In this article, I’m going to take you through a powerful lyric writing exercise, to show you that you can radically improve your lyrics if you have the following:
- a pen
- senses
- 6 minutes to spare
Good lyric writing isn’t just for those struck by the lightning of the lyric-writing gods. It’s available to everyone.
A Quick Story
When I was 17, writing lyrics was no problem. They burst forth with vigor, color, and an irreverent unconcern for ‘making sense’.
As I progressed as a songwriter, I realized that I did, in fact, care whether other people understood my lyrics, and most importantly: connected with them.
I grew up (a little), and in studying the lyrics of songs I loved, one thing became clear: these songwriters are writing to connect with me as the listener, not merely for the catharsis of their own inner turmoil.
In this newsletter, I’d like to share with you one simple exercise that I have honed for myself, and is now a staple exercise in all my lyric-writing classes.
It is based on a simple principle:
It’s the honesty and authenticity of you showing us your world and experience that creates a sense of relatability.
Leonard Cohen himself explained: “People relate to the world of details. We don’t just want to say “the tree”, we want to say “the sycamore”.”
The Exercise: “Turning The Dial”
This exercise is so simple, and so effective! You can do this anywhere, with 5 minutes to spare.
When we ‘turn the dial,’ we are turning a generic line into a more specific line. We are turning up the dial on the specifics. We are showing, in greater detail, rather than merely ‘telling.’
I’ll lay it out step-by-step, show examples, as well as where you can see this in action in the lyrics of master songwriters.
Here we go…
Find a line that is general, generic, cliche, or abstract – something that is getting at an idea, but lacks specificity.
This might be a line inside a song you are reworking.
It might be an idea for a section, or even a whole song.
You can also practice by picking any old ‘blergh’ line – or choose one from the examples below.
Here are some examples:
- A romantic Friday night with my lover.
- The excesses of wealth.
- Christmas is on its way.
Pick ONE.
In this step, you are going to set a timer for 6 minutes. In 6 minutes, you are going to come up with as many lines as you can that SHOW specific examples of the idea from Step 1.
Each line will be like a word photograph – we’re not creating sections, or lines that connect. Each line is a one-shot line, aimed to create a specific image that calls on the senses – its job is to give us examples – preferably from your own experience – that SHOW the idea.
Here’s an example from my own 6-min sprint.
Christmas is on its way:
The Halloween candy is starting to melt.
Flip flops on feet in downtown office buildings.
Rooftop bars are full of tipsy city workers at 2pm on a Friday.
The sun doesn’t set til after 7pm.
The Woolworths check-out staff still look over-tired in their Santa hats.
Giant inflatable Santa on the lawn next door.
Fairy lights and stars on the neighborhood fences.
YOUR TURN!
Take your lyric writing further.
Join us for a live online workshop on August 26
3 Ways to Use This Exercise
I use this exercise in 3 distinct ways.
Exactly as we are doing here, you can do this exercise on your phone, or a notebook, any time you have 5 minutes to spare. Start collecting phrases in a note on your phone that you can ‘turn the dial’ on.
The songwriting process can get stuck if you are trying too hard to ‘nail’ each line of lyric before moving on to the next. I will often happily leave a line as a placeholder, then go back and replace it in the revision process. This allows me to move on, write a working draft of the whole song, then go back in with a more detail-oriented eye, and shape the lines inside a working draft.
I use song mapping with almost every song I write. In practice, this might mean that I have a song concept, a title, and a specific idea of what each section needs to do, or be about. I might have something like this written for Verse 1 in my song map:
Verse 1: What a beautiful day it is outside…but I’m trapped inside.
I will then spend 10 minutes ‘turning the dial’ on ‘beautiful day outside’ to come up with most of the lyric material I need to craft a whole section.
Examples in Well-Known Songs
The ‘generic’ lines examples above are actually carefully chosen, to show you examples of well-known songs that have beautifully transformed those ideas, by turning the dial away from the general, and way up on the specifics.
A romantic Friday night with my lover…
The excesses of wealth…
Christmas is on its way…
I hope this has helped you add a tool to your toolbelt, and demonstrated one of the core principles in great lyric writing – one that is readily accessible to anyone with a pen, senses, and 6 minutes to spare.
Keep writing, keep working, keep the fires burning – it’s worth it, I swear 😉
Keppie