaths. 7. Stresses, Beats, & Breaths: [MUSIC] One of the trickiest aspects of writing lyrics before you've written chords and melody is in trying to figure out how long each line should be. Because eventually you're going to have to take all of the words you've written and turn them into music. Many people, especially poets turned lyric writers and first-time songwriters really struggled to figure out how many syllables or beats or breaths should happen in any given line. The truth is, of course, that it totally depends on you as a writer, as well as the song that you're trying to write. But here are a couple of things that you can consider as you go ahead and choose your line lengths. Firstly, start thinking about what your song is about and the type of character you're writing for. Most of the time, the actual number of syllables isn't going to matter that much, but in a couple of examples, you might find that the syllable count does a good job of painting a character who's really anxious or meticulous. Absolutely Cuckoo by The Magnetic Fields is a great example of using the syllable count in order to paint a really neurotic character. This character is definitely afraid that someone is going to fall in love with him and then realize how nuts he actually is. As you can see, the lyrics have a stream of consciousness feel to them. But when you take a closer look, you'll see that he put quite a lot of effort into them. In fact, every single line in this entire song is seven syllables long. Another funny example is Haiku by Tally Hall, in which the protagonist is trying desperately to write a haiku for this person he loves, but keeps struggling to actually get a haiku to form. A haiku is made up of three lines which follow a very specific syllable count, five, seven, five. So by paying attention to that syllable count, you start to notice that these attempts of haiku's are failing miserably, which subverts the expectation in your head of hearing five, seven, five. It also tells us a lot about our character and about the type of circumstance that we're in. [MUSIC] The next thing I want you to think about is both your genre and your vocal stylings. For instance, if you're writing really traditional Americana or folk, you're probably not going to add a lot of trills or a lot of fancy stuff. Whereas, if you're writing an R&B song, you're much more likely to use all sorts of vocal acrobatics. Take the song, I Will Always Love You by Dolly Parton, especially as it was sung by Whitney Houston. Reading the words on the page, the syllable count is already pretty loose. It's clear that Dolly didn't really care as much about the specific syllable count as she did on the emphasis and feel of the song which we'll talk a little bit more about later. But when you look at Whitney's version, all of that goes completely out the window and it starts to look more like this. This includes all of her gorgeous crazy runs but it doesn't even start to take into account space for breathing or longer or more held-out notes. All this to say in most examples, the actual syllable count isn't going to matter that much and instead I want you to start thinking about word stresses. The word stress here refers to the words that we emphasize when we sing or speak. So to practice this, try saying this sentence out loud. Now, notice which words you emphasized. For instance, I emphasized, let's go to Coney Island to ride the spinning teacups. Now keep in mind here that if you didn't say this phrasing exactly the same way that I did, that's completely okay. Different people are going to say things in different ways and they're going to emphasize different things depending on the context of the situation. For instance, if instead of saying it the way I said it, you decided to emphasize the word spinning, let's go to Coney Island to ride the spinning teacups. That implies to me that something isn't quite working, that maybe the ride isn't spinning. I want to go to Coney Island and ride the ride when it's working, not when it's not spinning. You could say the same thing about the word go. Let's go to Coney Island as opposed to just talking about it and sitting here, regardless of which specific words you emphasized, you might notice that both of these lines have three stress points. Without chords or a melody to add these words to, it doesn't really matter how many stresses there are in each line but what you'll notice in this particular example is that the line lengths match. The fact that there's a matching number of stresses between these two lines makes them feel really stable and comfortable, almost finished. This would pair really nicely with something that feels [NOISE] settled and easy. Whereas, if I actually go in there and change the number of emphasized words, the lyric now feels a little bit lopsided, but it does still make you want to keep listening. I think this is an awesome way to surprise your listener and make them interested in the story, especially if it's a really unstable story. So at this point, we've discovered that it doesn't necessarily matter how many syllables or beats or emphasized words there are in each line. It's really all about context. But one thing that we do always need to account for is the fact that we as human beings have lungs, and we need those lungs in order to function. So we have to breathe sometimes. I recommend reading your lyrics out loud every once in a while just to make sure that it flows nicely and that you're able to take those breaths. In our next lesson, we're going to take a look at one of my very favorite things, metaphor. 8. Metaphor: [MUSIC] One of the most common ways that songwriters make their songs more interesting is by using metaphor. Metaphor is an amazing tool to have, because it can help you to explain yourself in a clearer way, and it can also make your song more visually interesting. In the song Titanium, the narrator is trying to express that he is strong, but instead of just saying I am strong, he decides to go a step further and compare himself to something that we know to be strong, titanium. This gives us a really specific picture in our minds, and it allows us to further latch on to the fact that he is strong. Same thing goes for Katy Perry's Firework. She could just say, "You are awesome," but that wouldn't really give us any visuals or anything more interesting than just knowing that we're awesome. Instead, she goes a step further and she says, "Baby, you're a firework." We know that fireworks are awesome. We know that they're beautiful and super cool. In knowing that, hey, we're a firework, we can connect those two ideas. I'm awesome, fireworks are awesome. Overall, metaphor makes for a much more sense-oriented and visceral experience. When we look at that last example, signed, sealed, delivered, you'll notice that Stevie Wonder doesn't actually say the phrase, "I am a letter." But because he uses a bunch of words that we associate with letters or with packages, signed, sealed, delivered, we automatically know that that's what he's talking about, and he doesn't actually have to go about saying that he is a letter. In order to use metaphor, all you have to do is compare something tangible to something abstract. Pick a concept that's really out there and try to figure out an image or something in real life that it connects to. For instance, love is a squeaky step, or life is digging a hole to China in the backyard. Try to avoid comparisons you've already heard before like, love is a rose, because those are cliche. They get to the point where we've heard them over and over and they lose all of their meaning. Instead, try to come up with something original and strange and out there, because you're going to have a much easier time thinking of cool things to say. Try finishing these sentences with something unexpected and concrete. Extra points for being really specific. Once you have some ideas that feel interesting, try comparing those two things. For instance, how is love like a squeaky step? Maybe you try to avoid it. Maybe it wakes you up in the middle of the night. Get creative and try to think outside of the box. Another way you can go about choosing your metaphor is by looking at the sense description exercise we did a couple of lessons ago. In my sense description list, there were a bunch of images that would make interesting metaphors. The lake could represent new love, because love is refreshing. Maybe you're afraid to get in too deep, so you just dip your toe in, or maybe love is transparent and you can see clearly. Right now I want you to take all of these ideas you're starting to brainstorm, and try to think about how they could work in your song. What metaphors are you going to use? Remember though, to only stick with one metaphor at a time, because mixing your metaphors can get confusing. Once you have an idea of the metaphor or metaphors that you'd like to use in your song, you can move right along to the next lesson, where we're going to be talking about intensity, build-ups, and expectations. 9. Expectations: [MUSIC] One of the best ways to get your listener invested in your song is to create an awesome buildup. By ramping up the intensity or the excitement in your song, you're able to play on your listener's expectations and as the writer, it's up to you whether those expectations get met or not. The plot, setting and characters of your story can help you to determine the best way to handle listener expectations. If, for instance, you're writing a pure and sweet love song in which everybody winds up happy at the end. It makes perfect sense to go along with every one of your listener's expectations. But if however, you're writing a story about a really erratic or angry character, or if your story takes place at a carnival and you're looking through fun house mirrors, it wouldn't really make sense for those listener expectations to be met in the same way. Breaking away from those expectations can really help your listener to empathize with your characters, especially in situations where things feel a little bit off. In this lesson, we're going to do a little bit of a deep dive into the song, I hope, by Gaby Barrett, which is a fantastic song if you haven't already heard it. If you are new to this song, you should take a couple of minutes and give it a listen spoiler free before we actually get into the weeds. How amazing was that song? She does a lot of really clever things here. But one of the things I love the most about it is how much she plays with your expectations. When we hear the first verse, she sets us up to have a couple of really specific expectations. First, by using the word hope and images like smiling on the other end of a phone or singing along to the radio, or even the drive, a feeling like a blur. She sets us up with positive associations. We expect our narrator to be happy, or at the very least happy for this ex partner. And because of all of these happy images, we assume that this is going to be a song about moving on. The second trap that we fall into is in believing that this is the beginning of the story. The song uses the phrase, I hope to set up her wishes for the future. We don't expect her to ruminate or even mention much about the relationship they once had. We anticipate hearing her say she's ready to find someone new, or that she's going to learn from her past mistakes and be a happier, wiser person. There are tons of ridiculously famous and popular songs that are about just that. This honestly feels like it could just be a continuation of that trend. These images and well-wishes continue into the chorus, further convincing us of her intent to move on. But then we get the best part of the entire song. The hook in which she gives us that amazing plot twist. Then I hope she cheats like you did on me. After a solid minute of lies and deceptions from our unreliable narrator, we realized that we're not at the beginning of this story were right in the middle of the action. She's not wishing her ex well, she's miserable and she's angry and she hopes that he's miserable too. When a big reveal or a plot twist happens in the middle of a song like this, it can be really difficult to figure out where to go next, but she uses a really clever technique here. She takes a couple of really specific images from the first verse and flips them on their head in the second verse. Take for instance, the image of the phone, which she turns from a positive in the first verse into a negative in the second verse. By repeating the same image in wildly different emotional contexts, she's creating both comparison and contrast. The image of the phone in the second verse carries all the same emotional weight as the first because we remember those positive associations. But by using a contrasting emotion, it builds on that intensity rather than replacing it. This is a great technique to use in your own songwriting. I would encourage you to try playing around with using the same image in two different contexts. Start by choosing an image in your first verse and find a way to flip it when you get to the second verse. For instance, if my first verse is about two people getting lunch at a diner, I might use my second verse to talk about that diner closing down or sitting at the same booth across from an empty seat. When you're planning or writing the verses of your song, try stacking the intensity. You should have the least intense section of your song in the beginning. Then as the song goes on, you should be getting more and more intense. Everything after that first verse should keep building on what your listener already knows. It's totally okay if the story is out of order, as long as you use clear language to express the timeline. As we learned and I hope you can mess with your listener's expectation and build a lot of extra intensity by waiting to reveal new information. If you're a plotter, go ahead and look through your outline and try to figure out the order of your verses. If you're a pancer, take this moment to actually write your song, the verses and the chorus. In our next lesson, we're going to be talking about the most awesome thing ever. Clever turns of phrase. 10. Clever Turns of Phrase: [MUSIC] At this point, you've thought a lot about your characters, about your plot, and even about the form and structure of your song. But we haven't really talked about how to make your lyrics clever. In this video, we're going to be tackling some techniques and going through some tools that can help you to make your lyrics clever. Consider this lyric from the song, Happy Face by Jagwar Twin. I find this lyric really interesting because the phrase get your kicks has two meanings. The first is of course, to literally grab your shoes and walk out the door, so getting ready for your day. The second means to find enjoyment in something. You might have heard this phrase before in the song, Get Your Kicks on Route 66. By using a phrase that has two distinct meanings, he's giving the listener the opportunity to interpret the song on their own. In this example, the protagonist is both expressing that he's literally walking out the door, but also that he needs to take a moment to put his fake happy face on. I get the impression that he's collecting himself and putting on his fake good mood before he walks out the door. That way, nobody questions it. In the bridge of the John Legend song, All Of Me, he uses the metaphor of love as a card game in order to build those double meanings. He takes the images of cards on the table showing his cards, the suit of hearts, and the idea of risking things in order to express that he and his loved one are being open and honest with each other. In order to create an effective double meaning for your song, think of phrases or ideas that are related to your main idea, that happen to mean two different things. For instance, if you're using that metaphor of a card game, you can write a list of images related to cards, and once you have some images to work with, think of some popular phrases or other ways that those words could be interpreted. For instance, hearts are both a suit in a card game, and also an internal organ and also a thing that we associate with love. [MUSIC] There are several meanings of the word irony, and they're all really useful in song writing. But we're going to focus in on this one, the expression of one's meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect. In other words, creating sarcasm by saying the opposite of how we feel. This can be a great tool for creating comedic songs as well as politically charged songs. One of my favorite examples is Randy Newman's Political Science, which was quite obviously very critical of the USA's foreign policies. What you'll notice though, is that he gets his message across by having the narrator exaggerate the views of the other side, thus creating subtext. Instead of saying what he actually means, which is, Hey, maybe let's stop bombing people, he goes the opposite direction and really exaggerates that concept of, let's bomb everybody. This creates a comedic, sarcastic tone, but still gets across his message by emphasizing the ridiculousness of war. On the other hand, It was a Good Day by Ice Cube, uses irony to express immense horror and difficulty in life by reflecting on the opposite. He talks about the things that didn't happen on this particular day, giving the subtexts that other days aren't this good. The scary bad situations he's currently avoiding, car jackers, guns, corrupt police, and the death of friends and family are all situations that do happen in his daily life. [MUSIC] Take a look at these song examples and try to think about why they feel clever. Something you may have noticed while looking at these examples is that a lot of these ideas and words repeat, for instance, alone and loneliness. The phrase mean that much and the word live. The first time we hear each of these words or phrases, it's expressed in one way, but the second time it's used in a different way, typically the opposite of how we initially interpreted it. These artists are using contrast and comparison in order to break our expectations. To practice this, let's use some popular idioms. Under the weather, walking on air, and dead in the water. Now let's do our best to flip them upside down by thinking of their opposites or inverses. I came up with under the weather, could be weather over me, walking on air, could be the air is walking on me, and dead in the water, could be alive on land. My lyrics might look like this. The weather over me makes me under the weather. I used to be walking on air, but now the air is walking all over me, and we were dead in the water, but alive in the sand. By flipping these common phrases on their heads, we found a way to make them feel fresh and unique, even though they're phrases we've heard a million times. Keep in mind, you don't necessarily have to stick to idioms. You can use common news buzzwords or even just words that you use in everyday life. That funny feeling by Bo Burnham creates a lot of powerful, intense imagery by contrasting images and ideas that we hear every day. For instance, obeying all the traffic laws in Grand Theft Auto V. Here he takes this video game that is totally based on breaking all of the laws and all of the rules and generally doing really messed up things. But by using a phrase like obeying all the traffic laws, he completely breaks our expectations and takes us somewhere totally new and fresh. That's also really comedic. Meanwhile, he uses that exact same technique to create thought-provoking and unsettling ideas like that unapparent summer air in early fall. By moving the phrase, summer air into the wrong season, it feels unsettling and it feels uncomfortable, which is exactly how he wants us to feel as he talks about something like climate change. Go ahead and look for phrases and words that fit your song idea. Remember you don't have to use all of the things that we talked about in this video, but if you want to add some clever irony or some clever contrast, it's going to really help to make your lyrics feel witty and unique. In our next lesson, we're going to talk all about the way your words sound. 11. How Your Words Sound: [MUSIC] You now have a great foundation for writing clever, thought-provoking lyrics. But what about the way your words sound? The sound of your words can be just as important as what you're actually saying, but it's often an overlooked aspect of the songwriting process. Have you ever noticed that some words feel really ugly, whereas some words feel really pretty. Some feel silly and some feel serious. It's all about the different letters and syllables that we're using. Keep in mind though as we go through this lesson that word sounds are totally subjective and are often based in cultural norms and associations. As we discuss things like euphony and cacophony, remember that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and that you probably have a very different cultural experience than someone else might. Take a look at these two pictures. One of these images is called bouba and the other is called kiki. Which one is which? If you're over 90 percent of English, Spanish, and Tamil speakers, you probably said that the rounder curvier shape is bouba, whereas that jagged edgy one is kiki. Why are these associations so strong? One possible theory is the shape of your mouth. When you say the word bouba, buo-ba [LAUGHTER] you tend to open your mouth a little bit more and it tends to be a little bit rounder. Whereas when you say kiki, ki-ki, it tends to be a little more closed. The really cool thing though about this experiment is that it suggests that objects are not named arbitrarily, but are instead the result of sound mapping in our brains. Even cooler still is that you can use this sound mapping In your lyric writing in order to make your listener understand your meaning even better. For instance, you're likely to react differently to words and phrases when consonants are voiced, like b-g and d verses unvoiced p-k and t. The combination of several voice consonants often comes across goofy or childish, like an everlasting gobstopper or bumfuzzle. Whereas the combination of unvoice consonants comes across a little bit more harshly, like in constrict or tacit. [MUSIC] Euphony refers to words that are pleasing and generally beautiful to the ear. In these examples, you'll notice sonic connections and word combinations with easy pronunciation. You'll also notice that these pretty sounding lyrics often match really well with their meanings. With your silhouette, when the sunlight dims into your eyes where the moonlight swims, but your lips when we speak are the valleys and peaks of a mountain range on fire in a tree by the brook. There's a songbird who sings. Sometimes all of our thoughts are misgiven. The opposite of euphony is cacophony, which refers to harsh, discordant sounds. This is often the result of repetition and combination of consonants within a group of words. The vowel sounds are guttural and abrasive, and the consonant sounds often clash. In these examples, you might find that the words are actually hard to say. Someone came in saying, I'm insane to complain about a shotgun wedding and a stain on my shirt. He begged production. He got walrus gumboot. He got Ono side board. He one spinal cracker. Did you know that the grave diggers still getting stuck in the machine even though it's a whole other day dream? The use of cacophony in these songs does a really great job of expressing the meaning of them, that we're talking about things that are gross or uncomfortable. We're able to tell all of this before we've actually interpreted the meaning. As you write, think about whether you want that lullabies sound of euphony or whether you want harsh, intense, discordant cacophony. [MUSIC] As you probably already know, a rhyme happens when you have two words that have the same ending, but a different beginning, like rose and chose. Rhymes are an excellent place to start because they can really help your listener to get into the rhythm of your song, to start having expectations about where your song is going to go, and it's a great place to break those expectations. It allows your listener to really start to understand the songs pacing. A good rhyme can hit your listener right in the gut with emotion. It can accent a hilarious punchline or make your listener smile when they're able to guess what happens next. The most common rhyme schemes you'll run into are AA, BB, and AB, AB. Notice that the A rhymes, rhyme with each other and the B rhymes , rhyme with themselves. But if we decide that we want to break our listeners expectation, we can also play around with new or different rhyme schemes. For instance, you can use compounded words or contractions to create interesting slant rhymes like M&Ms, famous orange and door hinge. The song, A Guy Like You, from the Hunchback of Notre-Dame, uses a standard AB-AB rhyme scheme, but it creates comedy by using an unexpected slant rhyme. Adonis with croissant is. This creates a really funny lyric. Then the song ties up the loose ends of the joke by following it with a more direct rhyme. Chew and you. The Vatican Rag meanwhile uses the word religion'll, which is a contraction of religion and will in order to create a comical and unexpected slant rhyme with the word original. You can also create unexpected rhyme schemes like this one from the Big Bang Theory's theme song. Some lyric writers even decide to intentionally not rhyme at all which breaks all of your listener's expectations and can cause them to feel disoriented or surprised. When a song doesn't rhyme, we can feel a bit unmoored from the pulse or rhythm of the song. It can cause us to feel a little bit confused or up in the air. Take for instance, What You Waiting For by Gwen Stefani, in which the character feels really disoriented. We're just as caught off guard as she is. Playing around with different rhyme schemes is a great way to get your listener to empathize with your character, to walk a mile in their shoes. But it's not the only way to sonically mess with them. [MUSIC] The word sonic refers to sound. When we talk about sonic connections, we're talking about the way the sounds in each word connect to each other. In this section of Gnarls Barkley's, Feng Shui, you'll notice that CeeLo uses a lot of great rhymes at the end of his phrases, breeze and trees, weaves and receives. But in the last line, you'll notice that he also uses what's called an internal rhyme. The words evolves and solves, a rhyming words, but they happen in the middle of this phrase creating an even more exciting connection for our brains to pick up on. But CeeLo doesn't just stop there. He also uses alliteration to get his point across. Notice that many of the words in this section start with the same letter or sound. Another great example of sonic connection is in Taylor Swift's Cardigan, which is one of my very favorites from her entire catalog. Because her use of sonic connection is really effective and definitely expands on what's happening in the lyrics. Take for instance the phrase when you are young, they assume you know nothing. Almost every syllable gets repeated. The y and you young and they, the u in you and assume. Even the word nothing is pronounced like nothing to sound similar to assume. In your own writing, you don't have to go as far as these artists but you can still use assonance, consonants, and alliteration in order to make your sonic landscape more exciting and engaging. As I mentioned before, alliteration refers to the repetition of the first letter. I find that it's easiest to think of tongue twisters like she sells seashells by the sea shore. Assonance means using repeated vowel sounds throughout your words. Like in do you move and groove. The word consonance refers to repeated consonant sounds that aren't at the start of your words. Like this kiss in the spring mist. The sounds of your words can be a powerful tool in your lyric writing. Go ahead and practice assonance, consonants, and alliteration. In our next lesson, we're going to dive headfirst into rhetorical devices. 12. Rhetorical Devices: [MUSIC] The term rhetorical device is defined as a use of language that is intended to have an effect on its audience. This definition is ridiculously vague and broad but essentially what it means is that we're taking language either in its structure and its sounds or in its meaning and we're finding ways to get certain emotions out of our listeners. You've probably heard the phrase rhetorical question or seen the word rhetoric. But we've actually used a bunch of these rhetorical and literary devices so far in this course, including metaphor, irony, alliteration, assonance, and consonance. In this lesson, we're going to explore a few of my favorite rhetorical and literary devices in order to add some new tools to your tool belt. But while you're at it, go ahead and explore all of these rhetorical devices on your own, because it is a really fascinating world of opportunity to explore some cool new things that you can use in your songs. [MUSIC] The first rhetorical devices that we're going to talk about in this lesson are anaphora and epistrophe. Both of these techniques help to emphasize important ideas in your song by repeating the same phrase or word in each line. Anaphora refers to the repetition of words at the beginning of each line, like in the song Wonderful World by Sam Cooke. Epistrophe refers to the repetition of words or phrases at the end of each line. Like in, You Learn by Alanis Morissette. These are great techniques to use if you want to get across a simple, concise main idea and have a lot of repetition throughout your song. It's also really good if you want to contradict yourself, like Sam Cooke does when he sings, don't know much, over and over again. Then ends the section with, but I do know. [MUSIC] The word enjambment refers to the continuation of a sentence without a pause beyond the end of a line, couplet, or even a stanza. I think this is probably my favorite rhetorical device to use in my songs because it creates a little bit of tension while also giving the song continuity. It almost acts like a little bit of a cliffhanger that keeps the audience on the edge of their seat until they get to the end of that sentence. Notice in this example by Blink 182, that the phrase about spilling apple juice is split between two different lines in the middle of a section. Whereas in this example, the enjambed line is straddled between two different songs sections. You'll notice here that we have a slant rhyme at the end of the bridge between the words plebeian and with me and. A rhyme at the end of the bridge would typically cause this section to feel complete and resolved. But by ending with the word ''And'' we leave the bridge with a question, and what? Whether consciously or unconsciously, this leaves us with a lot of anticipation and with a lot of excitement for the next section. [MUSIC] The last rhetorical device that we're going to touch on is parallelism. Parallelism, or parallel structure means using the same pattern of words to show that two or more ideas have the same level of importance. For instance, this biblical illusion in Metallica's, The Memory Remains. Notice that the words and meanings change, but the structure of the sentence, including the word ''To'' and the number of syllables, stay exactly the same. This parallel structure can also be used throughout a song in order to provide continuity for the listener. For instance, in What a Wonderful World by Louis Armstrong, he uses the phrases, ''I see, I hear, and I watch'' split between his versus. This technique is great for making your verses feel uniform. But it can also be awesome for creating a sense of progress or character development throughout your song. Pat Pattison refers to changing the words in a pre-chorus or chorus, which would typically stay the same as recoloring the chorus. A great example of this is the song Rain King by Counting Crows. You'll notice that each chorus stays mostly the same, but that two words in the third line change each time. This gives each chorus a slightly different meaning and creates a sense of forward momentum throughout the narrative. In the song Kyoto by Phoebe Bridgers, however, she significantly changes the chorus the second time. But you'll notice that she leaves the rhyme scheme, syllable count, and a few keywords the same. This provides the same sense of continuity that you would find in a typical chorus, while also showing a lot of development in her feelings. Now that you know a bit more about rhetorical devices, start thinking about which ones you might want to include in your song. Could your chorus benefit from some anaphora or epistrophe to drive the point home? Could you use enjambment to create a cliffhanger at the end of your bridge? Could your song use some parallelism in the pre-chorus? If you're plotting your song, go ahead and finish your outline. If you're a pantser, you can take this opportunity to totally finish writing your first draft. A pre-chorus is a great thing to add if you feel like you're averse and your chorus don't quite flow narratively. A bridge is an amazing thing to add if you want to add some contrast or a new perspective to your song. Go ahead and put pen to paper or thumbs to phone screen and meet me in the next lesson where we're going to be finishing your lyrics. 13. Finishing Your Lyrics: [MUSIC] Throughout this class so far, we have talked about a lot of really wonderful tools and tips to help you become the best lyric writer you can be. Now it's finally time for you to finish your lyrics. If you're a pantser, your lyrics are already written. Now it's time to edit your song. Now that you have a ton of new lyric writing knowledge, you might decide that some of your words or phrases could be replaced with new ones in order to create cool sonic connections or use irony or metaphor. For instance, this rough draft isn't bad and does include some of the things we've talked about, like sense driven imagery, alliteration between the sun, and sweet, and summer, and even assonance between streaks and sweet. But with a little bit of reworking, we can make it even better. The message stayed exactly the same. But notice that in my second draft, I've incorporated enjambment and double meaning by using the phrase, "The sun is leaving" and following it up with "Her light in my hair." I added specifics by including the type of beer. I decided to personify the sun, which gave me some nice sonic connections between her and hair. I had a lot of fun creating even more sonic connections. There's assonance between hair, pale, ale, and air, between is, drink, bitter and in, as well as between we and sweet. There's also alliteration between leaving and light. Lastly, I've contrasted the word sweet with its opposite, bitter. Have fun and enjoy the process of tweaking what you already have. Don't be afraid to keep that rough draft because you might find that you can recycle some of those killed darlings. Or it might just be fun to look at the two versions back-to-back when you're done. If you're a plotter, use your outline to help guide you throughout the writing process. If you ever feel stuck, think of writing like doing Sudoku or the Wordle. You're just using what you already know in order to fill in the blanks. For instance, if your outline says, I fell in love by the lake, go back to those sense oriented descriptions and choose your favorites. From my descriptions of my characters day out on the lake, I liked these lines the best. Now to finish my section, I'm going to create a rhyme. If you struggle to think of rhyming words by yourself, no problem. You can always use a rhyming dictionary or a website like rhymezone.com. This is a simple, straightforward love song. I want the rhyme scheme to fit my listener's expectations, which means that I have the option of either using toes or shoulders. Let's choose some words that feel relevant or easy to incorporate. If the words you chose don't have as many rhyming options as these, feel free to rearrange your sentences until your lines end on easier rhyming words. Now all you have to do is just fill in the blanks. Try creating a sentence around each, or just choose your favorite word. If you're feeling stuck with either plotting or pantsing, try answering these questions. Who is singing and to whom? Where and when are they? What is the story? What metaphor, double meaning, irony or contrast will you use to tell the story? How do you want your words to sound? Finally, what words or phrases are important? How will you get your listener to remember them? [MUSIC] With all that said, take this moment to finish your lyrics. Once you've finished, you're done. You can move on to adding music or do whatever else you feel like doing with those words. 14. Final Thoughts: Congratulations on finishing your song and successfully leveling up your lyric writing. I hope you found everything in this course helpful and that you'll use it to continue honing your craft as you write amazing songs in the future. Remember that there's no right way to write a song, so you can use as much or as little of this information as you'd like going forward. But here are a couple of things to consider. Number 1, find your style. Are you a plotter or a panzer, or a mix between the two? Number 2, use the five S's of songwriting. Simplicity, story, senses, specifics, and the subtext. Number 3, play with listener expectations. Listeners expect to hear certain things while they're listening to music. Pay attention to what those expectations are by noticing your own expectations. Use rhetorical devices, mix and match those different literary and rhetorical devices in order to add some spice to your song. While you're here, I would love to see what you've been working on. Go ahead and post your lyrics of video or an audio recording in the project section below. From the bottom of my heart, thank you so much for taking my course. I hope you found it helpful in your songwriting journey. If you'd like more information on songwriting, lyric writing, or music in general, you can go ahead and check out my YouTube channel or my website, where I've got tons of songwriting and music resources, or add to your lyric writing skills and get started with the music side of songwriting in my Skillshare course , Introduction to Songwriting. Now let's go write some amazing songs. [NOISE]