Pimp My Rhyme Part 2

Markus Rill

How to make a not-so interesting rhyme better

Ambitioned songwriters usually do their best to stay away from clichéd rhymes of the moon-June-spoon variety. Sometimes, however, you can’t escape them. Sometimes you just can’t think of anything better.

Part 1 of this article offered some options on how to work with the rhyme itself to make it more interesting. Switching the rhyme words, extending your rhyme, and the use of alliteration are some avenues to explore.

Today we’ll look at another option that I often find even more helpful: Structural work on your  lines. It leaves the rhyme pretty much as is but points the spotlight elsewhere.

1. Parallelism
Parallelism means your lines have a parallel structure.
I am trying to have some fun tonight
I am trying but it ain’t working right
You can start neighboring lines with the same phrase, the same word or with words that hang together in a different way (Monday/Tuesday, right/wrong) or you can just use a parallel sentence structure (I always stay up late/you always make me wait).
Obviously, this draws attention to the beginning of the lines, the rhyme is almost an afterthought. And that’s exactly what you want if your rhyme is a dud, you don’t need it in the spotlight.
However, there’s the issue of repetition. Repetition is not per se desirable in a song. Be aware of this.

2. Chiasmus
Chiasmus means a crosswise structure, the opposite of a parallel structure. The problem in this case is that you probably don’t want to repeat any of the end words. How then can you have a crosswise structure? – By analyzing your lines. “Tonight” is a preposition of time and it comes at the end of a line. How about we put a different preposition of time at the beginning of the other line? In our example, I’d like to switch it around to
Tomorrow things will work out right
but I was hoping to have fun tonight

I’m a real fan of using crosswise structures. It seems a very elegant and subtle way to structure a line because it only reveals itself at the completion of the line. It also avoids the issue of repetition.

3. Antonyms
Synonyms are words that have the same meaning, antonyms are words that carry the opposite meaning. They often come in very handy in lyric-writing. In fact, the above example used the antonymous pair of tomorrow/tonight. [Strictly speaking, tomorrow & today would be antonyms or tonight & tomorrow night (or last night) but the pair of tomorrow & tonight
worked ok. ] What’s another antonym that comes to mind looking at our example? Sure, right/wrong – that could work. It also gives us an alliteration to work with if we want to put them close to one another.
Another key word we could try to find an antonym for is “fun”. Maybe we could make “sadness” work.
Can you find a good way of restructuring this
I was looking for some fun tonight
but nothing seems to work out right
using antonyms like “wrong” or “sadness” in conjunction with their counterparts “right” and “fun”? Keep in mind, that it’s important to keep the pair intact. In other words, if you stick “sadness” in there somewhere, don’t get rid of “fun” in the process.
Also: Antonyms are clearest when they’re in the same grammatical category. What I mean is “right” and “wrong” are both adjectives, “fun” and “sadness” are both nouns. “Sadly” does not correlate directly with “fun”, if you see what I mean.

4. Be laconic
Maybe I should’ve put this first. I think conveying information in a laconic way is a wonderful tool. This line
I was looking for some fun tonight
but nothing seems to work out right
not only suffers from its rhyme, it also suffers from taking itself so seriously.
I was hoping for some fun tonight
but clearly it ain’t working right
This has lightness and humor to it, it’s not as overly dramatic as the original. An improvement.

5. Combine options
Obviously, you can also combine these different ways of pimping your rhyme and your line. How about this:
Tomorrow things will work out right
but clearly that is not the case tonight
This sort of combines a crosswise structure with a laconic tone. I also switched the rhyme words. Plus there’s tiny alliterations in there as well (clearly/case, tomorrow/tonight).

And – voila – it’s a much better couplet and the rhyme doesn’t sound so lame anymore. In fact “tonight” sounds great here. How so? I would argue because it not only serves as the rhyme to “right” but it also relates to “tomorrow”. It resolves a lot of tension that we created by not only setting up a rhyme but also creating a crosswise structure. The rhyme may not be a big surprise but the crosswise structure is! The listener didn’t expect it and really enjoys the double payoff that “tonight” provides.
I would argue that it’s a huge improvement over our original line from part one of this article:

I was looking for some fun tonight
but nothing seems to work out right

Have fun experimenting with these different strategies for pimping your rhyme. Remember that even though our examples here were all of the aa-rhyme variety, most suggestions also work in an abab-rhyme scheme or any other variation.

Not every option presented here will work every time but if you keep them in mind, I’m sure you’ll find a way to improve your line and pimp your rhyme!

Let me know if you have other strategies to improve your rhymes!

Looking forward to hearing from you,

Markus

Markus Rill: Setting moving lyrics to driving rock’n’roll, atmospheric folk and stark country,  Markus Rill from Germany has established himself as “Europe’s premier Americana artist” (Rootstime). His new EP “Makin’ Trouble” can be found at www.markusrill.bandcamp.com. He blogs at rocknrill.tumblr.com and tweets at www.twitter.com/markusrill.

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