Most songwriters generally stay from using thesauruses because they think it will limit their own imagination and creativity. Some songwriters actually believe using a thesaurus while songwriting is a form of cheating, and by using a thesaurus the resulting lyrics will sound forced. Hogwash!!!!
If you learn how to use a thesaurus correctly you’ll find it hard to write a song without one! A thesaurus can give you not only choice words for your song, it can actually take your songs into new directions you never dreamed of by inspiring your own creativity! Pro songwriters know how powerful a thesaurus can be, especially when they’re trying to write a song to meet their publisher’s deadline for pitching a song to an artist in a timely manner.
There is absolutely no greater tool for getting rid of songwriters’ block forever than a thesaurus. Keep in mind there will be days when your songwriting seems easy and some where you’ll find songwriting more difficult, but by using a thesaurus correctly, songwriters’ block will be left behind forever!
Here are step-by-step songwriting tips to using a thesaurus:
1. Choose a theme for your song. (e.g., let’s say your song theme is something plain like, “I feel so alive because I’m in love with this person”).
2. Choose an interesting or even bland word from your song theme (i.e., the words feel, alive, and love stand out, so we’ll pick the most interesting one first- “alive”). Don’t worry if the original word is bland. One average word brings others to life!
3. Look in your thesaurus or use an online thesaurus such as “Rhymezone“, and find related words to the word “alive” while thinking of your theme. These are the related words I found in Rhymezone: aware, awake, vital, give, exist, breathing, life, remember.
4. Now write down these words in a single column on the left side of a paper.
5. Repeat the process with every single related word retrieved from the word “alive”, starting with “aware”, keep building your word list , and keep writing each word until you have two to four columns.
6. Now you have a worksheet to pick words from, which will naturally spring ideas as they relate to your song theme!
As an example let’s review the original words we found on Rhymezone from the word “alive”: aware, awake, vital, give, exist, breathing, life, remember.
Here are four original, interesting lines quickly sprung from this process:
I keep staying awake
Too aware of my breathing
My pulse is amplifying
Everything I’m feeling
It didn’t take very long at all. These lines are definitely good enough to be the start of a solid song. I added some words that weren’t on the list in the last two lines, but that’s the whole point! These words were actually inspired by the other words from the thesaurus.
For more advance techniques while using a thesaurus, visit SongwriterAdvisor.com
