How To-31: "How to Write a Ballad"

How to Write a Ballad

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A Ballad is a narrative composition in rhythmic verse suitable for singing. Originally ballads were not written down and were passed down from generation to generation orally; the music helped people to remember the story. Do you want to write a memorable ballad? While there are no real rules for writing a ballad, the traditional ballad form has a few easily replicated characteristics that have made it a popular storytelling device for hundreds of years.

Steps

1. Find a starter phrase. Perhaps you want to write a ballad for a particular occasion or to commemorate a certain event or person. Maybe, however, you just want to write a song, but at the beginning you're not sure what it will be about, and it naturally evolves into a ballad. Either way, the process for starting your ballad is the same as for starting any other song: find one phrase, a line or two, that you like, and build your song from there. Your starter phrase doesn't actually have to be the first line of the song--in many cases it will be the chorus, for example--but you just need somewhere to start. You can call it inspiration or you can call it brainstorming; the end result is the same.
   
• If a phrase or verse just pops into your head out of the blue, you can use that as your starter phrase. This is what people often refer to as inspiration. If the phrase is particularly catchy and seems to summarize the story or describe the story's main idea, then you probably have a chorus--the lines that are repeated over and over again throughout a song. Otherwise you probably have a verse or part of a verse.
  
• If you want to write a ballad about a specific thing think about that thing and write down some key words and phrases that can be used to describe it. When one of these catches your fancy, you can build the rest of the ballad around it, maybe by using other words or phrases on your list or maybe by using entirely different words and phrases.
  
2. Complete the verse or chorus that contains your starter phrase. Ballads typically have four lines, of which two or more rhyme. Common rhyme schemes include aabb (where the word at the end of the first line rhymes with the word at the end of the second, and the word at the end of the third line rhymes with the word at the end of the fourth); and abcb (in which only the second and fourth lines rhyme). Build one verse around your starter phrase using these techniques. If the phrase you began with already has two or more lines, your task is that much easier.
   
• Some ballads have the chorus built into each verse. In these cases, the rhyme scheme is often abac, where the two-line chorus occupies the second and fourth lines ("b" and "c") of each verse.
  
• Use a consistent meter. The meter is basically the pattern of syllables in a song or poem. Most ballads use the same meter throughout the song, or the meter for the chorus may differ from that of the verses. Typically a ballad's meter will be either:
  
• Every line has the same number of syllables and the same number of accented syllables; or
  
• Lines that "go together" will have the same number of syllables and accented syllables. For example, in a ballad with an abac rhyme scheme, the "a" lines may each have 7 syllables, of which four are accented, while the "b" and "c" lines each have 6 syllables, of which 3 are accented.
  
3. Complete the remaining choruses and verses using your template. Once you have the first chorus or verse down, you just need to complete your story following the same structural guidelines you used for the first verse that you wrote. Don't be a slave to that structure, though. If you need to vary the length of a line or even of a verse here and there, go ahead and do it, and if you want to deviate from your rhyme pattern feel free to do so if it will make your poem better.
   
• If you first wrote the chorus, you can repeat that over and over throughout the song leaving it unchanged or changing it only slightly each time.
  
• If you first wrote a verse, you may find it easier to write the rest of the verses before trying to write the chorus.
  
4. Edit your ballad. Let a little time pass, and then come back to your ballad and edit it with fresh eyes and ears. If you got stuck on a line or two earlier--you couldn't find the right rhyme, for example, or there were just too many syllables--come back and see if you can fix them now. Cut out any unnecessary verses, leaving only what the story needs.
5. Once you have finished read it over so that you are happy with it, if you are not go through the steps again.
   
6. Whatever you do, do not plaugerize. Its just not worth it

Tips

. It's OK to write a ballad without music. A ballad is a form of lyrical poetry, which means
simply that it can be sung. It doesn't have to be.

• If you sing or hum as you go, sometimes the words will just flow. It's just the trick of getting started.
  
• Unless you're writing your poem for a school assignment, you probably won't begin by thinking, "I'm going to write a ballad." The ballad form simply works well for a number of songwriting / storytelling uses, and some songs just sort of fall into that form naturally.
  
• Don't be afraid to be creative with your rhymes. If you try to force all your rhymes to be perfect, your song's lyrics may end up sounding silly or nonsensical. While rhyme is typically important in a ballad, there's nothing to say that you can't "rhyme" home with alone or even song.
  
• It's not necessary to use four-line verses and choruses. While this is the most common ballad form, occasionally you'll find a ballad with, say, six lines, or one with a varying number of lines per chorus. Perhaps yours will be one of these.
  
• If you know the story you want to tell, but you're having trouble putting it into a poetic structure, write out the story first. Don't worry about putting the story into verse yet--just get it down. You may find it easier to organize once the story is written.
  
• If you don't know what the melody of your ballad should be, you can wait until melodic inspiration strikes you; you can sing your words to the tune of another ballad; or you can get somebody to put your poem to music.
  
• If you come up with a melody but can't write music, record yourself singing your ballad so you won't forget how it goes. Don't trust yourself to remember the melody until you've sung it many times.
  
• If you do want to make sure your lines rhyme, try rhymezone.com, but a couple of warnings. First, try typing the sound of the part of the word that rhymes, rather than the whole word. You'll get more options that way. Secondly, do not get so caught up in rhyming you can't make your ballad good. As above, it doesn't need to be perfect.

Warnings

. Because ballads are so easy to write, and because telling a story is so much fun, ballad
writers often tend to go overboard and want to include every clever verse and rhyme
that they can think of. Too many verses may weigh down the song and make it boring,
especially since the ballad form tends to be quite repetitive.

Related wikiHows

• How to Write a Song
  
• How to Write a Poem
  
• How to Write a Love Poem
  
• How to Write a Short Story
  
• How to Write a Salable Life Story
  
• How to Write an Autobiography
  
• How to Write a Children's Story
  
• How to Be a Poet

Sources and Citations

. Rhyme Zone Rhyming Dictionary and Thesaurus

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