Songwriter Forum > The Writing Process

Writer's Block (Lyrics) Any tips?

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Magic Bones:
Hi all, glad to find this forum. This is my first post, so apologies if there is another thread covering this. I'm sure my problem isn't unique.

Bit of background, I'm a guitar player/singer/songwriter and I played in bands from being a teenager until I was in my early 30s.

Now, at the age of 53, I've spent the last couple of years getting to grips with Presonus Studio One and I now really enjoy it. I have a drummer friend who I email my stuff to and he puts live drums on for me. I'm enjoying playing guitar more than ever and love coming up with stuff using fingerpicking and open tunings. I also love the fact that these days, you can get phone apps for everything from a Hammond Organ to a Theremin, numerous synths, glockenspiel...etc...I really enjoy the production side of things. When I finish a song, I then make a video for it and put it on my YouTube channel, under the name Magic Bones.

The problem I have is with lyrics..When I was younger and playing in bands, I tended to adopt the 'Noel Gallagher Approach' (Not that I was a particularly big fan) of having a few rhyming couplets that scanned and had a few interesting images thrown in, but ultimately it was about nothing....

Now, I find that this just won't do. I want to write something with substance and lord knows, there's enough subject matter out there in the world at the moment, but I don't want it to be like '6th form poetry'.

At the moment, the melodies and chord sequences are just flowing out of me and I currently have about 6 songs in various stages of development, but none of them have even the most rudimentary lyrics! It's becoming very frustrating.

I'm hoping that some of you good people might be able to offer some tips of how you approach lyric writing. I've tried 'brainstorming' in a Word document.on my desktop, but essentially we're back to Noel Gallagher territory..A few interesting images, but not much more....Help! And thanks in advance for anyone who stops by this thread.

Boydie:
Welcome to the forum @Magic Bones

The first thing I would suggest is to find one of the wonderful lyric writers on the forum to collaborate with

Perhaps put one of your finished tracks in the Collab section and seek a lyricist to Collab with. This should help get your creative lyric juices flowing and there is definitely something magic that happens when 2 or people work on a lyric

I would also recommend some books on lyric writing and would suggest you check out authors like Pat Pattison, Robin Frederick and Jason Blume

The best tip I have heard is “songs are written, great songs are re-written”

just get a lyric WRITTEN - and then go over it and “craft” every word and syllable - with the great skill being to keep it “natural” and conversational (which is often the hardest part and the key to breaking away from “6th form poetry”, which is a great description)

The other pearl or wisdom I would add at this stage it to pick a SINGLE key concept and emotion AND STICK TO IT!

Magic Bones:
Thanks for the reply, @Boydie, I'll check out your suggestions.
I've already started with the idea of settling on a concept for each song. For a few of them, I have titles and a basic idea of the subject matter I'll be tackling.
Thanks again for your help! :-)

Sterix:
Hi @Magic Bones  and welcome to the forum.

I'm a lyricist and I've written thousands of songs over the years. So I've run into "writer's block" a number of times. It's almost like an old friend. :D

If I'm struggling with a song lyric I'll usually do one of three things.

a) I'll take a step back and take a little time away from it. Sometimes approaching it the next day allows the creative juices to start flowing and you can suddenly find the words you couldn't find previously.

b) I'll persevere and (possibly with a lot of swearing) try to force the words to come to me.

or

c) I'll take a small step back to think about what I'm wanting from the song and approach it from that perspective. I'll look at the structure of it - how it rhymes, how forcing I've got/want the rhymes, how free I can really be with the rhymes. I'll look at the subject of it - do I know where it's going (is there some sort of climax I'm trying to reach, for example, or am I just winging it?), is it actually going where I'm trying to get to, etc.



I may also think about the subject matter and just write down some words or phrases that pop into mind. Even if they're not suitable for the song, they may give you ideas.

Something I'll rarely do but might be helpful (especially if you've got the music in place already) is treat it like a story and write down a "plot" for the song. Something along the lines of "I want this to happen in the first verse, then move on to this in the second. The chorus needs to resolve something else and I want this to be the finale, what the song builds up to".

Don't be afraid to go back to lines you've already written and change/move/remove them. Even if you love a particular line, sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and change it because it messes up the rest of the song (this part can be really difficult - I know from experience - expecially when it's a killer line).

Apart from that I'm not really sure what to add. I've never read any books on writing - I've always just done my own things.

Magic Bones:
@Sterix Thank you, that's all brilliant and useful advice.

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