When well written, a song is like a mini story, not too long and not too short. But how to you write down a story into a concise set of lyrics?

There are countless books on fiction writing and novel plotting; i’ve studied my fair share of them, and i’ve been putting it into practice for many years.

As much as a song is different from a novel in form, there are some creative writing methods that can be applied to both.

- develop your initial idea into a chronological story and fully fledged characters; the difference between a song and a novel is the number of characters, eg it’s best to concentrate on one character only in a song

- decide where in the story you want to start telling the story; you need an “event”, something unusual, something that will draw the reader/listener in, so you don’t automatically start with Day 1 of the story

- define your theme, eg what it is you are trying to say. In a novel, you will include the theme in many scenes; in a song, this will be your chorus

- keeping your story, characters and theme in mind, write. Then rewrite. Then rewrite. Until you’ve said what you wanted to say.

- to help myself, i often imagine how i would tell the story in thirty seconds. Try a few times (time yourself telling the story); sure, you might do a lot of ad lib the first few times if this is your natural tendency (this is mine too) but after a few times, your brain will start focusing on the barebones of the story. You write them into a song, then you flesh them out on rewrite.

- work out what makes your character different, as well as similar to others; you want to personalise situations but you also want your readers to be able to emphasise with the character.

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