What is Anaphora?
Something you might know about already
I was once taking a songwriting course and the speaker mentioned the word Anaphora. Unfortunately, he didn’t say what it was, just something worth looking at after. It made me think: “What (on earth!!) is Anaphora?”. So, I thought I should do a little research.
Anaphora is a great tool to simply use a word or phrase at the beginning of several lines. The benefit of using anaphora is to:
Build emphasis
Build emotion, and
Build drama
Just like that.
And it’s found in all sorts of places - in songs, speeches, poetry, and anywhere that builds the moment somehow. In songwriting, repeating a word or phrase at the beginning of a number of lines can really add something to the lyric.
Here are 15 Anaphora Examples written by Barbara Sturm here. Great stuff.
How does it work?
In my book Song Maps, chapter 5, I introduce Map 2 - Problem/Declaration, where I talk about simpler Choruses, especially writing anthemic songs. And anaphora is just where this can help. Here’s the passage:
”One thing to note is that anthemic songs can often benefit from simpler Choruses, for example:
Title
Title
Another line
Title
Or simply,
Title
Title
Title
I often think that, as writers of lyric-driven songs, we are sometimes nervous about writing simple Choruses. We feel like we are somehow shortchanging the artist or listener by having a three-or four-line Chorus with a lot of repetition. But if you look at many of the most successful song hits, they often have simple three or four line Choruses with a lot of repetition of the title. Just sayin’.”
This is what happened with my song “He Is God”:
He is God, author of all
He is God, of power and awe
Nations rise and nations fall
But He’s still God
Yes, He is God
This is Title/Title/Another line/Title. But I haven’t yet written a Title/Title/Title Chorus so far this year.
How to use this?
There are many examples of using anaphora across all genres of music. The trick here is to keep a substantial idea when it needs to be repeated, say, in the Chorus or in a Refrain. For example, there is nothing substantial about someone losing their shoe (although maybe that’s a creative frontier yet to be explored!). The repeated phrase or word needs to be something people can really ‘get’ in an idea. Often, for writing anthemic songs, the Chorus needs to have something people can get behind, something universal enough for people to totally agree with—a cause, an injustice, a purpose or a triumph.
Here are a few steps I’d suggest:
Decide the main idea for the lyric (say, using a Song Map)
Draft how this idea can be developed in each section (say, a Writable Idea)
Decide on the Title (say, a phrase or word)
Generate options to best position the Title in the Chorus, using a phrase or maybe a word
Draft the Chorus and then sing/read it back to see if it works
And there we go, you’ve just written a lyric anaphora.
Questions
Here are a few questions –
What songs in your Idea Bank could be developed using a simple Chorus using anaphora?
Could anaphora help you build the emotional hook of your lyrics?
Have you written a song or two that would be more impactful in your catalog if using this tool?
Enjoy!
Simon