Whether you are the kind of writer for whom the whole song falls out in 15 minutes, or you painfully deliberate for hours over each line, there are a few quick rewriting tools that can help polish that final product. To apply these tools, sometimes we’ve got to be flexible with our melodic rhythms and pitches, open to adding or taking away a syllable or two as the lyric dictates. Other times we’ve got to be careful not to play and sing the song too much while we write, to avoid convincing ourselves something sounds natural when it actually doesn’t. Singing an unnaturally set phrase over and over again enables us to ‘learn’ the part, which can make it very difficult for a demo singer or the audience later on to sing and remember the song. Staying objective can mean keeping enough distance between you and the performance. When our gut tells us something didn’t sing right at first, our impulse may be to sing it again and convince ourselves we don’t need to go through the work of rewriting. But, give yourself enough credit as a skilled writer to practice seeing opportunities for making the melody even better, the harmonies even more complimentary, and the rhythm even more exciting. Remember, whether you’re pitching your songs to other artists to record or recording your songs yourself, the listener only gets one chance – and they’ll be relying on their first impression.

Point of View

One fun tool you might start with is changing the point of view of the song. First, check to make sure you have kept the point of view consistent throughout the song. If you start with ‘I’, then switch to ‘you’ or ‘he/she’, your listener can wind up confused. Establishing clear characters is the first step in making sure your listener can connect emotionally to the song, rather than sit there trying to figure out who’s doing the talking. After you’ve got it in one point of view, consider which point of view you’re working with.

First person point of view uses ‘I’. ‘I remember when…’ or ‘I thought I saw you there…’.

Second person point of view uses ‘you’. ‘You took the train to New Orleans…’.

Third person point of view uses ‘he/she’. ‘She held the ticket in her hand, and knew he wasn’t far away…’.

In third person point of view, the singer is the narrator, not part of the story but looking from the outside in.

If you’re in first person p.o.v., try changing to second person, replacing all the ‘I’ pronouns with ‘you’. If you’re in third person, try changing to first person p.o.v. If you’re in first person, try changing to third. Play the whole song and even record a rough guitar/vocal or piano/vocal of it. Sit back and listen to both versions and try to imagine yourself as the listener. What kind of impact do you feel from both versions? Does first person feel more intimate, more suspenseful, more purposeful or empowering? Does third person lend a more mysterious or adventurous mood? How does the point of view affect the overall emotion of the song?

Verb Exchange

Another technique you might use is exchanging your verbs for more specific verbs. Verbs hold so much potential in a lyric, able to burst forth strong feelings of movement and texture, or disempower those feelings and leave the lyric lying flat. Let me give you an example. In the lyric below, I’ve used generic verbs:

You’re putting sugar packets under the table leg
but it just seems it’s built to slant
and it’s making you crazy
I’m moving runny eggs around a breakfast plate
watching you put your face
in complete frustration

Now here is the same verse, with more specific verbs:

You’re stuffing sugar packets under the table leg
but it just seems it’s built to slant
and it’s driving you crazy
I’m pushing runny eggs around a breakfast plate
watching you twist your face
in complete frustration

By livening up the verbs, I can create a more vivid situation. The more vivid the situation, the more my listener feels a part of the experience rather than an observer from the sidelines. Try using this technique with the help of your thesaurus to find verb substitutions. In some cases you’ll be able to match the number of syllables and stress pattern of the original verb, and in other cases you’ll find a great verb that requires more or fewer syllables. All in all, it’s good to have options. Writing with control over all these elements means we can better gauge how strongly we’ll capture the attention of our listener.

Happy writing,
Andrea