Focusing the Message: 5 Pro Tips from a Songwriter
By Kathryn Craft | November 10, 2022 |
photo adapted / Horia Varlan
First, let me be clear: the songwriter referred to in the above headline is not me. I have written all of one song in my life, in apology to my mother for being someone different than the person she’d hoped I’d be. (Singing it for her diffused the tension in our relationship, so I quit while I was ahead and stopped short of trying to sell it in Nashville.)
No, the singer-songwriter whose mad skills inspired today’s post is Dar Williams, whose folk career rose to popular acclaim in the 1990s while opening for Joan Baez on an international tour. With that jump-start, she sustained her career in the same manner as do many authors: by appearing where she could in small-town venues across the country.
I was literally sitting two feet away from Dar Williams. #notfangirling
Amazingly, Dar made a September appearance in the hamlet closest to my summer home in northern New York State, where trees outnumber people a gazillion to one. Her tour was in conjunction with the release of her book, How to Write a Song that Matters, based on the songwriting retreats she’s been hosting since 2013. This meant that before her evening concert in the opera house at one end of town, I was also able to hear her speak about her creative process at the library three blocks away (yes, at the other end of town!) and pick up a copy of her book.
This was not because I hoped to further my songwriting career, but because as anyone who has read my chapter in Author in Progress (Therese Walsh, ed.) knows, I often find writing mentors and muses hidden within other art forms. Because songwriting is a shorter form, we wordy novelists can learn a thing or two from the way Dar focuses her message.
1. Zero in on your audience
Yes, I think of her as “Dar.” Cheeky, right? I talked to her for all of two minutes in a signing line. But I’m pretty sure everyone who’s heard her speak about songwriting or has heard her perform thinks of her as a friend.
As Dar’s foray into the North Country woods suggests, her listeners matter. Dar pays keen attention to the places where she’ll perform and the people she meets there, and then makes good use of the details she accumulates. They fuel the conversation she has with her audience, inspire new songs, allow her to publicly thank the town’s arts champions as well as some of its inhabitants by name, and even resulted in her first book, What I Found in a Thousand Towns. Add lyrics that feel personal and true, and the audience feels like she’s “one of us.”
Pro tip to build your audience: An audience is built one person at a time. Whether at a conference, a book signing, or speaking in a lecture hall, learn something about the town. Interact with bookstore personnel, organizers, and other authors as well as readers. Use names whenever you can. An interaction that feels personal will make an impression that sticks.
2. Think poetically
During her talk at the library, Dar used a few of her songs to lead us through her songwriting process. Once she latches onto an idea, her first step is to think of it “poetically.” I assumed she meant through metaphor, rhythm, and rhyme, but when I asked to be sure, she said it ran deeper than that.
She glanced out the window. “Take a road, for example. What is a road, really? Why must we tell each other where to go and how to get there?” Such thoughts lead her from the pavement beneath our wheels to deeper explorations of our society.
Pro tip for poetic thinking: Dar generates material for a new song with the following questions:
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- Where did I go? Where did I really go?
- What happened? What really happened?
- How did it feel? How did it really feel?
This depth of focus might not be needed on every page of your novel, but it could certainly unearth extra meaning for key scenes.
3. Sharpen your revision game
Sometimes, in order to make our daily word count, we’ll slap something on the page such as, “At long last, he was happy”—and somehow that determination persists through many drafts because we never paused to question the truth of this. Further psychological fine-tuning—Dar’s “how did it really feel?”—might reveal that this character isn’t “happy” so much as “relieved of the burden of regret.” This specificity helps the reader relate better to that character, since “happy” can be such a vague and fleeting state.
Pro tip for sharpening your end game: “Before the ink is dry” on your story, Dar encourages writers to question whether decisions you made might have just sounded good at the time. As an editor who has seen more than one character “let out the breath she didn’t know she was holding” (guilty), too many fingers “worrying the edge of a cloth,” and so many smiles playing at the edges of mouths that I sometimes imagine them on teeter-totters, I know that we writers can become enamored with phrases that sound authorly. It makes sense—we want to be in that club. Dar urges writers to persevere until every word of what they wrote feels specific and true.
4. Ensure the story makes sense to you
Before we share our work, Dar implores us to make sure our stories make sense to ourselves. In her book, she shares a critique she gave one retreater: “You have a beautiful voice and a song with interesting words and images. We will follow you on the journey of this song. We will trust you. And if you don’t know what it means, you’re basically leading us into the woods.” She added, “And not the good kind of woods.”
The good kind of woods invites the reader to explore and make connections. The bad kind of woods just leaves the reader feeling lost.
Is the story you meant to tell really on the page? Answering this question requires a lot of honest self-reflection from a writer. Sadly, you might not be able to rely on critique partners to determine this; it’s hard for many readers to admit that your lush prose and high-minded ideas didn’t add up to much.
Pro tip for ensuring your story adds up: It’s okay to leave certain aspects of a story open to interpretation—book clubs love that. But whether told through novel or song, a story should leave the reader with a distinct impression about the protagonist’s journey. At the very least, Dar says, cohesion in voice will limit the scope of interpretation. “If we truly believe a song can mean anything at all, we can spare the songwriter some time and direct the listeners to a dishwasher manual.”
5. Make emotional room for your reader
Dar aims her message to a “strike zone” of collective experience and emotional honesty that resides in a listener’s core, somewhere between their heart and their knees—then later applies a tool she calls the “Sentimentimeter” to help “dry up prose that sounds too mushy.” A certain amount of dryness allows the listener to feel their own feelings as opposed to being told what they are supposed to feel.
Pro tip for hitting the strike zone with emotional prose: In a highly emotional sentence, try subbing in one workmanlike word. For example, “Long after you’re gone, my heart will be yours” could become “Long after you’re gone, my memories will be yours.” This allows the reader to make the connection between shared memories and love.
I’ll close with this beautiful quote from her book, which reinforces the links I find between my work and those of mentors in other art forms:
“Art in general reminds me that there are things we call meaningful. Time is an impersonal force, and life itself can feel airy and insubstantial, but when I hear a song that I love, something catches and holds me the way gravity holds us to the ground. There is resonance; there is traction.”
May your work catch readers, hold them to the ground, and continue to resonate in their hearts long after the final cover is closed.
Does experience in other art forms influence your writing? If so, please share something you’ve learned from a sister muse, or an inspirational resource based in another form (and yes, M. Scott Peck’s Golf and the Spirit counts!).
Kathryn Craft (she/her) is the author of two novels from Sourcebooks, The Art of Falling and The Far End of Happy. Her forthcoming book, Crafting Story Movement: Techniques to Engage Readers and Drive Your Novel Forward, draws from decades of experience as both a story consultant and a movement specialist/dance critic. Learn more on Kathryn’s website.
[coffee]
Kathryn, fascinating. Song writers love words as do poets, writers, but in some way, are they not also guided by the rhythm, the flow of the notes. Of course, there is rhythm in the flow of words, absent music, though again poets and lyricists might focus on that more than writers. And in your post, you show how we can adapt a songwriters ideas to our prose, our story-telling. On that note, bad pun, I share that in early childhood, singing brought me comfort and became a daily activity. My father died when I was three. We had a swing in our yard and always song, music in our house. I would sing and swing, in good weather. Every writer has to fall in love with words. Maybe this was my way.
I bet that was how your love of words began, Elizabeth. There’s such a rhythm to swinging, too—perfect for adding a song, while soaring to the joy of words. Thanks for sharing that story, pun and all!
GOSH, this was such a good post, Kathryn! I’ll be rereading and pulling out important bits and quotes to adorn my writing space. And I have her book on my wish list now. Thank you!
Had I thought about it I would have alerted you to this post in advance, Erin, as it is so well targeted to your interests. Glad you found it! A writing friend went to these Dar Williams events with me and we’ll never forget that special day.
First of all, I’m a HUGE Dar Williams fan. I cry every time I listen to The One Who Knows. Thanks for this post. I love the “poetic” thinking prompts (as that is not a strength of mine). This one is a keeper!
That one is so moving. I get that, Jamie! Since you know her work: she specifically spoke about writing “The Beauty of the Rain,” and how it started from one chord she was messing around with. I love that one as well.
You are going to laugh, but my upcoming release (July) is The Beauty of Rain (basically because I love that song…although the book is not based on the lyrics).
Jamie I love this! What a serendipitous connection here!
Kathryn, what a beautiful take on Dar’s book and message! I’m so glad I got to be with you in the North Country and experience Dar together, not just her book signing but her music as well at the opera house! I’m working through her book, too.
I love how you mention her poetic reference to storytelling. This especially speaks to me aligned with these questions:
Where did I go? Where did I really go?
What happened? What really happened?
How did it feel? How did it really feel?
Seeking the answers to these questions and then writing them in a sparse poetic way can also enhance the power of our words in a novel. To choose beautiful, impactful words and string them together in a selective way that evokes emotion. This allows for us, the reader, to fill in the blanks between the words with our own thoughts and feelings and expand on the story with our own unique experiences.
It was such a special day! I’ll never forget it, or sharing it with you. I’ll also never forget the mountains of gorgeous food that no one ate at the library, lol (wish we’d skipped lunch!). It was a special event for the entire North Country. And…I love that both of us immediately started thinking about her as “Dar”!
I am also a huge fan of Dar Williams and she was a local gal (Western Mass) for a long time. Hearing her sing an orgasm in the Vagina Monologues to a packed house remains a stellar memory. Loved the article and the meshing of the arts.
Thanks for stopping by, and sharing that story, Jacqueline! She spoke of her Western Mass roots during the show. Oh how I’d love to hear her sing an orgasm, lol! I believe it would be most convincing. 😂
Thank you, Kathryn, for posing a question that makes me mull over influences on what I write besides written ones. When younger, I wrote while listening to music, symphonic and keyboard jazz. At some point, it became a distraction, and I stopped. But I suppose, all along, that photography has been a constant influence, especially in terms of setting and mood. Captured moments in brilliant light, or brooding shots taken at night, cityscapes or landscapes or interiors deserve the credit for some of my better efforts. And of course we’re all either beholden to or slaves of movies.
I also like your quote from Dar on how “cohesion of voice will limit the scope of interpretation.” This is a valuable insight: a consistent, cohesive voice and tone serves to guide the reader where writer wants her to go. Couple that with a gift for choosing details well, and the writer is likely to take the reader somewhere worth going.
As concerns focusing the message, photography seems the perfect influence. And even your insightful comments about cohesion of voice seem to speak of how to frame/contain/deliver your story. And use of light is so important in our work—it would seem photography is a strong influence in you, Barry!
I was driving one day recently and heard a song called Winter Birds by Ray Lamontagne. When I realized that it was breaking me open, I found a place to pull off the road and listen. Even without being entirely clear on the lyrics, the words I did hear wove an entire tapestry of voice and depth and mood. Of course I googled it as soon as I could and listed to the magic over and over. Your post today speaks so clearly to the brilliant storytelling in the hands of a master, no matter what the medium. Thank you!.
Susan I love Ray LaMontagne. And I have had this same exact experience, needing to pull off the road to jot down a lyric when a song grabbed me by the heart. (That sentence wouldn’t pass Dar’s Sentimentimeter, lol!). It’s such a great reminder that writers are artists who are part of a great, diverse collective.
Another great post, Kathryn, and one that speaks to me. I have often marveled at how a few words in a song or poem can evoke powerful emotions. The first notes from an old, familiar song can bring me to tears. I would love to be able to do that with my writing.
Of course a song has the added benefit of those “first notes.” Music is so powerful. But also, due to shorter length, a song must dive right into the problem at hand, without all the throat-clearing we authors are fond of. It’s well worth studying those few words you found so moving to learn what you can for your own writing.
Such a wonderful post, Kathryn. Excellent lessons from songwriting. I esp. liked her advice to go deeper–what *really* happened, how did it *really* feel, etc. I’m going to use these questions while I revise. Thank you. I’m curious now and will have to listen to her songs–lately almost all the music I listen to is very, very old, as in Gregorian chant, polyphony, some classical. I like how they cross-pollinate my writing. Music helps me to see the underlying structure more easily. Because I also write picture books, I find that making lists of images helps put them in a logical order. I make dummies of all my PBs–stick figures. I do wish I had greater skill in drawing but music and writing take up a lot of time. And there’s always the gardening, cooking, and cleaning. I think the creative life is full of play and I love it.
Thanks for the comment, Vijaya, and the peek inside your writing process. The list of questions you like reminds me of Don Maass’s advice to look beneath the obvious emotion for the underlying one. Here’s to more creative play!
Lovely and insightful article, friend. I especially like the idea of digging into what something is *really* about–such a great way to mine down to the soul of things.
Thanks Tiffany! I’m pretty sure all of us developmental editors appreciate that question. We write “dig deeper here” on manuscripts for a reason—it’s a way of transforming the obvious into revelation.
Thank you so much for sharing what you digested from your evening with Dar Williams. Events like this — author events at bookstores, concerts, visits to the art museum — are so inspiring and nourishing to me.
Here was my big takeaway, the two words I’m going to repeat to myself over and over while I work today: “specific + true”
Yes, such events nourish me as well, Kristan. And I heartily approve of your takeaway, as would “my friend” Dar. May your words be specific and true!
Thank you Kathryn. “Is the story you meant to tell really on the page?” I’ve asked myself this question over and over the past month. I am revisiting early chapters and writer’s group comments in revisions to align characters with the story that’s unfolding—to clarify meaning and purpose in the story itself. You shared so much wisdom in Dar’s insights, and I feel your experience there too. My current journey in both revision and writing forward has me wrestling (dancing?) with specificity. And to my surprise, I’ve discovered a new freedom of action while nailing down details. Hopefully it is as Dar said, “The gravity holds us to the ground. There is resonance; there is traction.” All will be revealed in good time.
Aligning characters with the unfolding story, clarifying meaning and purpose, wrestling with specificity…this sounds like a good revision process, Tori! But I hear you as concerns “is it on the page.” It’s a bear of a question; it’s so easy to fool ourselves.