Top 5 Exercises for Coming Up With Great Song Lyric Ideas: #4—Metaphor Sense Writing

Metaphor Sense Writing is a combination of Exercise #1 (Sense Writing) and #2 (Metaphor Collisions).

It’s a way to take a novel combination of ideas—the sun is a bride; aging is a church (for example)—and expand the connection between the two ideas, filling it with rich language that furrows into the rabbit hole of the metaphor.

Here’s how it works.


Step 1. Find an interesting metaphor!

(Use Exercise #2 for this).

Metaphor works best when it is a novel combination of ideas. 

When we make a metaphor, we are using one image as a lens through which we are seeing and describing some other thing. The lens is the metaphor: it’s the colors we are using to paint the picture. But the picture itself is what we are actually describing. 

If I say, “the sky is a mouth, spitting rain and screaming thunder,” my lens is ‘mouth’. That’s the color palette I’m using to describe the sky. The sky is my target idea. 

Metaphor is all about showing something familiar in an unfamiliar way. Its magic sparkle is all in its power to surprise (and delight) a listener.

So when starting with a metaphor, aim for something novel rather than something we’ve heard before.


Step 2. Build a word palette for your metaphor image.

Spend 5 minutes creating a list of words and phrases that are closely related to the metaphor image. Aim for a variety of nouns, verbs, adjectives, and phrases.

For example, let’s say my metaphor is: “her temper is a hurricane”.

Hurricane is a metaphor image.

Here’s my word palette:

Thunder, Lightning, Crash, Swell, Tide, Tidal wave, Flood, Electricity, Surge, Strike, Crack, Crash, Rain, Hale, Clouds, Dark, Grey, Cold, Humid, Air is thick, Eye of the storm

You can use a few extra resources to help you build a rich palette:

  1. Use an online Idiom Dictionary. Use a few different search terms around your metaphor.

For ‘hurricane’, I would also search: ‘rain’, ‘storm’, and ‘weather’. 

  1. Use the ‘related words’ filter on rhymezone.com. 

Sometimes the list can have a few random things in there, but often will throw up lots of useful language related to your search.

  1. Get yourself a hard copy of the Roget’s International Thesaurus. The internet has not yet replicated the awesomeness of this resource, and it is by far the best thing for this job. For a deeper dive into this resource and how to use it for this job, check out this YouTube video from our channel

The aim here is to give yourself lots to choose from, and especially to give yourself options beyond the first and most obvious words associated with your metaphor. 


Step 3. Spend 10 minutes Sense Writing using your metaphor as the prompt.

Write in full sentences (prose). Dip into your word palette, using those words and phrases by applying them to what you are actually describing.

Here’s an excerpt from mine:

The clouds of her mind gathered, darkening in her eyes. Her words were lightning, striking out at the nearest touch point – her voice swelled and spilled, and you hardened like ice. You could sense her humid thoughts, invisible but making everything heavy under them. For days afterwards, her dark mood rumbled on the horizon of your life…


How to use Metaphor Sense Writing in your Lyrics.

  1. Write a Metaphor song

‘Metaphor songs’ are a ‘type’ of song that is entirely based on a strong, central metaphor. The lyrics to these songs almost always express the central metaphor in the Chorus or refrain, and use language related to the central metaphor throughout the rest of the lyric to express and explore the different dimensions of the idea and emotion.

Let’s take a look at one here. I have highlighted all the language in the lyrics that is drawn out of the strong, singular metaphor at the center of the song, ‘Love is Rocket Science’. 

Rocket Science

By Lori McKenna

They say it ain’t complicated
Any fool can understand
Until the fuse is lit and
It blows up in your hand

It all looks good on paper
Step by step, you follow the plan
In the sky watch the desperate vapor
‘Til it blows up in your hand

Love is rocket science
What comes up it must come down
In burning pieces on the ground
We watch it fall
Maybe love is rocket science after all

Not if, but when you crash and burn
Somehow you survive
But you’ve touched the hem of heaven
For a time you felt alive

Love is rocket science
What comes up it must come down
In burning pieces on the ground
We watch it fall
Maybe love is rocket science after all

From the distance in the twilight
Love is such a beautiful thing
Dry your eyes beneath the night sky
And I’ll hold you, I’ll hold you
I’ll hold you like a dream

Love is rocket science
What comes up it must come down
In tragic pieces on the ground
It’s worth it all
Maybe love is rocket science

Here are a few other well-known songs that use the same technique:


  1. Extract the stand-out lines

In spending a little longer on developing a metaphor idea through Metaphor Sense Writing, sometimes you will write a sentence that never would have happened if you weren’t following that trail of crumbs through the forest.

I found myself writing this the other day, while exploring the metaphor, ‘the teacher was a map’:

…she showed me that although the curriculum was the main highway we were traveling, that the best learning I would do would be on the side roads of experience outside the classroom.

Would I write a song about a teacher? Maybe yes (there are some absolutely gorgeous songs about teachers), but also, this line alone stood out to me:

“On the side roads of experience”

That line alone was worth the 10 minutes it took to get there, and it’s important to note: I never would have gotten there if I wasn’t exploring the metaphor. 

Now that I have the line, I can leave behind the initial metaphor. I’m not contractually obliged to use it at all. It’s often the discoveries along the way when we are Metaphor Sense Writing that are the treasures to keep.


  1. Twist an idiom

Here’s a slightly different approach to this exercise. Instead of using a novel combination of ideas, actively seek out a familiar combination, but use Metaphor Sense Writing to add something new and original to it, that turns the familiar into something worth seeing again.

Let’s take something like:

 “eat your words”

There’s a metaphor here that has to do with eating/food.

In spending 10 minutes creating an ‘eating’ word palette, and exploring the metaphor, I wrote:

“Hungry enough to eat our words”

I suggest using an idiom dictionary, either an online version, or even better, a physical version (I use this one), to explore idioms based on a metaphor image. Spend 10 minutes on it, and see what new trails of thought you end up with. It’ll be worth it, I promise.

Here are a few to get you going:

Handed on a silver platter

(word palette: food/serving/restaurant)

In the line of fire

(word palette: fire/war)

Live like a king

(word palette: king/castle)

Go off the deep end

(word palette: pool/swimming)

For more on this, check out Exercise #3.


14-Day Songwriting Challenge: DAY 2

#2. Starting in motion.

Write a verse (with lyrics and melody). Instead of I V vi IV (the most used 4-chord progression in pop music of the last 40 years), try IV I V vi.

In the key of C, this would be:      F    C    G    Am
In the key of A:                             D    A    E    F#m
In the key of D:                            G    D    A    Bm

Meta: This is a gentle chord-based way to start down a less obvious road. It starts your song on a chord that is not ‘home’, so the song starts in motion. The last chord, the vi, is also a motion chord, so the progression itself, though simple, has a lot of movement and tension in it. 

I enjoyed this David Bennett video analysing the chord progressions of Taylor Swift’s songs (there are some she’s used more than 20 times…), and seeing this one feature heavily. 


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Top 5 Exercises for Coming Up with Great Song Lyric Ideas—#3: Twisting Cliches

Clichés are everywhere. 

They are encoded into the way we think and express ourselves in such a pervasive way that we simply don’t notice they’re there. Yet there they are, when you’re feeling “under the weather,” or if someone “paints you a picture” of dinner last night; when you’re just “killing time,” or perhaps instead “time flies”…all cliches.

Cliches are useful. They come preloaded with meaning. The problem is that they are dull.

So how can we use clichés in a way that exploits their pre-loaded meaning, but rescues them from their mediocrity? 

Strategy 1: Replacing

  • Find a cliche with an image inside it, or a word that is easily replaced.
  • Make sure that the rest of the sentence still sounds like the original cliche.

The aural fireworks happen because of the element of surprise—something familiar with something new inside of it.

For example: We fight like…rust and rain.

What else do we fight like (the key here is: anything unrelated to cats and dogs…)?

Maybe we fight like: 

  • tree roots and concrete
  • secrets and loose lips
  • a toupee and a sudden breeze

Any of these is not only more interesting, but the very fact of subverting the expected image shines an even brighter light on your alternative combination.

Song Example

I wanna drive you…wild, wild, wild

From ‘Wild,’ by John Legend


Strategy 2: Extending

  • Take the image that is being used in the cliché, keep the image, but elaborate on it using words and images that are related to that image.

For example: I was drowning as the conversation flowed

The cliché of “flowing conversation” is extended by adding in more water imagery, which is the base image that gave us the cliché in the first place.

Another example: Hungry enough to eat our words

You can see that by elaborating on the image contained within the cliché, the image itself comes back to life. We now re-see the image as it was originally intended.

Song Example

Taylor Swift and Liz Rose did a beautiful job of this in Taylor’s song, “All Too Well”:

It was a masterpiece til you tore it all up


Strategy 3: Inverting

  • Turn a negative into a positive; or
  • State the opposite of the known cliche

For example: The grass is never greener

Song Example

Time won’t fly

From ‘All Too Well,’ Taylor Swift and Liz Rose.


Strategy 4: Swapping

Strategy 4 relies on the cliché using two images, or using verbs that can also easily become nouns, and vice versa.

For example, let’s take: There’s no time like the present
And turn it into: There’s no present like time

You can see that this twist relies on the word “present” having two distinct meanings, which work in both contexts. The best way to find these is to brainstorm or research as many clichéd expressions as you can, and testing out whether an inversion will yield anything juicy like this.

One more. Let’s take: Storm in a teacup
And make it: A teacup in a storm

Even though the meanings of the specific images don’t change, the inversion creates a new image with a fresh connotation.


Strategy 5: Contrasting

  • Add to the cliché by using a contrasting image (even by combining two clichés into a novel combination).

For example: I’ll make short work of being long gone

The key here is finding clichés that contain one main image, then using the opposite or contrasting image to recast the original. When we talk about opposites or contrasts, we can think about things like: future/past; day/night; fire/water; best/worst.

Songwriters in the past have used this technique to generate snappy titles:

“The Night We Called It a Day” (Thomas Adair and Matt Dennis)

“The Last Thing I Needed Was the First Thing This Morning” (Gary P. Nunn and Donna Farar, recorded by Willie Nelson)

“Full Moon and Empty Arms” (Buddy Kaye and Ted Mossman, recorded by Frank Sinatra)

This strategy runs the risk of getting cheesy pretty quickly, so approaching it with sensitivity and nuance is required to prevent the cheese from overwhelming the platter.


Strategy 6: Verb object

  • Change the object of the active verb
  • This relies on clichés that have an important verb as part of their construction.

For example, we can take: Play the devil’s advocate
And make it: Play the piano like the devil’s advocate

Or: Break the ice
Becomes: Break him like ice

And Taylor on the subject:
Break me like a promise

From “All Too Well”.


You don’t need to avoid cliches. 

They are too valuable, too pre-loaded with meaning to abandon altogether. Instead, we can take advantage of the meaning they carry with them by twisting them into new shapes and colors. In fact, by altering them ever so slightly, we not only end up bringing the dead back to life, but the element of surprise acts like a switch on the ears of your listeners.

The images you choose will be bathed in the special light of surprise.


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Photo credit: Instagram (Taylor Swift)

Writing better lyrics with metaphor magic

In this video, I show you how to write songs—and specifically lyrics—like Taylor Swift, Bruno Mars, and John Mayer. There is a particular type of song and songwriting that these three songwriters have in common—it’s a way to write songs that lots of songwriters use: metaphor songs. I start by defining metaphor, and share the principles and methods for creating original ideas, and furnishing them with great lyrics, just like these songwriters.

Want to write your own original lyrics? AUGUST 25/26 2022 – LIVE ONLINE METAPHOR WRITING WORKSHOP. Join in here!