The Crafty Songwriter - Tip #1
January 20th, 2008[tutorial, songwriting]
Show don’t tell
by Carson A. Metzger
Exercise #1: Practice writing a song where you avoid telling entirely
How do you do this?
Be descriptive.
Avoid universal statements by grounding or dramatizing your song in the details of a particular scene, character, or relationship between characters.
Avoid using “to be” verbs.
Forgo clichés and truisms by translating things you have heard before into your own words.
If you find yourself writing about the effects of television, consider these two divergent ways of approaching the subject matter.
Example 1:
1A. Telling
Turn off your TV
it only makes you stupid.
1B. Showing
Dad talked at the TV
more than he heard me.
In example 1A, the songwriter adopts the telling mode to let us know what he thinks of television. The resulting statement is universalizing, didactic, clichéd, and ungrounded in any particulars (see the forthcoming theory section for more explanation).
In example 1B, the songwriter communicates a similar notion—that the TV can have a stupefying effect on people—by describing how television is experienced through a relationship between two particular people.
Example 2:
2A. Telling
Isn’t it strange
The way the world works?
Isn’t it odd
How fate moves us?
2B. Showing
As the tarot cards told
She got rounder with season
Sucking in her bulging belly
“By whose magic am I pregnant?”
In example 2A, the songwriter uses vague words—“strange” and “odd”—to express a cliché: fate is inexplicable. Part of the burden of the songwriter is to put the inexplicable into words—not simply to mimic the truism. Often, when we tell, we are making an argumentative claim of some sort. Here the author claims that the world is strange because of the manner in which fate works. Yet in telling, she provides no evidence to support this claim. Why should I believe this songwriter? Such a telling approach leaves me asking the question: why is the world strange? How does fate move us?
In example 2B, the songwriter approaches a similar claim—fate shapes the world—by giving fate a character—in the forms of “tarot cards” and “magic”—and by dramatizing the strangeness through a particular woman. Here, the fate is not some abstract force; rather the pregnant woman embodies fate—we see the effects of fate as she struggles with the strangeness of “her bulging belly.”
In practicing a showing mode in my songwriting, I have learned that we are capable of telling through showing. This leads to much richer, more dramatic, less didactic songwriting.
I want to end with a few lines from Iron & Wine’s song Passing Afternoon:
There are things that drift away
Like our endless numbered days
Autumn blew the quilt right off the perfect bed she made
Here, songwriter Sam Beam of Iron & Wine mixes telling with showing. In the first two lines, he tells us about change in a universal fashion. Both the use of the verb to be—“There are”—and the invocation of a collective subject—“our”—suggest the universal reach of Beams words. In these first two lines, we are not privy to a particular scene or narrative.
Yet Beam shifts in the next line to a more particular mode of showing; in fact, he uses this line to show what he has told us in the first two lines: “Autumn blew the quilt right off the perfect bed she made.” What was universal and objective—the vague “things [that] drift away”— becomes embodied in a particular quilt blown off by the winds accompanying a specific change of season (The first stanza of the song describes summer so we witness the movement of “endless numbered days” from summer to autumn).
I will continue this rough read of the Iron & Wine lyric and further flesh out these thoughts with an additional theory section to better explain how to decide when to show and when to tell in your songs.
Cheers,
Carson
Carson Metzger is an alt-folk singer-songwriter working on a PhD and performing in Albuquerque, NM. He is wrapping up the production of a new album, A Nova Anatomia of Gods and Bodies. His music and lyrics can be found at carsonmetzger.net.
He can be contacted at carsonametzger@gmail.com.
See another of Carson’s contributions to The PCQ:
Garage Sale Retrospective
As we create, we use up media, materials, tools, ideas, time, and our own creative energy. Working from abundance means having a well of resources—more than we need—to create what we want. 
My son used this expression in a conversation about the new songs he had just recorded. I mentioned how much the phrase resonated with me and he said that he had heard it from a professor who used it in terms of writing. In both instances, they were talking about accumulating, creating, way more than is needed for a project and then winnowing it down later to a more refined level. 
Not everyone creates this way. I have a friend who writes sparsely and then fleshes out the story after she has the skeleton of it constructed. I’m the opposite. I overwrite and then must be brutal with myself about taking out everything that isn’t necessary. 
However, the crucial aspect of abundance isn’t the number of words we write or the collection of materials on our worktables or the amount of paint we have at our disposal. It’s not even about time. 
Time is necessary and without it we can’t create. But, there are people with loads of time who don’t use it to record music, make art or write novels. So having the time will only work for us if we have an abundance of what will motivate us to work, to play, to innovate.
While it’s true there are those instances when the more we create, the more energized we feel, it does have a limit. We have to always be aware of when we begin to feel like a worn-out battery. At that point, the idea is to get away from what is depleting us and re-charge ourselves. Working from an abundance of creative spirit will always result in a more effective creation.
