Page 86 - Song Maps - A New System to Write Your Best Lyrics - Simon Hawkins

In the arms of my Savior You settled my debt Nailed to a tree
So freely You've given So my sin is broken
You paid the price
But Your grace isn't cheap It is...
Chorus
Bridge
I'm free from my selfishness Free from despair
Free from the heavy chains That held me back there Free to see hope
In all that I do
Free to choose love
And I choose to serve You, now I'm
Chorus
Words and music by Simon Hawkins
Copyright © 2016 Great British Music (Adm. by Music Services) Lyrics Used By Permission, All Rights Reserved
Some points I'd make:
1. The chorus needs to work with both meanings, so simplicity and repetition can help here. It's also articulating a new place (after meaning 1) which is helpful in moving the lyric forward.
2. The function of each Verse is to build two separate contexts to make the Chorus mean something different after each section, but still moving the same plot forward.
3. It's important that both ideas (for Verse 1 and Verse 2) are individually substantial enough.
4. It's also important that the sequence of ideas helps move the song forward in a logical progression,
e.g., from dark to light, from time one to time two, etc.
5. You may well have spotted that there's also a plot twist in the Bridge: because I am free I want to
serve You. This can be a cool way of achieving a payoff.
Variations on the Twist
In some ways, the Twist Map is one of the most flexible in that the Map needs to serve the nature of the twist that you are working with. For example, if the word or phrase twist is best set up as the title (as in Julie Roberts' "Men and Mascara"), then that's the best place to put it. The benefit of putting it in the title is that it's likely to get repeated, thereby reminding everyone what a genius lyric it is.
On the other hand, if the twist is a plot twist, which requires a story to develop before it can twist into something else (as in the UK's 1976 winning entry for the Eurovision Song Contest by Brotherhood of