Does anyone have any advice for someone just getting into writing lyrics?

[-ZERO-]

Hello, it's been a while, since my last post I have read through the entirety of Michael Miller's Complete Idiot’s Guide to Music Composition and created two instrumental pieces that I'd call quite decent that I posted on my tumblr, here and here, if anyone has criticism of these pieces it would be nice to hear.
Since teaching myself as much of the basics as I can I have been a bit stuck, since I don't know what genre of music I want to write in ( jazz? rock? ballads?) or where to learn more about these genres.
I do however plan to attempt my first utau piece, I'm thinking of writing a fan song for Hornet from Hollow Knight and I will probably be posting updates of that project.
But before I embark on that, does anyone have any advice for someone just getting into writing lyrics? I have written poetry before but it was pretty freeform, not really paying attention to the rhyme or rhythm.

 

[Kiyoteru]

First, get a general idea of what you want the song to be about. It could be a story, a feeling, etc. Brainstorm a bunch of words, phrases, and sentences related to this idea, to explore the kinds of things you can talk about.

Create an outline of the song and list the sections. If you've already written an instrumental track, you'll already have a musical structure to go with. If you're starting with lyrics, you can also plan out how the instrumental will go by coming up with the structure. For example, a pop song might go verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus, chorus.

In each section of the song, put some notes for what it'll be about. You can see how the topic of the chorus gets repeated throughout the song, or see how the verses might tell a story by developing each scene, or see how the ideas flow from one section to the next. This is also where you might plan out the music if you haven't written it yet. You could note down what instruments will go with those lyrical topics, or if a section should have an energetic drum beat, or what style of singing the section uses.

Once you have this outline, it's easier to write the final words. You can write the sections in any order, but I like writing the chorus first since it's usually the most important and memorable section, and because I can copy+paste it and finish more of the song. This is where you'd make decisions like how many lines per sections, which lines should rhyme, and so on. I recommend paying very close attention to the sound-related aspects of poetry. For instance, in the English language it's very important to have the right syllable stress, which is affected by the rhythm of the vocals and how it aligns with the beat of the song.

 

[-ZERO-]

Quick question on syllable stress, I read up on the topic at https://www.songwriting.net/blog/lyric-writing-mistakes and I think get it means, it means different syllables deserve more emphasis and need to be higher in pitch. I know you can check the syllable stress of individual words via dictionary or by saying the words out loud but is there any online checkers that check whole blocks of text rather than checking every word individually? (It might be lazy of me to try to take shortcuts like that I'm just curious about the tools available. I also am wondering if I'm taking the definition of syllable stress too literally, since when I tried to find syllable stress checkers for blocks of text most people stated that it would be impossible to create a tool like that since with English you can choose to change the stress to change the meaning of a sentence. I'm just a bit worried since syllable stress as a concept would explain why my previous attempts at writing lyrics would always have irregular rhythm since I never considered it to be a factor prior to this.)

 

[Kiyoteru]

If you're a fluent English speaker, the easiest way to check the syllable stress is to say your lyrics out loud or sing them to yourself. If it "feels weird" it's most likely the stress.

Rhythm is a more significant factor than melody. When you count the beat of music, the main beat will be stronger and more emphasized, while off-beat notes sound weaker. You'll generally want to align your stressed syllables with strong beats. This is when you could refer to poetic feet like iambs and trochees, which are patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables.

It may feel like an intimidating pile of rules and you may want to look for shortcuts or automatic checkers, but to develop your own intuition it takes practice. You can accelerate your practice by deeply analyzing song lyrics. Pick your favorite songs and really dive into what makes the words physically sound good. Make notes about the structure and sections, the rhyming patterns, and the syllable stress. You may notice that a lot of words are almost-rhymes, or that there's rhymes within lines instead of just the very end of lines. Besides reading the lyrics on a page, you can also listen to the song carefully and hear how the syllable stress aligns with the musical beat.