rock'n'rill

Rules of writing - or not

As you may or may not know for several months now I’ve been writing a monthly column on songwriting (usually they’re 1 1/2 to 2-page articles) for Gitarre & Bass, Germany’s most-read magazine for, you guessed it, all things associated with guitars and basses.

Writing about music is challenging and rewarding. I don’t declare unbreakable “rules”. I much prefer giving “advice” or “tips”, acknowledging the fact that not everything that works for me will work for everyone else. And: things that would never work for me, things that I, in fact, despise will work just fine for somebody else. Among them: writing an entire lyric before you set it to music, writing a finished musical composition before adding text and - most of all perhaps - knowing beforehand where you want your song to go.

I’ve found out that it’s much easier for me to talk about the lyric writing process than about musical composition. Why?
Mostly maybe because I studied literature and am familiar with the jargon. And also because it may be the part of the process that has more to do with logic and analysis. I always try to follow my instincts but in the rewrite, things come under close scrutiny and get rewritten accordingly.

The music part is much harder for me to explain. I mostly write what “feels right”. Sure, I can describe what I was shooting for after the fact, I can even make up fancy explanations like “this section needed more tension” or “I wanted a lighter flow in the chorus”. These are also the kinds of things I might say to a co-writer if I’m in a co-writing process. And they do make sense to me and sometimes I can even communicate what I mean to a co-writer but in general, I admit, I mostly follow a gut-feeling that is difficult to describe in anything other than very vague or colorful terms.

But I always love reading other people’s rules on writing, particularly if they come from people whose work I deeply respect, love and admire. So without further ado, here’s Elmore Leonard’s Rules Of Writing. I believe you could do a lot worse.

This is only the short version. You can find annotations on each of the points in the original New York Times article.

In case you don’t know who Elmore Leonard is, do yourself a favor and read one of his books. They’re funny, intelligent and wonderful. And I believe Quentin Tarantino knows them inside out.

8 February 2012 ·

• Tags
• writing
• songwriting