But what happens if there are no real feelings of passion or emotional high or low in you right now. How can you make yourself sit down and write a song?

This is what I would like to show you how to do.

Firstly, you must realize that a song comes from within your spirit. And since your spirit communicates outwards to your mind using the senses, usually mostly the sense of sight, you need to see some pictures first.

This is easy to do. If you shut out all influences on the outside, your spirit will automatically begin to pour out from inside. Pictures will come up from inside you. All you need to do is write down what you see, and you will have a starting point for a story that could become a song.

As you allow pictures to come into your mind, you will find that the most common pictures are of events of the past. So instead of seeing a picture like a still photo, you will tend to see a picture as though you are watching a movie.

It is very easy to sit and think of many such pictures and if you get alone in a quiet place and take the time, you could make quite a big list of pictures to use.

I did this as I prepared this lesson, and I wrote down 28 different pictures that came to my mind. Then I took one of these pictures and used it as an example to show you how you can use it to create a song.

You could use the exact same principle actually to just write a story. It does not necessarily need to become a song. But since we are speaking more about song writing here, I want you to see that as your ultimate goal.

That is what I am going to show you how to do. First, here is the list of pictures that I came up with, very quickly as I closed my eyes and ‘listened’ to my spirit.

1. A burning candle, with flame flickering in the dark.

2. A gushing river, with water flowing swiftly along

3. A barking dog or meowing cat.

4. A couple making love

5. Someone playing guitar or piano.

6. Driving a car.

7. A sleeping person snoring.

8. A gentle breeze blowing over me

9. A howling gale blowing outside

10. Writing on pen and paper.

11. Typing on a computer keyboard

12. Walking down the road

13. Jogging up the road

14. Panting from exhaustion

15. Reading a book

16. Washing your hands

17. Stretching and yawning

18. Watching TV

19. Playing a computer game

20. Playing tennis

21. Washing dishes

22. Putting on shoes and socks

23. Combing/brushing your hair

24. Drinking a soda

25. Scratching an itch

26. Riding a bike

27. A noisy fan rotating near you

28. A rainstorm

Each of these is a simple picture of something happening or someone carrying out an action. They are each like a little snippet of a video.

I am going to take the last item and show you how to convert it firstly into a story, and then into a song.

Let the Rain Come Down

Expanding the Event

The first thing you need to do is to expand the picture you saw by looking at it more closely and writing down some more detail about it.

To do this, you need to apply as many of the five senses as possible to the picture. I will take each sense one at a time and see what we can find out about this picture.

A. What Do You See?

1. Rain falling on the ground

2. Trees blowing in the wind

3. Dry ground becoming mud

B. What Do You Hear?

1. The rain falling on the roof

2. Rain hitting against the window panes

3. The wind blowing loudly

4. Thunder from the clouds

C. What Do You Feel?

1. Cold from getting wet

2. The shaking of the thunder

3. Fear, frustration, anger, sleepy (any other emotion you can think of)

D. What Do You Smell?

1. The wet earth

2. The flowers shedding their aromas

E. What Do You Taste?

1. A hot cup of coffee or soup

Expand Each Statement You Wrote Down

You need to now take each thing you wrote down from your senses, and expand it into a more descriptive line. Each statement must come to life.

To do this you must build pictures by adding adjectives to the nouns – words that help objects come to life and form pictures in your mind.

You can add adverbs to verbs, words that make actions more real and easy to see in your mind.

Any extra words to bring the statement to life, and also make it more poetic.

Here is what I did with my statements above:

1. The rain is falling on the ground

  a. Adding some adjectives for the ground – The rain is falling on the hard, dry, ground

  b. Improving the action words – The rain pours down on the hard, dry, ground

2. The trees are blowing in the wind

  a. The large fir trees are blowing in the wind

  b. The large fir trees sway wildly in the wind

  c. The large fir trees sway wildly in the raging
wind

3. The dry ground becomes mud

  a.The thirsty ground drinks greedily until it turns to slushy mud.

4. The rain is falling on the roof

  a. The roof goes pitter patter from the falling drops

5. The rain hits against the window panes

  a. The droplets tinkle on each window pane.

6. The wind blows loudly

  a. The howling gale growls loudly at the door

7. The thunder makes a loud noise

  a. The thunder roars from the sky in anger

8. You are cold from getting wet

  a. Soaked to the bone, you shiver from the cold

9. You are afraid of the thunder and lightning

  a. Your heart is filled with fear at each loud roar of the storm

10. You feel like going to bed

  a. You long to curl up safely in your soft, warm bed

11. You can smell the wet earth

   a.That familiar smell of rain soaked earth fills the air

12. You can smell the aroma of the flowers

  a. The flowers spread their sweet perfume, filling the air with beauty

13. You need a cup of coffee

  a. The taste of a good warm cup of coffee is on your lips

Put All Final Lines Down Together

Putting all these statements together, you should now be able to clearly see every part of this picture in your mind, with all your senses involved.

1. The rain pours down on the hard dry ground

2. The large fir trees sway wildly in the raging wind

3. The thirsty ground drinks greedily until it turns to slushy mud

4.The roof goes pitter patter from the falling drops

5. The droplets tinkle on each window pane

6. The howling gale growls loudly at the door

7. The thunder roars from the sky in anger

8. Soaked to the bone, you shiver from the cold

9. Your heart is filled with fear at each loud roar of the storm

10. You long to curl up safely in your soft, warm bed

11. That familiar smell of rain soaked earth fills the air

12. The flowers spread their sweet perfume, filling the air with beauty

13. The taste of a good warm cup of coffee is on your lips

Now that we have a few lines to describe the experience of rain, we need to build a full story out of it. Then with the story must come a spiritual principle.

Once you have that in place, you can convert your story to a song. And then we can add some music to the words.

But first we must accomplish the following:

1. A brief description of the story

2. The spiritual principle involved

3. A poem to express the story and the principle

When we get to the third stage we will take some of the lines that we have made above and work them into a rhyming poem that tells the story.

This is the first most important part of song writing – the creation of the actual words of the song, and the part that will decide whether your song is interesting enough.

So let’s take each of these three stages now and see how we can produce a song.

A. Let’s Make a Story

You began by picturing a rainstorm. But the rain storm must have people in it. If you are the only person in the story, then whoever reads your words, or ultimately listens to your song, should be able to relive this story with you as though they are you.

So let’s look at a simple story plot. Here are some suggestions:

1. You are walking along not expecting rain, when suddenly the rain begins to come down.

2. Before you know it you are soaked with the water and filled with fear at the loud thunder and lightning.

3. You make a dash for your house, where you can find safety

4. Once inside the house you shut the windows to stop the rain from coming in and you rest secure from the storm.

5. Now the rain is no longer a threat and you feel safe and secure.

6. You change your clothes and make yourself a warm cup of coffee.

7. You hear the rain on the roof and on the window panes, and instead of being afraid you begin to feel sleepy.

8. You decide to curl up under the warm covers of your soft bed.

B. Now Find the Spiritual Application

1. The storm is like life, which brings sudden problems and difficulties that catch you by surprise.

2. The Lord is like your house, a place of safety to escape the storms of life.

3. In him you find peace and rest.

4. In Him you can rest securely, knowing He has the storm under control.

Now with the story plot and the application in your mind, you can begin to share the story and its spiritual application using whatever words you wish to describe the whole event.

Once you have done this, you can begin to convert your story into a poem by using some of the lines you already created to describe the storm. You will change most of these, and add some new ones to create a poetic flow, including some rhyming of the text. We will look at that shortly.

But first we need to write the story. Here it is in summary.

I was walking home when it happened. It came suddenly and caught me by surprise. The rain came down so quickly that I was not able to shield myself from the downpour. In just seconds I was soaked.

The raindrops were falling so hard I could scarcely see where I was going. Then the lightning started to flash in the sky and I was frightened by a loud peal of thunder that sounded close by me.

Running quickly to my house I dashed inside for shelter. My clothes were dripping wet and I shivered with the cold. The first thing I did was to rush into the bathroom and grab a clean, dry towel.

Soon I was dry and had on fresh clothing. I sat and listened to the rain falling loudly on the roof and splashing against the windowpanes, causing a steady stream of dripping water onto the ground.

Looking through the window, I could see that the hard dry ground was now becoming soft and the brown soil was turning to mud.

The thunder continued to roar outside and the wind howled fiercely through the trees. Now I had nothing to fear. I was safe inside and out of the storm.

I desired only two things to make me feel happy. The first was a warm cup of coffee to take away the cold. The second was a nice warm bed, where I could crawl under the covers.

There I could lie and rest peacefully until the storm blew over. I was safe and secure, and I had a peace in my heart.

As I lay there, I thought about how all of this was a good picture of the spiritual life. Often we are going through life when trouble comes unexpectedly. Suddenly without any warning, you are faced with an attack from the enemy.

It usually catches you by surprise, and at first you find yourself overwhelmed by it and fear fills your heart. Then once you recover, you realize that you must run for shelter.

The only place you can run to is the presence of God. There alone will you find protection from the attack, and shelter from the storms of life.

With the Lord’s help, you can overcome every problem and the effects of the spiritual attack. Then the words of the enemy and his lies can no longer affect you. You are safe and secure in Him.

In Jesus, you can find peace and rest. In Him alone is there protection from all harm. And when you are in His presence you can rest. His Spirit deep inside warms your heart and gives you new strength to face what lies ahead.

And you rest securely, knowing that everything is under His control.

The Story Song

This then is the story that we have made from this event. Now you have some clear pictures in your mind, which you can express in a story song.

Before we actually make a song out of this story, I would like to share with you a few ideas on song patterns, and the kind of structures that are needed in the songs you write. By the time you are finished this course on songwriting, you will be able to write many different kinds of songs.

But before I show you these things, I would like to show you another way of coming up with words that can be converted into a song.

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