The ong- 40 strategies to excite your ECU imagination, help you design distinctive songs, and keep your WH creative flow. SHEILA DAVIS ras po anes Cincinnati, OhioEi eee ABOUT THE AUTHOR Davis, a gold-record lyricist, teaches at The New School for Social Research York and conducts songwriting seminars around the country. She is the of The Craft of Lyric Writing and Successful Lyric Writing. vriters Idea Book. Copyright © 1992 by Sheila Davis. Printed and bound in the 4 Scates of America. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in tm or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and ‘al systems withour permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, ray quote brief passages in a review. Published by Writer's Digest Books, an imprint W Publications, Inc., 1507 Dana Avenue, Cincinnati, Ohio 45207; 1(800)289-0963. dition, tion Data ry of Congress Cataloging in Pul » Sheila xe songwriters idea book / Sheila Davis. Pp. cm, cludes index. BN 0-89879-519-2 Lyric writing (Popular music) I. Title. 7.D233 1992 966782—de20 92-23322 cp MN gned by Sandy Conopeotisee 1927- The sonowriters idea boot Every good idea and all creatioe work are the offspring of the imagination... . The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable. CARL JUNGTABLE OF CONTENTS ntroduction 1 art I art II ‘art IIT art IV atV A Digest of Songwriting Theory 2 ‘An Overview of Lyriewriting Principles 3 The Three Major Song Forms 8 Personality Type, Brain Dominance, and the Creative Process 1s Identifying Your Personality Type and Brain Dominance 16 Tracking the Four-Step Creative Process 22 How Your Type Influences Your Work Habits 25 How Your Type Shapes Your Lyrics 29 Right-Brain, Left-Brain Techniques: Defining Our Terms 32 Title Strategies: A Key Word 35 AColor Title 36 A City, State or Foreign Place Title 39 ADay, Month or Number Title 43 AFemale Name Title 47 A Title With a Top-Ten Word: Heart, Night, If 52 ABook-Title Title 58 More Title Strategies: Wordplay « 7 AnAntonym Title — 62 8 An Idiom, Axiom or Paragram Title 66 9 ACoined Word Title 71 10 Starting With “And...” 76 ouaene Design Strategies: Figurative Language % 11 Metaphor 83 12 The Compact Simile 91 13° Personification 95 14 Apostrophe 99 15 Synecdoche 104 16 Metonymy and Symbol 110 17 The Pun 120pat vi More Design Strategies: The Framing Device 127 18 19 20 21 22 23 The Question Title and Question Plot 128 The Phone Call 133 The Letter 137 The Setting 141 ‘The Third-Person Vignette 148 The Duet — 153 Parvir Plot Strategies: The Romantic Relationship 138 24 25 26 27 28 Sex 159 Love 163 Infidelity 166 Breaking Up 171 Reuniting 176 Par vi More Plot Strategies: The Universal Theme 179 29 30 3 32 33 34 35 The Parent/Ghild Relationship 180 The Need for Automony 184 Friendship 188 Song, Music, Dance 193 ‘The Need to Escape 198 An Archetypal Portrait 203 ‘The Famous Person 207 pat tx More Plot Strategies: Special Genres and Markets 22 36 37 38 29 40 Coda 242 The Chrisemas Song 213 The Children’s Market 216 The Comedy Song 222 The Social Statement 232 The Inspirational Song 238 Role Model Lyrics and Lyricists Index 243 Subject Index 245ACKNOWLEDGMENTS is book advances an original theory: Namely, that writing style predicts one’s personality type and brain dominance—and vice versa. Every the- ory of course piggybacks on the thinking of others. So I must acknow!- edge those seminal thinkers without whom my hypothesis could not exist. First and foremost, Carl Jung on whose theory of psychological types my own notion of the relationship between language and cerebral function squarely rests. Tam indebted to Katharine C, Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers who together created the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI), a pioneer psy- chological instrument based on Jung’s theory of type. Their idea to supplement Jung's three scales of polar-opposite cognitive functions and attitudes with a fourth scale of orientations was essential to my envisioning the type/brain models which have become fundamental to my teaching methods. The insight of another illustrious thinker scaffolds my theory of writing style and brain function: Giambattista Vico, the 18th centry philosopher, was the first to realize that Metaphor, Metonymy, Irony and Synecdocke were not mere figures of “speech,” but rather the four master figures of shought. My theory links those master figures to both Jung’s personality types and to brain lateralization function. Of course my hypothesis would not exist without the neurological discoveries of such eminent researchers as Broca, Wernicke, Sperry, Bogen, Gazzaniga, Gesch- wind, et al. Their pioneering studies paved the way for the sophisticated tech- niques that continually yield exciting new clues to the brain’s organization of language. I want especially to acknowledge the talent and tenacity of my students whose role-model lyrics enliven this book. They rose to the challenge of tough criticism to polish the rough edges of those lyrics until they fulfilled their potential. And finally a “thank you” co my husband, mentor, and meticulous editor, whose cogent comments on my manuscript sent me back yet again to polish my awn rough edges.INTRODUCTION uilding a successful songwriting career demands three attributes: talent, technique and sustained creativity. Talent of course is something one is born with. It’s what Irving Berlin called “having the knack.” My first two books— The Graft of Lyric Writing and Successful Lyric Writing — aimed to support that knack by laying a foundation of craftsmanship those time- less principles on which our standards were built. This book, like my advanced classes, presumes that you're familiar with the major music forms and the basic tenets of rhyme, rhythm and plot development. So we start beyond the basics. We'll address here the third requisite—sustained creativity. This book aims to put you in closer touch with your individual creative process. The core material of The Songwriters Idea Book features forty strategies to spark your imagination and keep your creative flame burning. It’s illustrated by over one hundred role-model lyrics produced by writers trained in whole-brain thinking and writing. These songwriters not only know their right brain from their left— which hemisphere does what, and when and how to use it—they know a lot about their individual thinking styles, generally called brain dominance. They've learned how to access their right brain’s ability to be spontaneous, imaginative, visual, metaphoric—to tease out intuitions and come up with original concepts. And they've learned how to access their left-brain’s structural ability to help shape their thoughts into sequential order and the ideal form, and with its resident editor to detect the discrepancy, weed out the redundancy, and transform a prom- ising first draft into a polished final. Their lyrics “work” on the printed page without the crutches of melody or synthesized rhythm track because each coherently expresses an individual slant on a universal concept with genuine feeling—combining the best of both brains. We all possess enormous creative potential. But, like solar power, to be effec- tive it must be harnessed. I believe that you'll find the whole-brain approach to songwriting both challenging and rewarding. And like my students who've gained success in every area of songwriting —pop, country, children’s market, cabaret and theater—you will gain a new mastery of your creative process that will lead to success in your chosen marketplace. @DPOS A Digest of Songwriting Theory Tae the book I'll allude to such common songwriting terms as the bridge, or she atvitudinal plot, or railing rhyme. For your convenience, Part I supplies you with a digest of the major principles of songwriting structure and development. From time to time you may want a more detailed description of a particular element such as meter or time frames, so Vl refer you to those pages in The Craft of Lyric Writing and Successful Lyric Whiting — hereafter referred to as CLW and SLI-—which go into a subject in depth. BD