The truth is…
Anything and everything can be used as a lyric writing prompt.
But the 15 writing prompts below are guaranteed to get your creative juices flowing.
Here's how to get the most from these songwriting prompts (and improve your songwriting productivity while you're at it)…
- Commit to sticking with the song and following it through to completion, and build a good habit of finishing what you start.
- If the song is going badly, write even faster. Just get it over with because if anything is worth keeping, you'll know a day or two later. But you'll also learn a valuable lesson about what you don't like. Writing songs is how you get better.
- Forget about caring if your ideas are good enough until you're warmed up and have lots of ideas on the page. Picasso said, "The chief enemy of creativity is good sense." So don't let your taste turn you into a snob that turns its nose up at your own work!
Now, let's write a song...
Song Titles
Song titles make excellent writing prompts. These rock-solid songwriting techniques will get you started writing song titles that generate interest, make entertaining songs, and ultimately get people to listen and talk about your songs.
- How To Get More Listeners With A "Lizard Brain" Song Title
- The Perfect Song Title – 5 Things to Remember
The Lyric Triad
The Lyric Triad is a tool I created to make it easy to start writing and keep coming up with ideas whenever you need them. Here's a brief introduction and the story of how I came up with The Lyric Triad.
Song Plots
Song plots are outlines that give your song sections a basic premise that you can flesh out in your lyrics. Not only do song plots make excellent writing prompts, but they're very powerful when it comes to presenting your song ideas.
The Story Hook Challenge
If you're interested in storytelling and learning dramatic writing structures, you'll love The "Story Hook" Challenge.
Tag Clouds
Use a popular content source to create a word cloud app like WordItOut.
For detailed instructions, check out How To Get More Listeners With A "Lizard Brain" Song Title.
Put words and song titles into Google or Google Images and describe what you see.
Start From a Mood
Pick the feeling you want the song to carry and let the mode suggest the music. Lydian is bright, Ionian is neutral, Mixolydian is bluesy and fun, Dorian is sexy and edgy, Aeolian is melancholy, Phrygian is defiant. Choose a mood word, pull a chord progression or a melody out of the matching mode, and write to what you hear.
Start From Someone Else's First Line
A great opening line does a lot of work in a few words, and reading a pile of them back to back teaches you what that work looks like. Skim until one snags you, then write your own first line that does the same job. You're borrowing the move, not the words.
Reddit Prompts
16 million people subscribe to the Writing Prompts subreddit! (If you need a laugh, check out The Worst Reddit Writing Prompts Of All Time.)
Read: How To Get The Most Out Of Reddit As A Songwriter
Music, Books, Movies, Media
All those hours binge-watching Netflix can be put to good use.
Taylor Swift puts herself in other people's perspectives to access emotions. For example, she would pause John Hughes' movies (The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, Pretty In Pink) and ask herself, "What's he or she thinking at this moment?"
Writing Prompts on Tumblr
There are over 800 writing prompts on this Tumblr blog. Many of them are images to help you get your visual sense warmed up.
365 Creative Writing Prompts
These 365 creative writing prompts have you covered through the rest of the year.
A Year of Journaling: 52 Journaling Prompts
The Girl Who Loved To Write has a fun post of 52 prompts to get you started journaling.
Start From a Sound
Rhyme works as a prompt too. Pick a word you like the sound of, find its perfect rhymes, then open it up with family rhyme, where the consonants after the vowel are phonetically related instead of identical. Cut and luck. Rich and wish. Fun and sung. The pairs you'd never reach through perfect rhyme are usually the ones that suggest a line.
TED-Ed: Creative writing prompts that you can do in 10 minutes
Ted has some fun things to write about as well as inspirational videos for creative writers.
There you have it. 15 songwriting prompts to help you get warmed up and brainstorm new song ideas.
Keep in mind that Speed Songwriting isn't just about writing fast. It's about being aware of time and making the most of it.
If you know how long it usually takes you to write a song, you can set realistic goals that are motivating to achieve.
There's nothing wrong with writing slowly. But if you write slowly, it's even more important to set aside more time to complete your songwriting projects.
Simple planning can help you complete more projects throughout your year.
Challenge yourself. You might be amazed at the results.
The 7-Step Method That Helps You Actually Finish a Song
Most songwriters have more ideas than finished songs. This free guide shows you the exact sequence to take an idea from start to done — without the rewriting loop or the blank-page panic.
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No spam. Just useful things for songwriters.
Thanks for posting this very very cool post!
You pretty much can’t not write after looking at this one. 🙂
YES! That’s exactly what I was hoping for. 🙂
I find a good technique is to imagine you are writing a song for someone else, trying to write it as you think they would, from their perspective. I find it works best by picking out strangers, people you see when out and about, imagining their lives and thoughts. It takes you out of yourself and opens up whole new ideas and senarios. It’s worked for me many times!
Nice!!!!
😉