Finding the one line the song is really about
Okay. Last time we talked about writing what you know instead of what sounds like a song. This lesson is the next problem you'll run into once you've done that.
You'll have a page. Maybe two verses, maybe more. Some of it true, some of it just filler you wrote to get to the next rhyme. And somewhere in there, usually not where you expect it, is one line that's actually carrying the song.
Everything else is just there to get you to that line and away from it again.
The tractor song had this problem too
I've mentioned the eleven-verse tractor song before. What I didn't say is that it took me a long time to figure out which line in it mattered.
It wasn't any of the verses about the engine, or the color it used to be, or the year my dad bought it. Those were just facts. The line that mattered was buried in verse seven, something about him checking the oil before checking on us kids in the morning. That was the true thing. That's what the whole song was actually about — not the tractor, but where he put his attention.
Once Jill made her comment about it being "a lot of tractor" and I cut it down, that line is the one I built the three verses around. Everything that didn't serve it, I let go.
How to find your line
Read what you've got out loud. Not in your head — out loud, even badly, even alone in the truck. Somewhere in there you'll hit a line that feels different from the others. Sometimes it's the one that made you a little embarrassed to write down. Sometimes it's the plainest line on the page, no dressing on it at all.
That's usually it. The true line rarely announces itself with fancy words. It just sits there being true.
Once you find it, ask yourself: does everything else point at this, or away from it? If a verse doesn't lead toward that line or follow from it, it's probably filler. You can cut it. I know that's hard to hear when you worked on it. Cut it anyway.
Opinion, stated plainly: most songs are twice as long as they need to be. Say the thing, then stop. Nobody has ever complained that a song was too short.
The time I tried to skip this step
I'll tell you where this goes wrong, because I did it myself.
A while back I decided to write a fast, cheerful song on purpose, just to prove to myself I could do something other than slow and plain. No true line underneath it, no verse about anything I actually knew. I just wanted something upbeat that moved.
It was terrible. Genuinely one of the worst things I've written. It had energy and rhyme and not one true thing anywhere in it. I played it for Nelda and she was polite in the specific way she's polite when something isn't working — which, if you know her, you learn to read pretty quick.
What I figured out afterward is that the song had no line to organize around. Nothing to point at. It was just verses, stacked up, going nowhere in particular, fast. I write slow and plain because that's where my true lines show up. I stopped fighting that after this one.
Try this tonight
Pull out whatever you wrote a couple lessons back — the rough thing from "write something rough by the end of tonight," or anything since.
- Read it out loud, twice.
- Circle the one line that feels different from the rest. Trust your gut here, don't overthink it.
- Write that line by itself at the top of a blank page.
- Look at your other lines. Which ones lead to it or come out of it? Keep those. Set the rest aside — not in the trash, in your notebook. Scraps aren't waste, they're just not for this song.
- See what you've got left. It'll probably be shorter. That's fine. Probably better.
If you can't find a line that feels true yet, that's alright too. Sometimes the true line isn't written yet — it's the thing you actually meant to say and haven't gotten to. Keep working the verses and it'll show up. It usually does, later than you'd like.
Before next time
Bring your circled line to next class, even if the rest of the song's a mess around it. We're going to spend some time just on that one line and build outward from there. 🌞