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How to Write Song Lyrics for Plays

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Part of the video series: How to Write & Develop Dialogue for Plays

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Summary: Learn how to write song lyrics for a musical or play with expert playwriting advice in this free play production and theater video clip.

Views: 591 | Tags: art, theater, acting, write, producing, plays, dialogue

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About the Expert

Steve Caverno Steve Caverno attended the University of Southern Mississippi where he received a BA in theatre. Since graduating he has had several plays produced across the... read more

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Video Transcript

How to Write Song Lyrics for Plays

STEVE CAVERNO: Steve Caverno, on behalf of Expert Village, here to talk to you today about dialogue. Okay, now let's talk about something that's specific to the musical genre of plays: song lyrics. Now, in musicals, we'll begin with dialogue and then someone will break into song. What constitutes a song lyric? What makes it different from a line of dialogue? Well, let's look at one. Okay. "I don't know what to do 'coz baby I can't stop loving you." Okay? So this way you have a rhyme. Okay, and then also we could have "I don't know what to do. It feels like my life is through 'coz baby I can't stop loving you." You can throw in three rhymes. Or you can go, "I don't know what to do. Everything is dark and gray. I can't stop loving you baby. I wish you'd just stay," something like that to where we have an alternating A-B-A-B line, and that way we have a rhyme and then a B-rhyme and then another A-rhyme and then a B-rhyme, and now we will alternate between these two. This is a way to write some lyrics. Also, you want to have a meter to it, a rhythm to it. So "I don't know what to do 'coz baby I can't stop loving you." so a lot of times in musicals you kinda extend stuff. "Baby...can't stop loving you." So you'd say, "I don't know what to do. Baby, I can't stop loving you." So you can kind of extend stuff, and that way you can come up with song lyrics that way. And these are some of the ways in which song lyrics can function in musicals and obviously the musical will be a little bit more in-depth, involved in the plot, but this is just a simple example of how song lyrics are created, and obviously you're going to have orchestral backgrounds, you're going to have music behind this, and you got to think about that. How is the music going to play in to the song lyrics in your play?

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