CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

MANAGING COUPLETS

Let's do some work with four-stress couplets. Couplets are dangerous because too many of them can march lockstep in small, repetitive units that make your song feel too long and old before its time.

When your lines are all the same length and rhyme in pairs, your structure is probably working against you — no matter how interesting your ideas may be, they have to work harder to overcome the interruption of stopping and starting, stopping and starting, over and over again.

I'll bet you've done this a lot in your lyrics. I know I have:

Not so bad for just four lines. But admit it, you have songs that march lockstep from beginning to end in matched couplets: aa bb cc dd ee ff gg, etc. ad nauseam. Those are probably the songs that feel too long. It doesn't have to be that way if you remember that structure doesn't happen to you. You can make interesting things happen in your songs. You have choices.

Here's a tip: The more words there are in your lyric section, the larger your structure should make it feel. Couplets are units of two lines. If you have couplets in your verse, you can expand them into something larger. Size can make all the difference.

EXERCISE 21

Okay, first, let's build our pair of couplets into something larger in one easy stroke: Unrhyme the first couplet and leave the second one rhymed. Like this:

Rather than a section that subdivides into two units of two, we've created a section that doesn't end until the final line. It feels better, more interesting.

EXERCISE 22

This is what I came up with for my lyric:

Now the long third and sixth lines provide the main glue, creating a six-line section that keeps moving all the way to the end. Of course, you can use more rhymes, too.

EXERCISE 23

Here's what I did:

The movement feels stronger, not quite so loose.

EXERCISE 24

Mine is:

Now the motion is even more organized and precise, even with the imperfect rhymes. Which rhyme scheme should you use? It depends on what you're saying. If the lyric's emotion deals with uncertainty or loss (unstable), keep it looser. If its ideas are more factual or resolved (stable), tighten it up. Make your structure reflect the emotion of the lyric. Prosody.

Here's another way to approach the process. When you have something already written with matched couplets, like my beginning lyric:

You can “clean it out” by first unrhyming both couplets. Then, insert five-stress lines in the middle and end. It should be easy. Do it to your matched couplets first.

Here's what I did. First, I unrhymed them:

Then I inserted rhyming five-stress lines:

Pretty easy, huh? And the structure has become a lot more interesting.

EXERCISE 25

Here's one more way to escape the deadly march of couplets: Create an eight-line structure using four-stress rhymed lines with shorter fourth and eighth lines.

Here's mine:

This rhyme scheme, unrhyming line four and matching it at line eight, was David Wilcox's move from “Eye of the Hurricane.” Without the rhyme scheme's organizing larger motion, the eight lines could really have been dull city:

With couplets, the lines themselves have to work hard to keep the song interesting; the structure isn't helping a bit. Any weakness in the lines is exaggerated. Even if the lines were great (which those above clearly aren't), the message would still be stronger if the structure helped, too. Any of the structures we went through earlier in the chapter could be useful alternatives.

Once you rearrange your couplets into larger units, you can invent new and more exciting possibilities. Look at these lines from Leonard Cohen's “Closing Time”:

Okay, so it's a little quirky. What did you expect from Cohen? He's built a six-line structure using longer third and sixth lines (with five stresses each) contrasting with shorter lines (basically three-stress lines with weak syllable endings). The structure is interesting enough, and the language is interesting, too. A nice combination. But wait, there's more:

These three new lines make listeners expect another three, ending in an -ime rhyme. They're waiting for another first six-line structure to match the first six lines. Of course, once you raise their expectations, you are free to play tricks that turn on spotlights:

Now we have five of the six lines we're expecting. All that's missing is a five-stress line with an -ime rhyme. The new lines aren't quite matched with what came before, since they end with strong stressed syllables rather than weak, but they're close enough to prepare our ear for the final line with its -ime rhyme. Instead, though, we get:

This line delays the resolution and leaves the structure unbalanced; we still want to hear the -ime rhyme. At this point, you could produce the expected line, satisfying the listeners and spotlighting the final idea (because you have made the listeners wait for the resolution). But not Leonard Cohen. His next move is:

This extra delay builds even more pressure for a resolution. But it's like stretching a rubber band (Minnesotans call them “binders”, New Englanders call them “elastics”… weird): You don't want to stretch them too far or they'll break. If you don't stretch it far enough, though, they won't hurt when you snap someone with them.

The delay is maddening. Spotlights are flashing on. We still want the -ime rhyme, and we're right at the brink of the whole thing falling apart when he finally gives it to us:

Whew! Look at the whole thing now:

He keeps us dangling for two extra lines before giving is the -ime rhyme in a blaze of spotlights, spotlights created by building the structure carefully — raising our expectations, satisfying them, then raising them again. The second time is the charm. It's another great example of what expectations can do to make your journey through a series of ideas more interesting. Look at what the section could have been:

The relentless march of couplets sinks the whole enterprise. More has been lost than just some neat words and a couple of nice turns of phrase. The dance of ideas has lost its partner. When the interesting structure decides to sit this one out, the ideas stumble into a partner with two left feet. What was elegant and interesting becomes something almost embarrassing; rather than looking on with pleasure, we avert our eyes. Such is the power of the dance between structure and ideas.

Interesting structure isn't something that just happens. You create it. And usually out of the simplest of starting places: matched couplets and/or common meter. None of these techniques are difficult to use — you can create wonderful partnerships any time you choose to. It's always up to you. Just work hard. Pay attention. Write well.