Use This to Kickstart Your Songwriting

I need to confess something to you all...

I have a terrible habit—one that all creative types fall into at some point in their careers and hobbies. Here it is:

I only write songs when I'm inspired. And inspiration is a fleeting thing. So as it stands, the past few months have been nothing short of dry for me when it comes to songwriting.

BUT lately, here in the last week or so, the juices have started flowing a bit more, but they needed a little "umph" to get going.

Here's the process.

Fill the Blank Space with a Frame

There's almost nothing worse than looking at a blank page of paper with intention of filling it, but then your mind is as blank as the material on the desk in front of you. (Or worse, there are too many ideas fighting for attention in your head and you can't nail a solid thought down!)

That's how the creative process has been for me when I've tried showing up to get a song written this past calendar year. There have been a couple of decent results, but largely, I've been left wanting to make more and more... but nothing "inspiring" materializes. It's either non-existent, or it's lost in a sea of competing ideas and priorities that are too overwhelming to divide.

This last week though, I started working within a stricter set of criteria for songs I wanted to write, and it's paying off nicely. Actually, it's something that I've done before, but in the busyness of life, it's easy to forget how well this works.

The framework? Writing new stanzas to old hymns. It's a great way yo break out of writer's block; you already have a rhyme scheme in place, and you don't have to re-work the syllable count.

A Glimpse Into My Songwriting

This past week, I wanted to sing the Doxology/"Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow (Old 100th)" for our upcoming Sunday service, but I felt there needed to be more words to sing in light of our sermon topic, which is Christ as the True and Better Isaac.

We're covering a wide swath of themes, mainly touching on sacrifice, Father/Son dynamics, and confessing the story of the gospel in our singing. The Doxology is a great way to cap off a time of worship, especially at the end of a service. I started off by just writing the classic, one-verse lyric down:

Praise God from whom all blessings flow

Praise Him all creatures here below

Praise Him above ye heavenly hosts

Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost

Any time we have a song that speaks of all persons in the Godhead, I look for ways that we can explore each person of God in greater detail. A great way to frame this introducing the tune with the classic, original verse, and then writing verses that speak of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

For the second verse, the first line that popped into my head came from John 3:16:

Praise God who sent His only Son. 

Looking at the rhyming scheme of the original lyric, I needed to aim for words that rhymed with "Son," or at least were near-rhymes. This is where that, instead of writing out complete lines, I list words that are rhymes or near-rhymes and then work my toward those words. Easy rhymes would be words like, "won," and "done."

So how about using, "won?" Well, Christ won over death and the grave, but another angle could be seeing "heaven" winning, too. After all, a word like "heaven" can be used to represent the divine whole. Here's the line I came up with:

Through Him was heaven's vict'ry won.

Nice! But I still had to get two more lines, and I just couldn't come up with anything to work toward "done." This where instead of doggedly trying to find a way with that word only, you should pivot into a near-rhyme. Thinking about imagery of Christ, His trial and mortification (beatings, carrying the cross, being nailed, etc.) came to mind, and the perfect near-rhyme presented itself: "blood." This is where I thought more about the purpose of shedding His blood, which is to save the world from sin. So here's the first line I came up with:

He saved the world by His spilled blood.

It's an OK line, but not really poetic enough to draw the singer/listener through a narrative. How about using it as the second line, instead? If you change the first couple of words, you get this:

Praise God who sent His only Son, 

To save the world by His spilled blood.

Ok—now we're getting somewhere! Not only does the lyric flow better, but it strengthens the familiar language from John 3:16. (Any time you can do this is a huge win for quality songwriting.) This sparked even further exploration of the purpose and outcomes of Christ's sacrifice: What does His sacrifice do, in an even more specific sense? Well, we always hear phrases like, "He has purchased us with His blood..."

Ah, "us"—there's a word I can use as a near-rhyme! Couple that with some synonyms for "purchased," and here's the initial line I wrote down:

His stripes have bought and ransomed us.

Eh, there's a problem here: Redundancy. After all, "bought" and "ransomed" are essentially the same thing in this context. So, what else is produced by Christ's spilled blood for us? Hmmm... "redeemed" comes to mind, but that doesn't naturally fit the syllable count—it really needs to be one syllable. Let's try the word "sealed" instead.

His stripes have sealed and ransomed us.

Perfect. We eliminated redundancy and got an added bonus of alliteration! Put together, here's the final stanza:

Praise God who sent His only Son, 

To save the world by His spilled blood.

His stripes have sealed and ransomed us;

Through Him was heaven's vict'ry won!

In this verse, we have a clear narrative of the redemptive work of Christ, being sent by His heavenly Father to die for the sins of the world and purchasing His people from eternal death, and then pointing us to victory, lending a sense of finality to lyric.

Now It's Your Turn

So here's a challenge: Write your own verses and reply back to this email, and then I'll feature some of the submissions in the next post!

Be blessed 👊✌️