New! Song Map: Questions/Answers
Adding intrigue and depth
As a songwriter, you may sometimes find yourself asking the question, how can I make my lyrics more interesting? A great way to add intrigue and depth to your lyrics is to use questions and answers. That’s what this Song Map is all about. Keep reading to learn more.
What does the Q/A Song Map look like?
The Questions/Answers Song Map is a new Map, following the seven universal Song Maps as set out in my first book, Song Maps: A New System to Write Your Best Lyrics.
The great thing about this Map is that, once you've established the question concepts in the first verse, your chorus becomes the most obvious means to expand on those ideas. To continue building on the lyric, assuming a VCVCBC structure: The second verse goes into further detail regarding what it feels like, how it makes you feel, or how it influences V1's ideas.
Finally, the bridge brings in a new idea that changes the perspective, before going back to the chorus to remind us of the main point: the answer.
Questions/Answers can be represented as follows:
Verse 1 – Questions
Chorus 1 – Answers
Verse 2 – What the answers are sensed
Chorus 2 – Answers
Bridge – Payoff
Chorus 3 – Answers
How to use Q/A
To use the Questions/Answers Map I’d suggest asking a few things:
What is the central theme or idea you want the title to represent? Is it strong enough? Is it something that can be repeated several times, and approached from different perspectives? This will become your Chorus idea.
What questions are meaningful enough to ask about the central theme in the Chorus? How can this question be approached in several different ways? What are the essential key elements to set up the question? What elements of seeing, feeling, hearing, touching, smelling etc., can create this setup? This is V1.
Having found the answer in the Chorus, what new elements of this situation can help develop the story further? How is the answer idea sensed using the same things in 2 above? How does this make your picture more granular? This is V2.
What does it all mean? What is the impact after having gone through the process from V1/Ch/V2? What does that picture look like? This is your Bridge.
Examples
In terms of commercial songs, there are many great songs out there that use this Map, for example:
Pop/Soundtrack: “Shallow” by Lady Gaga & Bradley Cooper
While they are all great songs in each genre, it’s worth digging into the context of these to help decode how this works.
For example, "Shallow” from A Star Is Born, starts with three questions in both verses, with the pre-chorus taking through changes - falling/good times/longing for change - before reaching the answer in the chorus - off the deep end/dive/through the surface/ far from the shallow now. Great development, and great crafting.
Questions
Here are a few questions:
In your Idea Bank, what titles could easily be set up using a question?
What would happen if you swapped the ideas in V1 and the Ch? Would it lose some of the impacts of the lyric?
What favorite songs are written with questions/answers in the lyrics?
Hope this helps!
Simon.