Write from your Soul 💗

SONG 4 of the 10 Songs In 10 Weeks Challenge is all about telling your story with fresh metaphors.

Today’s exercise is called…

Fresh Metaphors I: From the Soul

This exercise is great to:

• Make your song more emotive and memorable
• Express personal tales with vivid fresh imagery by wading through the waters of your own experiences
• Make your songs bloom like a tall sunflower in the field of mediocrity

In the video, I walk you through the exercise step by step, so you can follow along. But here are the individual steps, if you prefer to read:

1. Echoes: Personal is powerful. Recall a moving personal experience. The more vivid, the better. If it’s raw, better still. You’re looking for an emotional core of your song. Then write it down and spend 10 minutes freewriting with the memory. Describe the experience through your senses. What did you see, hear, feel, touch, smell?
   
2. Emotional Essence: Read your freewriting. Then make a list of any objects or images. Take note of the core emotion of your experience. Write one sentence that expresses clearly what your song will be about.
   
3. Metaphor Mould: This next part takes practice. So if at first you don’t succeed, pick yourself up and don’t be lazy like this sentence. There are purposely no examples in this exercise. This is YOUR voice you’re creating. It’s fine to read other people’s writing but don’t limit yourself to someone else’s way of thinking.
   
   – Look at your object and image list and see if any of them match the core emotional message.
   – Infuse the core message into your images. What would that object do if it embodied the core emotion? Are there a few choice words you can place around your scene that show your emotional core in action?
   – Craft a metaphor that captures your experience and feelings.
   – Still struggling? Close your eyes, feel that emotion again, let images flicker through your cortex and try again.
   
4. Lyric Link: How many metaphors did you get? Did you manage to avoid cliches? As long as you have one that you’re happy about, you’re golden.
   – Create more lyrics to support your metaphors. Try to keep them in the same theme e.g. if one of your metaphors is about cars, steer clear of hugging trees.
   – Massage your metaphohrs and lyrics to fit the emotional core and mood.
   
5. Put your lyrics to music: Once you have a full lyric drafted, create melodies and harmony that speak to your lyrics and finish your song!

That’s it! I hope you enjoy this exercise 🤗

The foundation for this challenge

The book I’m basing this challenge on is Ra Wilson’s book, Write 47 Songs. If you haven’t heard of it yet, I highly recommend you get it. As the name says, the book gives you 47 exercises that serve as a practical roadmap for your artist development through implementation and self-exploration. So it’s a highly practical guide for artists who are just starting out in their songwriting journey, and it’s packed with exercises that are designed to help you put in the practice and level up in all the ways I mentioned before – from your lyric writing to your musical understanding, to developing yourself as an artist in terms of your sound and your artistic voice. All of that through implementation. Because it’s what you DO that counts. When you learn to play an instrument for example, you go to lessons and you spend most of the time DOING. Songwriting should be no different.

Are you new to this challenge? Watch the intro video here!

Wanna join alongside a group of artists?

If you’ve ever made a purchase with us (like joined any of our bootcamps, or got Ra’s book) you also get access to our free WhatsApp community where our artists hang out and support each other. There you can share what you make within a safe space and listen to what others share as well. This will make it way more fun and really help you with accountability.

If you decide to get the book (or you’ve already joined a bootcamp with us), be sure to send me an email so I can give you access to the community! My email address is sonj@artistspringboard.com

I hope you enjoy writing your SONG 3! I’m here if you have any questions 🤗❤️

Happy songwriting,

Sonj