Page 16 - Song Maps - A New System to Write Your Best Lyrics - Simon Hawkins

A lyric written in 2D paints a picture. It still sounds like a song, often with a lovely melody, cool guitar riffs, sweet harmonies, and a bass line. However, its impact is restricted because it doesn't give us the whole picture. It's flat. It doesn't move us from place A to place B; we just stay in the same place but use different words to describe it in each section.
If I wanted to show you what my house looks like I have a choice. I could draw it in 2D, and it could look like the following:
I know, my drawing skills are so awesome (not). But irrespective of my drawing skills, anyone drawing it in 2D would only provide you with a limited view, leaving questions unanswered: How deep is the house? How far back does the garage go? Is there a patio at the front? Is that a boat at the side of the house or a shed? How thick are the chimneys? Are those front windows really at the sides of the house?
In the same way, writing lyrics in 2D only provides a limited picture because it uses just two dimensions:
Title (or theme), and Structure
Alongside other technical elements (rhyme, rhythm, prosody– matching the tone of the lyric to the tone of the music).
If I were to summarize a 2D lyric, it would broadly look as follows:
Verse 1 - Idea 1
Chorus - Title
Verse 2 - Idea 1, different words