: Re: How do you make a vague metaphor more easy to understand? I am a fairly avid songwriter, and although I like writing meaningful lyrics, I am not particularly good at it. I tend to use a

It's unlikely anyone will make that connection unaided, but, speaking as a big fan of lyrics, it's not necessarily a problem if people don't understand everything in your lyrics.

Even more than is the case for ordinary poetry, a large part of successful lyrics is the raw sound of the words. Many great songs have been written with lyrics that presumably mean something to the writer, yet are obscure to the world.

I would venture you may find yourself happier with your lyrics if you let go of some of the rules and guidelines that surround other types of writing. When the meaning is too clear and direct, the song often sounds trite. I wouldn't deliberately be obscure, but if the lyric otherwise works for the song, I would leave it as is. For me personally, encountering a mysterious reference in a song, although frustrating, can actually increase my sense of engagement with the song --similar to how songs in foreign languages always sound more profound than they actually are.

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: Re: How do you make a vague metaphor more easy to understand? I am a fairly avid songwriter, and although I like writing meaningful lyrics, I am not particularly good at it. I tend to use a

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: If characters never do bad things, you don't have a plot, and if every bad action is followed by a speech about how bad it is, you end up with a didactic polemic, not a novel. It's possible

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: What's the common practice for warranty chapters in technical manuals? I'm working on a technical manual project for industrial machines and the original documents have some warranty warnings and

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