Welcome to Writer Tips

Getting Better Every Day

Write as much as you can as often as you can, and try out different topics, rhyming schemes, backgrounds, and techniques. It takes time to perfect your style. Be proud of whatever you write, but recognize that the longer you do it, the better you will get. Never throw away your older pieces, though. You may be able to revisit them when you are more experienced and either rework them or reuse parts of them, like the background or parts of the lyrics.

Subjects

Similar to other kinds of writing, rap about what you know about. If you have never lived in the hood, do not rap about it just because you think it will make you sound cool. You will come off sounding phony, and your audience will know it. If your day is trading stocks, rap about that. If you are a family person and you love your spouse and kids, rap about that. When you talk about the issues that affect your life, you will find it easier to be creative and spontaneous.

Explaining the Song

It´s always good to have a specific thought or reason in mind when writing a song. Do you have to tell this thought or reason to the world? Not at all. Sometimes it´s better to let each person in the audience relate to the song in his or her own way. That way the song becomes more personal. For example, you may have written a song about how much you love to eat chocolate, and other people might interpret the lyrics as referring to sex. Why ruin their fantasy?

Rhyming

Although lyrics may rhyme, there is no reason that they have to. If you choose to rhyme your lyrics, be consistent and rhyme all lines (don´t mix and match rhyming and non-rhyming lines). However, when rhyming, be don´t just put words in a phrase because they rhyme; think about the actual meaning you are trying to get across. Just because words sound neat together doesn´t mean that they make good lyrics. In addition, to avoid being tiresome and predictable, be wary of employing over-used rhymes, such as "love/above" or "heart/apart."

Chorus: Length

The words to the chorus can be as complicated and lengthy or as short and repetitive as you want. A short, simple chorus is easier for the audience members to remember (for example, The Beatles´ "Can´t Buy Me Love"). It is more likely that they will want to sing along with the song if they can easily remember the chorus, even after only one or two hearings. Alternately, you can repeat parts of the chorus to help make the song catchier (for an example, see the lyrics to Ricky Martin´s "Livin´ La Vida Loca"). For an example of a longer and more complicated chorus that still stands well on its own, see the lyrics to the Santana song "Smooth."