This skill does not teach any technique. It does only two things:Give a fixed worksheet for breaking down a lyric, andIndex specific works and lyricists' own accounts to other skills. ★ For any "how to do it", this skill only gives the source and the destination,the method itself is in the corresponding L1/L2/L3 skill。
Which sections to read by task
| Task | Read |
|---|---|
| Want to break down a lyric | ★ The table in §1, fill it in the order of §1.3 |
| Want to find a real example | §3, or reference.md the index in §1 |
| Want to know how professional lyricists judge good versus bad | §2 |
| The three people say different things, whose do you follow | ★ §2.4 |
| Can't put your finger on what's wrong with your own lyric | §4 the negative checklist, go through it item by item |
| Want to practice with someone else's work | §5 |
Boundaries
| Not handled here | Where it belongs |
|---|---|
| The five questions of conception | lw-song-intent |
| Section function, where the opening line goes, sentence patterns, asymmetry | lw-structure |
| Imagery, concrete nouns, metaphor | lw-imagery |
| Perspective, time anchor, leaving blank space | lw-narrative |
| Rhyme, rhyme scheme, degree of surprise | lw-rhyme |
| The thirteen rhyme categories, level and oblique tones, character count and pauses, singability | lw-mandarin |
| Inverted tones | lw-tone-check |
| Chinese style, allusions, wordplay | lw-chinese-style |
| Rap, musical theater | lw-rap、lw-musical-theatre |
| Melody, arrangement, instrumentation | Composition and arrangement(not in this library) |
| Final AI-flavor check before submission | lw-ai-tell-audit |
★ The line most easily crossed: when breaking down a lyric you notice "the third time the chorus changes one character", this skill is only responsible for noting that this happened; "whether the third chorus should change and how to change it" is a matter for
lw-structure. What a breakdown produces is evidence, not rules.
1. The fixed worksheet for breaking down a lyric
1.1 The twelve rows
Every time you break down a lyric, fill in this table. The columns are fixed, no substitutions.
| # | What to look at | Specific question | Corresponding field | Where the method belongs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Conception | Useone plain sentenceto say the one thing this song says | intent.one_thing |
lw-song-intent |
| 2 | To whom | Who is the "you" in the lyric; is there a "you" | intent.to_whom |
lw-song-intent |
| 3 | Moment | At which point in time does the speaker stand | narrative.tense_anchor |
lw-narrative |
| 4 | Recurring object | Is there a thing that appears repeatedly; what does it mean each time | intent.anchor_object |
lw-imagery |
| 5 | Opening line | What the first line does: give a scene / give an action / give a question / give a conclusion | — | lw-structure |
| 6 | Section division of labor | What the verse handles, what the chorus handles;what changed the second time | prosody.sections |
lw-structure |
| 7 | Perspective | Which person; does it switch midway | narrative.pov |
lw-narrative |
| 8 | Imagery system | Why are these things in the same frame (one sentence） | imagery.system |
lw-imagery |
| 9 | Language layer | Which rhyme scheme, did it change; line length; how far from colloquial speech | rhyme.che |
lw-mandarin、lw-rhyme |
| 10 | Asymmetry and blank space | Which line is deliberately short;what is left unsaid where it should have been said | asymmetry、narrative.withholding |
lw-structure、lw-narrative |
| 11 | Interlocking with the melody | Which character the highest note of the whole song falls on; which line's melody was reused | prosody.peak_syllable |
lw-tone-check + composition and arrangement |
| 12 | ★ One transferable point | What action does this lyric teach me(one sentence, with a verb) | — | — |
Plus one line, not in the table but must be written：
⚠ The part that cannot be learned: how much of the merit in this lyric depends onthis singer, this era, this melody? Write that part down, butdo not treat it as a method。
1.2 Three disciplines for filling in the table
| # | Discipline | Why |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Go through the whole song once before writing, and write nothing down while going through it | Taking notes while listening turns structure into sentences |
| 2 | Write only what is visible | "He wants to express loneliness" is not observation; "the whole piece has only one person, no 'you'" is |
| 3 | ★ Cells you cannot fill in are not allowed to be left blank; write "this column has none" | "None" is a discovery—if a good lyric has no recurring object, it means it is held up by something else, and that is what should be learned |
1.3 ★ Order: start filling from the middle
Do not start filling in from line 1.
先填 5–10（破题、段落、视角、意象、语言、留白） ← 这些是看得见的
再填 11（与曲的咬合） ← 需要听
然后回头填 1–4（立意、对谁、时刻、物件） ← 这些是推出来的
最后填 12 ← 一句话
★ Reason：The theme is dismantled out, not seen. If you write the theme first, you will write down your own impression, and then look for evidence in the nine lines below to justify it. Fill in the visible things first, and the theme will surface on its own—and it is often different from what you thought at first。
Yao Qian recorded a practice in the same direction: when writing "Answer",he first set the big theme of "answer", then, under the given melody and verse-chorus structure,distributed the extended details under the big theme(Yao Qian p0005)— ★ When writing, go from top to bottom; when dismantling, go from bottom to top. The two directions must not be mixed.
2. Three people's writing habits and judgment standards
★ Each item below is marked with who said it. The three people are not three versions of one method; they are really different (§2.4).
2.1 Yao Qian
| Item | Statement | Page |
|---|---|---|
| Opening | "The first line of a song that opens the theme often determines the life or death of a work";the opening must seize the listener's curiosity in the shortest time | Yao Qian p0005, p0002 |
| Standpoint | ★ Think from the listener's position, not from the creator's position | Yao Qian p0001 |
| Chorus fine-tuning | The chorus melody usually stays unchanged for singability and memorability,but words are fine-tuned to intensify emotion—in "The Meaning of Travel", the first time is "make you fall for it", the second time is "make you distracted" | Yao Qian p0001 |
| Restraint | The beginning of the chorus has three rapid repeated notes, which could have been reinforced with reduplication,he deliberately avoided it, using plain phrasing; the judgment is **"a restrained brushstroke is more likely to touch the listener's inner emotions"** | Yao Qian p0003 |
| Empty shot | "Just like a film, when the protagonist is absent and the frame freezes on an empty shot, that is when it is most sentimental" | Yao Qian p0003 |
| Remove chicken soup | Check whether the lyrics fall into clichés,remove words like "promise" and "positive energy" | Yao Qian p0003 |
| Hold yourself back | "When creating, one must appropriately suppress one's own emotions and maintain objectivity, only then can the reader also stand in your position and look at this story" | Yao Qian p0005 |
| Voice | Record your own daily speech and transcribe it to recognize habitual expressions;after finishing the lyrics, read them aloud and record them | Yao Qian p0004 |
| Set the situation before writing | "Speaking to one person" or "speaking to everyone"; a public occasion or a private occasion | Yao Qian p0004 |
| Specific state method | "Put yourself in a certain specific extraordinary state, and it is possible to write works different from the conventional" | Yao Qian p0005 |
| Honesty | "Honesty is more moving than showy words"; creation does not provide a final answer, it only seeksthe answer that can most convince oneself at this stage | Yao Qian p0005 |
| When is it considered finished | ★ "The completion of a work is not when it is finished writing, but when the listener produces an interpretation" | Yao Qian p0004 |
2.2 Zhang Li
| Item | Statement | Page |
|---|---|---|
| What lyrics are | "Lyrics are poetry combined with music"; the ideal form is **"set to a tune it can be sung, apart from the tune it can be recited, catchy... plain and easy to understand, never mediocre"** | Zhang Li p0028, p0033 |
| Source | "Life is the only source of lyric creation"; opposesthe theory of theme first, believing it inevitably leads to conceptualization and homogenization | Zhang Li p0029, p0049, p0066 |
| Four criteria for conception and theme | ★ Novel, clever, deep, clear | Zhang Li p0099–p0107 |
| Take one point | The theme is **"the bamboo skewer that strings the candied haws; after gathering the trivial imagesbe good at taking one point**, and by all means avoid excessive elaboration | Zhang Li p0137 |
| Follow the vine to find the melon | During writingby all means avoid a restless mind, one must follow one vine down,and must not branch off in different directions | Zhang Li p0144 |
| Elaboration | Before the climax appears, one mustadvance layer by layer；"The tall must be set off by the short, the fat must be accompanied by the thin", red flowers need green leaves as a foil | Zhang Li p0127 |
| Unity of emotion | ★ Within a single paragraph the emotion must be unified; if "one emotion per line, four emotion symbols in a four-line paragraph,"the composer will be unable to grasp it, as if facing somniloquy | Zhang Li p0023 |
| The first three lines | "For every lyric you write, you must be good at choosing the sluice gate of emotion. That is, the 'first three lines'" | Zhang Li p0117 |
| Title | The title is the **"eyes of the lyrics"**, and must be striking yet concise and catchy;it accounts for fifty percent of the weight of the work | Zhang Li p0150–p0151 |
| Narrow rhyme | ★ Narrow rhymes actually tend to produce good lyrics; broad rhymes have more vocabulary, but when overused they appear mediocre and insipid——"Experience proves that new vocabulary frequently appears in narrow rhymes" | Zhang Li p0150, p0179 |
| Recitation | After finishing, have relatives and friends hear it recited, to assess which partsread very awkwardly; recitation is the first step in putting the work into practical testing | Zhang Li p0150, p0180 |
| Cold treatment | "When creating, one is hot; when creation is finished, one must cold-treat it"; for one lyric he wrote four drafts, five drafts, all the way to ten drafts | Zhang Li p0150, p0055–p0056 |
| Three walls | ★ Three things that block progress:laziness, complacency, premature completion (rushing to finalize the draft) | Zhang Li p0190–p0191 |
| Strictly guard against three characters | ★ flat, scattered, long——"When writing lyrics, do not seek completeness. Once you seek completeness, it is inevitably flat, scattered, and long" | Zhang Li p0182 |
| Length | A paragraph is best with eight to ten lines; two paragraphs are best, three paragraphs are also fine | Zhang Li p0182 |
2.3 Hong Yuan
| Entry | Statement | Page |
|---|---|---|
| What lyrics are | "Lyrics are the carrier of emotion, the materialization of meaning"；"Lyrics are the fire erupted by the magma of meaning between the fault lines of emotion" | Hong Yuan p0011 |
| The lyricist's heart | Must havea childlike heart(holy, only then can one discover truth, goodness, and beauty) anda great heart(universal love, only then can one express truth, goodness, and beauty) | Hong Yuan p0013 |
| The lyricist's eyes | The eyes must be likea convex lens, a concave lens, a telescope, a periscope；★ but by no means wear glasses——colored lenses make everything monotonous, dust makes everything blurry, refraction makes everything grotesque | Hong Yuan p0013–p0015 |
| Individuality | ★ "Without individuality there is no need for your existence; without individuality there is even less a work that belongs to you" | Hong Yuan p0016 |
| Posture | "A lyricist is one who offers flowers, not one who fishes" | Hong Yuan p0016 |
| The boundary between poetry and lyrics | Poetry is still on the page, occupies space, and can be read repeatedly; lyrics flow within the music, occupy time, and can only be heard in sequence | Hong Yuan p0018 |
| Seven things to give a composer | Vividemoji、a thread of emotional development、a form of rhythm、a unique artistic angle, an image that can be deepened and beautifiedimage, a savourableartistic conception、a space in which one can fly freely | Hong Yuan p0022–p0023 |
| Not a semi-finished product | "Lyrics are not a semi-finished product"、"Lyrics are not a parasitic vine"——What loses its vitality once separated from the tune is not good lyrics | Hong Yuan p0024–p0025 |
| Nine rules of language | Popular (seemingly vulgar yet not vulgar, beingfiltered colloquial speech), concise, vivid, distinct, image-rich, accurate, true, novel, profound | Hong Yuan p0029–p0031 |
| Four opposites | ★ Oppose the plain, oppose the direct, oppose the exposed, oppose the full——"The greatest secret of art is the art of concealment", beyond the surface of the words there must besubtext; "fullness" is a kind ofbloating | Hong Yuan p0031–p0032 |
| Auditory traps | ★ Notepolysemous characters and homophones，"One must never cause misunderstanding" | Hong Yuan p0033 |
| Scenery is set for emotion | Distinguishscenery in the eye(natural state) fromscenery in the mind(in conception);"Scenery has always served emotion" | Hong Yuan p0033–p0034 |
| The core is the conception | A work cannot be without a core,the conception is the core; a work without a core **"the author has no conception, writing at random"** | Hong Yuan p0035 |
| Skills beyond the lyrics | Quoting Lu You: **"If you truly wish to learn poetry, the skill lies beyond poetry"** | Hong Yuan p0036 |
2.4 ★ Their disagreements
This section is more useful than the previous three. The points of disagreement are exactly where you must choose a side yourself.
| Point of contention | Yao Qian | Zhang Li | Hong Yuan |
|---|---|---|---|
| To what degree of subtlety | Restraint: at the point of heaviest emotion, deliberately use plain wording (Yao Qian p0003); the endingthrows out only possibilitiesletting the listener imagine (Yao Qian p0001) | ★ Leans toward explicit statement："Poetry emphasizes lingering flavour, lyrics stress explicit statement"，"Lyrics, however, vanish as soon as they are sung, and must be understood at first hearing"(Zhang Li p0154)—but in the same book there is also a section specifically titled **"Lyrics Should Learn from Poetry"** discussing subtlety (Zhang Li p0163) | ★ Leaning toward subtlety: against the explicit, the direct, the exposed, the full; there must be subtext (Hong Yuan p0032)—but he also says **"lyrics in recitative are best when they state the matter plainly"** (Hong Yuan p0018) |
| Can lyrics live without music | Follows the singer and melody more closely (e.g., deciding which line carries the heavy words according to the melodic rise and fall, Yao Qian p0004) | "Set to music it can be sung, apart from the music it can also be recited"(Zhang Li p0033) | ★ Even harder:"Lyrics are not a parasitic vine", and what loses its vitality once separated from the music is not good lyrics (Hong Yuan p0025) |
| How much to leave to the composer | Will communicate with the composer down to the melodic level over a single word (Yao Qian p0004) | ★ "The lyricist's conception cannot and should not replace the composer's arrangement... if it is designed too concretely, I think it will instead spoil things by being too clever"(Zhang Li p0115–p0116) | ★ "Those who write tunes for the words word by word, line by line, following every step, are not the lyricist's true kindred spirits"; ask the composer to treat the words asa guiding thread(Hong Yuan p0023) |
| Colloquial or written language | Return to the colloquial, casting aside word-count limits and using plain speech close to one's own language habits (Yao Qian p0004) | Both ends are needed:colloquial beauty(Zhang Li p0161), but he also advocatesusing uncommon language in moderation, learning from poetry's ornate beauty (Zhang Li p0171–p0172) | Popularity = seemingly vulgar yet not vulgar, it isfilteredcolloquial speech, and must never be coarse (Hong Yuan p0029) |
| Whom the lyrics are written for | Before putting pen to paper, first decide whether it is "speaking to one person" or "speaking to the crowd"(Yao Qian p0004) | ★ "The lyricist, by contrast, demands 'having someone in view'"—borrowingthe singing protagonist'sidentity to speak, the character being a fiction (Zhang Li p0159) | ★ "Respect the self"—respect the self's feelings, reason, convictions, mission (Hong Yuan p0015) |
★★ How to use this table：
- Do not try to reconcile them. The positional differences among the three come fromwhat kind of songs they write— on the same axis (plain statement ⇄ subtlety, self ⇄ character, lyrics independent ⇄ lyrics clinging to music),which square your song should stand in is a decision at the stylistic level.
- Note one thing: of the threenot one stands at either extreme. Zhang Li, who leans most toward plain statement, wrote a whole section telling lyrics to learn poetry's subtlety; Hong Yuan, who leans most toward subtlety, likewise says lyrics should state the matter plainly. ★ Both extremes are wrong—this is the one place where all three are completely in agreement.
- There is one thing all three say：read it aloud after finishing.
Yao Qian reads aloud and records (p0004), Zhang Li holds recitals to verify (p0150, p0180–p0181), Hong Yuan treats musicality as a requirement running through the whole (p0027).
→ This one goes straight into
lw-workflowclosing move.
3. Full-song breakdown
★ Each song below is broken down according to the twelve lines of §1. Quotations are limited to the short phrases necessary for explanation.
3.1 "The Meaning of Traveling" (Yao Chien p0001)
| # | Breakdown |
|---|---|
| 1 Theme | The song title says traveling, but what it ultimately wants to say is "the reason you left" |
| 2 To whom it is addressed | A man who likes to travel;An observer's perspective watching him |
| 3 Moment | After he has already left |
| 4 Objects | Maps, Paris at night, truths in books,Every letter sent for me |
| 5 Opening move | Starts with "your" actions, without writing about oneself |
| 6 Paragraphs | The verse lists the things he has done;The chorus repeats twice with only one word changed |
| 7 Perspective | First person looking at second person,but "I" almost never appears |
| 8 Imagery system | The full set of travel objects: maps, cities, books, letters |
| 9 Language | Close to colloquial |
| 10 Omission | ★ From beginning to end it never says "you no longer love me" |
| 11 With the music | The chorus melody stays unchanged, relying onchanging the wordto increase the weight |
| 12 ★ Transferable | The second time the chorus changes one word, making the force heavier: "yet I cannot say on what occasion I ever made youfall in love"→"yet I cannot say on what occasion I made yoube distracted"; the ending uses "cannot saythe reason for leaving" to echo "cannot saythe meaning of traveling" |
⚠ The part that cannot be learned: The reversal between the song title and the conclusion depends on the listener first accepting "this is a song about traveling."
This trick can be used only once per song.
→ The method of changing the word goes to lw-structure; omission goes to lw-narrative。
3.2 "Remembering" (Yao Chien p0005)
| # | Breakdown |
|---|---|
| 1 Theme | What is missed is the image created in memory, not the real person |
| 2 To whom it is addressed | A "you" still being missed (the singer) |
| 3 Moment | A meetingafterwardsThe moment of discovery |
| 4 Objects | ★ Scent—"his appearance has changed, with the scent of a new partner" |
| 5 Opening move | Starts with "missing turns into a line, spreading through time," first giving a visible shape |
| 6 Paragraphs | Verse one: still missing; verse two: meeting reveals change; chorus: the truth is uncovered; verse three: understanding is offered |
| 7 Perspective | ★ Third-person perspective writing feelings close to the first narrator |
| 8 Imagery system | Seasonal dislocation ("he is on the spring side, your autumn has just shed leaves") |
| 9 Language | Cold, with a touch of rationality—chosen to match the "a bit of coolness and rationality" in the singer's melody |
| 10 Blank space | Not a single reproach |
| 11 With the music | The chorus carries the theme |
| 12 ★ Transferable | Use one sensory detail (smell) to replace the conclusion "he has changed" |
★ The author's own judgment："I didn't put too much subjective emotion in the lyrics; instead, I used a third-person perspective to describe the feelings and story close to the first-person narrator"(Yao Qian p0005).
→ Perspective belongs to lw-narrative; non-visual details like smell belong to lw-imagery 's sensory distribution.
3.3 "Home II" by Luo Dayou (Yao Qian's analysis, p0005)
★ This is a textbook example of the chorus becoming progressively more specific over three repetitions.
| repetition | What the chorus needs | Change |
|---|---|---|
| One | "warm trap", giving the "cold heart" athought of longing for home | ★ deliberately avoids the specific phrase "give me a home" |
| Two | "warm true feeling", giving the "drifting heart" afound the feeling of home | "Home" is spoken for the first time |
| Three | "warm family", giving the "back going out the door" areturned to the feeling of home | From "home" to "family," from longing to an actual return |
The verse advances in sync: the first repetition "everymissing youpoem," the third repetition "everyagingpoem"— Yao Qian's judgment is **"'aging' has more sense of reality than 'missing you' in the first repetition"** (Yao Qian p0005).
| 12 ★ Transferable |
|---|
| When the chorus repeats three times, make the word in the same position more specific each time: longing → feeling → family.Don't change the structure, only change the clarity of one noun. |
→ Belongs to lw-structure(chorus variation) and lw-imagery(abstract→concrete).
3.4 "Lin Hai Love Song" (Zhang Li p0128–p0129)
★ The value of this song lies in the author explaining his own arrangement logic line by line.
| # | Breakdown |
|---|---|
| 1 Core idea | The whole lyrichighlights the word "love"—this is the gist; "Our forebears built happiness for future generations; we are the tree planters" is the theme |
| 5 Theme statement | "Gazing afar at cloud after cloud, looking close at grove after grove"——★ Start from sensory imagery, not from concepts |
| 6 Paragraphs | Distant view → personification → directly stating "love the forest sea" → action climax |
| 8 Imagery system | Things in one grove: clouds, forest, sand dunes, barren ridges, leaves, dew |
| 11 With the music | The melody places the climax at **"love the forest sea"** and at the ending |
| 12 ★ Transferable | Before the climax line, approach it layer by layer: scenic description (clouds, forest) → personification ("the sand dunes put on a jade-green sash, the barren ridges drape themselves in a green gauze scarf") → direct statement ("walk the sea of forest, it is always spring") → lands on a physical action("pluck a leaf and kiss it") |
★ the author's principle of arrangement: good arrangement is like the "urgent wind" passage in luogu-jing,"each line and each line lock tightly onto each other, as closely interlocked as large and small gears"(Zhang Li p0127); the opposite is **"every phrase leaks energy"**—the supporting lines are flat and unrelated to the climax line, unable to press step by step upward (Zhang Li p0127).
⚠ the part that cannot be learned: this song's subject matter and era set its tone.What can be transferred is the ladder of arrangement, not those few words.
→ goes to lw-structure。
3.5 "Ode to Beijing" (Hong Yuan p0069–p0070; syllable analysis in Zhang Li p0025)
★★ This is the only song in the two books that interlocks with each other—one person wrote it, the other used it as an example to discuss rhythm.
Zhang Li counted its syllable arrangement (Zhang Li p0025):
头两句 每句 5 音节
三、四、五句 每句 2–4 音节
六、七句 每句 4–5 音节
结尾句 每句 4 音节
His judgment:This kind of variability (not drastic change but subtle change) in syllable composition forms a harmonious whole, reading with sonorous cadence and in one breath(Zhang Li p0025).
Compare this with the textual structure on Hong Yuan's side (Hong Yuan p0069–p0070):
| # | Breakdown |
|---|---|
| 5 Theme statement | first give avisible picturethen give the judgment |
| 6 Paragraphs | clearly marked as sections (1) and (2);the core line "Ah, Beijing, ah Beijing!" appears in the same position in both sections |
| 9 Language | ★ four noun phrases are juxtaposed to form a definition ("the heart of the motherland, the symbol of unity, the pride of the people, the guarantee of victory"),each line 4–5 characters |
| 12 ★ Transferable | the character count of each line should have "subtle variation" rather than being "completely uniform" or "suddenly long and suddenly short"：5、5 / 2–4 / 4–5 / 4——the range of variation is kept within one or two characters |
★★ this point directly addresses LYR-LINT item 3(the character counts of each section must not be completely identical):
it gives the measure of "not identical"—not long and short lines jumping wildly, but each line differing by one or two characters.
→ goes to lw-mandarin §4 (pauses and long/short lines) and lw-structure。
3.6 "Song of Homesickness in Four Seasons" (Hong Yuan p0076–p0077)
| # | Breakdown |
|---|---|
| 1 Concept | a person in a foreign land, each of the four seasons brings one family member to mind |
| 4 Objects | ★ each section has one concrete object: a kite with a broken string, the Weaving Girl star, a small dragonfly, a densely stitched cotton-padded jacket |
| 6 Paragraphs | ★ four sections share one grid：季节 ＋ 故乡的某个景 ＋ 某个亲人带我做一件事 ＋ 当年如何 ＋ 如今如何 |
| 7 Perspective | first person, from beginning to end |
| 8 Imagery system | one home + four seasons, the figures in order are elder sister, grandmother, father, mother |
| 10 Omission | ★ the last line of each section states only the situation "now",without saying why one cannot return |
| 12 ★ Transferable | Make a four-cell template, then change only the people and objects in the cells—Variation relies on substitution, not rewriting |
★ This move and 《家Ⅱ》 in §3.3 are two complementary kinds of repetition：
《家Ⅱ》 changes the same word to make it more specific; this one swaps out the whole set of nouns while keeping the sentence pattern unchanged.
→ Both belong to lw-structure。
3.7 ★ Draft comparison: what the three drafts became
This is the most practical section of this skill—because you can see the middle step.
| Work | First draft | After revision | The author's judgment | Page |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 《绿海玫瑰》 | “草原开玫瑰，绿海更妩媚，玫瑰容颜好，满身香滋味。” | “草原开玫瑰，姑娘走几回。摘花心不忍，人走花香追！” | ★ First draft **“只写了景，并没完成人爱花开的心灵描述”；“只有写到心灵深处，才算初步完成了题材与主题的开掘”** | 张藜 p0040–p0041 |
| 《月牙》 | At first wrote things like "月下人相爱" and "月影照西窗"ornate phrasing | “你爱天上的满月，我爱云缝里的月牙。” | Only after revision did **“觉得这个小葫芦，刚刚画出个雏型儿”** | 张藜 p0084–p0085 |
| 《都说他黑》 | (final draft) “都说他黑，／都说他黑，／黑得象块煤；／这我不怪罪，／我也没理会，／我看他很美。” | ★ Reverse revision: forcibly fitting it into seven-character lines “都说他呀长得黑，／黑得好象一块煤……” | “这样硬性安排七字句式的节奏，既破坏了口语美，更破坏了这位姑娘的性格真实” | 张藜 p0120–p0121 |
★ Three common points：
- The direction of change is always "from scenery to person"—the rose shifts to the girl looking at the rose, the moon shifts to "which one do you love, which one do I love."
- After revision they all became shorter and more rustic. Ornate phrasing is the side that got cut.
- ★ The 《都说他黑》 entry demonstrates it in reverse: the author first gives the version that works, then shows where regularizing it would die. The sentence pattern obeys the character's personality, not the character obeying the sentence pattern.
→ Belongs to lw-song-intent(writing to the heart = writing to that one thing),lw-mandarin §4 (sentence pattern and pauses).
There is another example that is "deletion" rather than "revision": The revision of 《萨日朗》 wascutting the whole pile of images "半导体、獐狍、套杆、风餐露宿、那朵光荣花", keeping onlythe grassland-flavored 炒米、奶干、砖茶—the reason being **“用多了，反而把炒米的香味搅没了”(张藜 p0109). ★ Concluding sentence：“只有经过集中，经过删减，才能使构思立意明确起来”**（张藜 p0109）。
For more cases see reference.md §1。
4. Negative examples
4.1 张藜's "flat, scattered, long"
"When writing lyrics, do not seek completeness. If you seek completeness, it will inevitably be flat, scattered, and long."(Zhang Li p0182)
| Symptom | Description in the book | Page |
|---|---|---|
| Flat | "The fatal flaw of lyrics"— lacking distinctive qualities, without unique feelings or ingenious conception; what is written is **"the familiar old routine that everyone has written"** | Zhang Li p0182 |
| Scattered | "Everything, no matter how trivial, gets a few strokes... nothing in the east is written through, nothing in the west is grasped"; like **"a dragonfly skimming the water, a lotus seedpod floating on the surface, without deep roots"** | Zhang Li p0182 |
| Long | A section may run to as many as fourteen or fifteen lines, with many and long sentences;"If there is something to say, it is long; if there is nothing to say, it is short" | Zhang Li p0182 |
★ The item "flat" is with lw-ai-tell-audit completely isomorphic——
"the familiar old routine that everyone has written" is the old-fashioned way of saying "these four sections could belong to any song."
4.2 Other flaws named by Zhang Li
| Flaw | Example in the book | Page |
|---|---|---|
| One emotion per sentence | "One emotion per sentence, one emotion shifting to another tone, four sentences in a section with four emotional symbols,""like dream talk, impossible to grasp"— the composer cannot catch hold of it | Zhang Li p0023 |
| Exaggerated to the point of distortion | Having a blind hero lift a flood diversion pipe he could not possibly lift in order to show grandeur; using the words "blood smear" to describe the sweat of construction workers | Zhang Li p0083 |
| Too concrete | "So concrete that it is almost completely identical to life itself, trivial and lacking typical generalization" | Zhang Li p0074 |
| Too abstract | "So abstract that it has almost completely lost the basis of life, vague and without any breath of life" | Zhang Li p0074 |
| Unclear theme | First draft of "Gift""The theme appears unclear, the images are not concentrated... and they are still naturalistic descriptions"; after revision it was concentrated on the single juncture of "parting in emotion" | Zhang Li p0107–p0108 |
| Drifting away from the theme | Writing "Cuihu" but then going on to write about the Spring City;"Delete it, and it will appear more distinct and concentrated; cut off all the superfluous branches" | Zhang Li p0146 |
| Every phrase leaks energy | The foil sentences are plain and unrelated to the climax sentence, unable to push it up | Zhang Li p0127 |
| Theme not concentrated | "Equivalent to having no theme, not hitting a single point, existing in name only" | Zhang Li p0067 |
4.3 Hong Yuan's "white, direct, exposed, full"
| What is opposed | Wording in the book | Page |
|---|---|---|
| White | "Containing no colors, storing no sweetness or sourness", white is colorless and tasteless; lyrics should be like strong tea or mellow wine,not like "a ladle of plain water, which once swallowed leaves nothing to seek" | Hong Yuan p0031–p0032 |
| Direct | "It cannot be like a ten-li long street, seen through at a glance, taken in completely"; quoting the ancients **"direct plain statement is easy to exhaust, but hard to stir feeling"** | Hong Yuan p0032 |
| Expose | "Expose means exposed, bare, showing off one's sharpness"；"The greatest secret of art is the art of concealment"—Beyond the literal words there must be subtext | Hong Yuan p0032 |
| Full | "Full is stuffing, crowding, overlapping, piling up; fullness is a kind of 'bloat'"; do not write it so **"a needle cannot be inserted, water cannot be poured in, packed to the brim"** | Hong Yuan p0032 |
Two more：
- ★ Wearing tinted glasses: colored lenses → everything becomes monotonous; dust → everything becomes blurry; refraction → everything becomes grotesque (Hong Yuan p0014–p0015)
- ★ A work without a core: the authorhas no theme, writes by mere whim, and the work is just a "seedless mandarin orange" (Hong Yuan p0035)
4.4 The flaws Yao Qian names
| Flaw | Description | Page |
|---|---|---|
| Chicken-soup words | Check whether it falls into cliché,take out words like "promise" and "positive energy" | Yao Qian p0003 |
| Chicken-soup-style adjectives | When writing "Self"do not use chicken-soup-style adjectives; lower yourself | Yao Qian p0001 |
| Sentimentality | At the heaviest point of the chorusdeliberately avoid reduplication, and instead write "it sounds so sentimental even to myself" | Yao Qian p0003 |
| Only caring about oneself | The writer's position vs The listener's position—he advocates the latter | Yao Qian p0001 |
★ Use §4 as a checklist: once your own lyrics are finished, go through them item by item.
Whichever one it hits, go to the skill corresponding to that item(flat →lw-ai-tell-audit; scattered →lw-structure; full →lw-imagery; blank →lw-narrative whitespace in ).
5. Practice with other people's works
This library's own read sample of stratified corpus (the distribution of 540 songs and twelve entries filled in according to the twelve-line table, excluding the source text) is in reference-corpus.md(distribution and twelve entries) and reference-corpus-2.md(two twenty more entries, grouped by type); when practicing, first compare with entries of the same type.
Three people each gave one practice method.
| Practice method | How to do it | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Cover-song lyric writing | ★ Use a completed foreign work and fill in Chinese lyrics—the melody and structure are ready-made, so what is practiced is purely the lyric side | Yao Qian p0002 |
| Recitation verification | After writing, read it aloud to others,assess which parts "are very awkward to read", which should be added and which deleted; verify whether characterization, colloquial style, emotional progression, and obscure language work | Zhang Li p0150, p0180 |
| Comparability (plagiarism check) | ★ Before putting pen to paper, first investigate what techniques others have used for similar subject matter, and see whether there is any convergence; learn from thembut do not trod the old path, the point is tobreak a new path | Zhang Li p0141 |
| Draft/final draft comparison | Find two drafts of the same lyric and look at them side by side (see §3.7) | Zhang Li p0040–p0041, p0084–p0085 |
| Multiple writes on one topic | How many essays can one green bamboo produce——the same object, see what different authors each dig out of it | Zhang Li p0141–p0143 |
| Record your own speech | Record your everyday speech and transcribe it by listening, to recognize your own habitual expressions; after writing, read it aloud and record it | Yao Qian p0004 |
★ The "comparable" item is the easiest to skip, and also the one most worth doing： What you think is clever ingenuity is often someone else's standard practice from twenty years ago. Investigate first, then write.
6. Correspondence with LYR-SPEC fields
The twelve rows of the breakdown tableare arranged according to LYR-SPEC(§1.1, fourth column). Two additional conventions:
| Field | How to use it when breaking down |
|---|---|
checks.self_audit |
★ Write in each item of the negative list in §4 one by one——it is more judgeable than the abstract "whether it is written well or not" |
meta.style_layer |
When breaking down a lyric, also fill in:which style layer it belongs to, which determines which L3 skill's criteria to use to measure it |
asymmetry |
★ When breaking down someone else's lyricfirst look for asymmetries——they are the easiest to see, and can best be used to infer the author's intention |
7. Self-check after use
- twelve rowsall filled in, with no blank cells ("this column has none" also counts as filled in)
- ★ Filled in according to the order in §1.3:first 5–10, then 11, and finally go back and fill in 1–4
- The central idea in row 1 isa sentence of plain human speech, not a thematic keyword
- What is written in each cell isvisible fact, not "he wants to express..."
- Row 12 isa sentence with a verb
- ★ Wrote the row **"the part that cannot be learned"**
- Where the lyricist's own account is quotedmarked who said it(§2 the three people are not one set of statements)
- When encountering disagreementtook a side yourself, and can explain why this song stands on this side (§2.4)
- The techniques broken outpoint back to the corresponding skill, without rewriting the method here
Appendix: Sources
- Yao Qian, We Are All People with Songs——the lyricist's own account, including his creative analyses of his own and others' works. Citations are counted by its paragraphs (Yao Qian p0001–p0005).
- Zhang Li, The Road of Song Poetry—Lyric Writing Techniques and Their Works(Culture and Art Publishing House, 1984)——selected essays (Zhang Li p0016–p0191) + selected works (Zhang Li p0192–p0308). The citations in this skill are concentrated in the selected essays and the revision examples in them.
- Hong Yuan, *Spring Tidings — Knowledge of Lyric Writing and Appreciation of Works*(Knowledge Publishing House, 1989) — the writing knowledge is concentrated in "Fragments of Thought on Lyrics" (Hong Yuan p0009–p0036); the rest is the original texts of works.
★ Two points of attribution that must be made clear：
- Every item in §2 is marked with who said it, because the claims of the three authors conflict at the four places listed in §2.4.
- ★ The breakdown table in §3 is filled in by this skill according to the format of §1. Among them,judgments given by the authors themselves are marked separately and carry page numbers (e.g., Yao Qian's explanation of the perspective in "Ji Nian," Zhang Li's explanation of the arrangement in "Lin Hai Lian Ge"); lines without page numbers are breakdowns made by this skill based on the texts of the works, not the words of the original authors. The works section of Hong Yuan's book has no author commentary,the breakdowns in §3.5 and §3.6 all belong to the latter。
- The twelve-row table in §1, the three rules in §1.2, the table-filling order in §1.3, and the summaries in §3.7 and §4 are devised by this skill, and are based on examples from the three books and the fields of other skills in this library.
- The lyrics quoted are limited to the short passages necessary for the analysis.