The forbidden vocabulary
Words aren’t bad. Some have just been doing the writer’s work for too long. Here’s a list of the ones that need a pass.
“Soul” won’t blow up the studio. “Forever” won’t call the police. But some words imitate depth so conveniently that the writer stops doing the rest of the work.
The red zone
What’s wrong with them
They increase the scale too quickly. The writer hasn’t shown who argued with whom yet, and eternity has already arrived. The second problem is universality. “Shards of a heart” fit a million songs. A good detail usually fits one.
How to get a pass
You can keep a red-zone word if the scene around it stops the phrase from becoming generic. The main question: if you replace it with another big word, does the song change?
The green zone
These aren’t mandatory props. It’s just that specific objects make the lyrics live in a time and place.
A big word asks for trust. A small detail earns it.
If two red-zone words show up in four lines, rewrite one line around an action or an object.