A personal love song or poem is a great way to show your sweetheart that you love him or her. But not all of us were born poets. Does that mean we’re stuck flipping through our MP3 player playlists, searching for the perfect song to use? Nope.
As it turns out, you too can write poems and song lyrics! We’ll be honest – the following tips won’t win you a Grammy or Pulitzer any time soon, but if you’ve been wanting to tell your better half exactly how he or she makes you feel, we’ve got a few words of advice to get you started.
Writing Love Lyrics
- Put down the rhyming dictionary.
If you start of trying to write verses and choruses from nothing, you’ll end up resorting to the same-old “Roses are red, violets are blue” schtick. Before you even think about the best word to rhyme with love, spend some time brainstorming. Write down the message that you want to tell your sweetheart first.
- Be specific.
This is another part of the brainstorming phase. You’re only writing this for one person anyway, right? Come up with favorite memories, future plans, things you really love about him or her. This will make your lyrics personal and unique.
- Narrow it down.
Now that you’ve got (hopefully) pages and pages of ideas, start picking which ones you really want to talk about. Remember when you were writing down your main message in step 1? Stick to that. If you’ve decided to write about how giddy he or she made you when you first met, don’t throw in a line about your second anniversary.
- You’re still not allowed to touch the rhyming dictionary.
But you can start working your ideas into verses. Think of verses like little paragraphs – each verse should contain one idea, and all the ideas as a whole are what tell the story. Remember, poems (including song lyrics) don’t always have to rhyme. If your verses are honest, personal, and heartfelt, then you’re 99% of the way there. Everything else after this is window dressing.
- Be the boss of rhyming and meter, not the slave.
Rhyming you know, as it’s what happens when “love” rhymes with “above.” There are tons of different rhyming patterns. You can rhyme two lines together, or rhyme the first line with the third, or the second with the fourth, etc. It can get really complicated, really quickly. The general rule, though, is that once you pick a rhyming pattern, you should stick with it. Otherwise, a sudden not-rhymed line after a series of rhymed ones sounds awkward.
Meter refers to the rhythm of your poem. There’s a lot of details about syllable counts and iambic pentameter (which Shakespeare was fond of), but the point is that if the rhythm in the first line of your poem goes, “A-dumpty-dumpty-dumpty-dum,” then the rest of the lines should follow that pattern. If you’re feeling good about the process so far, you can mix up the rhythm in the same way that you mixed up rhyme schemes. But like rhyming patterns, once you start a pattern, if you stop it part-way through the poem it’s going to sound awkward.
- Share!
Now that you’ve written your poem/song, you’re ready to give it to your sweetheart. You can include it as part of an ecard from DGreetings.com, or you can get it printed on nice paper, frame it, and present it in person. Or, you can read it aloud as part of a date or a quiet evening at home. No matter what, you’ve got a poem on your hands that will make your loved one swoon.
|
