Remember that the listeners only know what you tell them. You can do this through direct information: “I was a poor kid from a small town in Louisiana.” Or you can provide information to be inferred: “I grew up on the wrong side of the tracks in a one-horse Bayou town.” Melody, groove, and chord structure can also convey emotional information (minor keys tend to sound sad) or help set the scene (a chord pattern of C/Am/F/G over a medium cha-cha groove conjures up the 1950s).

Continuity

Make sure that your storyline is clear and easy to follow. If you lose a listener's attention, you probably won't get it back. The events in your song should all connect to the hook in some way. Verses don't have to relate to each other, but elements within a verse should all work together and support the central theme. The event flow of your songs doesn't have to be linear. Flashbacks and foreshadowing can be useful, but make sure the storyline can be followed and to develop the idea or plot at a pace that doesn't bore the listener.

It's easy to fool yourself into thinking your storyline is clear. After all, you know the whole story. Test your story's clarity by getting outside feedback. Remember not to tell your test audience what the song is about before you play it. Instead, ask questions about the story after you play the song for someone.

Songs in the Moment

Tense, to put it simply, is when the action in your song takes place. Tense can be a tricky business, especially when changing tense within a song. This must be done carefully, so as not to confuse the listener. Be careful and consistent.

Present tense is often best for love songs, statement-of-self songs, heartbreak songs, or any song in which you want to express vivid emotions. The power of these songs is in helping the listener become the singer in his or her imagination. Since the listener is hearing the song now, putting the song's action in the present can help someone connect more directly to your song.

If you need to give past information in a present tense song, do it from a view point that sets up a contrast to the present: If you say, “I was lonely,” you are frontloading to be able to say, “Now, I'm not.” If you say, “I've been working up my nerve,” it's easy to move ahead to, “Now the moment is here.” To flash back from a present moment, a phrase like, “I remember the time” gives a connection from the now to the then.

Telling a Story

For story songs, past tense usually works well. As long as the story events are told in the order in which they happened, it's relatively easy to jump forward along a timeline to different story scenes without confusing the listener. Usually, a story song will use the first verse to set the time and the scene, the second verse to give more specific or more personal information, and the chorus to reinforce the central theme or idea. The bridge or third verse may give the climax of the story or detail present situations or emotions that were affected by the events in the story. “Strawberry Wine” is a beautiful example of this form.

“The Devil Went Down to Georgia” is a story song in past tense. The story takes place in the past. However, the song makes good use of present tense quotes from the two characters in the story. In Anthony Smith's “Impossible to Do,” the verses list a series of seemingly impossible things the singer plans to do in the future and contrasts them against a chorus focusing on past events that, while easily accomplished, can't be undone.

Choosing the Tense

There are usually several possible ways to set the tense of a song or song section. You'll have to decide what's best on a case-by-case basis. During the writing of your first few hundred songs, you'll develop an instinct for dealing with tense.

Meanwhile, the best way to learn tense sense is by doing. Try the following exercises:

Write a story song in past tense. Use the first half of the first verse to connect present to past. Stay in past tense through the rest of the verses and the chorus. Use a bridge after the second chorus to connect the past back to the present.

Write a “wish list” song. Use present tense in the verses to talk about things you already have. Use future tense in the chorus for your wish list.

Write a story song about an historical event. Create two characters, one who lived at the time and the other a present-day descendant who finds a letter from the ancestor detailing a story, real or made up, relating to the historical event. Write the whole song in past tense. The challenge is to make the jumps from “long ago” past tense to recent past tense in a clear and easy-to-follow manner.

Write a “life cycle” song with a verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus structure. Use past tense in the first verse, present tense in the second verse, and future tense in the bridge. Write one chorus that works without changing it.

Write a song in present tense with no reference to things in the past or future. Apply this to other tenses, too. If you try it, you'll see that this may seem simple, but it's really tough.

The Art of Saying Without Saying

Simplicity and directness are some of the prime virtues of songwriting, but sometimes just saying something outright sounds drab. What to do? A simple but indirect description can liven up an otherwise boring lyric. Instead of saying: “She was happily married but life was tough / She worked too much but at least she had love …” try something more like: “Days at the fact'ry were hard and too long, / But the ring on her finger helped her keep keepin' on.”

Instead of narrating your song like a wildlife documentary or a tennis match, use objects, places, actions, and expressions to color your story. This involves the minds of listeners in two ways; it makes them visualize the object, place, action, or expression and it also gets the deductive part of the brain working. (“Watson, by the ring on her finger, I deduce that she is married!” “Amazing Holmes, how do you do it?”)

Don't make the listener work too hard to figure things out. Pointing out that a character walks with a limp will not tell everyone that he was shot in the leg during an argument over a poker game in pre–Civil War New Orleans. When the song is complete, check through and make sure that the average person will be able to figure out your story.

• Developing Your Idea
• Painting a Picture