Writing better lyrics
by Pat Pattison · first published 1995
6mentions
2recommended by
2HN commenters
2015–2021first – last mentioned
100% recommend
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…in the audience, so they share a lot of similarities. For me, learning to write poetry and explore has been great, although funny enough one of the best books to help me with the writing of poetry was Writing Better Lyrics by Pattison, as his advice helps a great deal with poetry (with the above caveat about forms still holding true).
on “On getting poetry” ↗On the Pattison one, out of curiosity did it use his Writing Better Lyrics for the material? I've read the book and love it to pieces even though I write prose, the way he explores words and phrases is sort of magical.
on “Ask HN: What are the best MOOCs you've taken?” ↗So this is technically to language, but as someone who writes on top of codes it gave me so much to think about I feel it still counts. Writing Better Lyrics by Pat Pattison. The way he explores using senses, how to build metaphors, how to construct things gave me new ways to look at a lot of different things. I reread the book pretty regularly and glean something…
on “Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?” ↗…This sounds crazy, but pushing the words not only into your brain but back out through your fingers gives your brain a different avenue into them. 2. Object writing. Learned this one from Pat Pattison's writing better lyrics, but most of the techniques are generally applicable. You take an object/idea, and for 5-10 minutes write about it using all 6 senses (the standard five plus motion). The more you do this the more your…
on “How to get better at painting without painting anything (2015)” ↗I'm doing this one right now, along with his book Writing Better Lyrics, it's great :)
on “Ask HN: What's your favorite online course?” ↗…see things more deeply. A couple I really found helpful here are Elements of Eloquence (gets into rhetorical tools, parallel structure as mentioned in the article being one of many such examples), and Writing Better Lyrics which gives a lot of tools that helps for all forms of writing not only song lyrics.
on “How to gain more from your reading” ↗