Whether your idea line is used to introduce your chorus or not, it is usually wise to end your chorus with it.  Most choruses—­but not all, as “Put on your Old Grey Bonnet,” would suggest—­end with the idea line, on the theory that the emphatic spots in any form of writing are at the beginning and the end—­and of these the more emphatic is the end.  Therefore, you must now concentrate your chorus to bring in that idea line as the very last line.

3.  Make the Chorus Convey Emotion

As we saw in the previous chapter, a lyric is a set of verses that conveys emotion.  The purpose of the first verse is to lead up to the emotion—­which the chorus expresses.  While, as I shall demonstrate later, a story may be proper to the verses, a story is rarely told in the chorus.  I mean, of course, a story conveyed by pure narrative, for emotion may convey a story by sheer lyrical effect.  Narrative is what you must strive to forget in a chorus—­in your chorus you must convey emotion swiftly—­that is, with a punch.

While it is impossible for anyone to tell you how to convey emotion, one can point out one of the inherent qualities of emotional speech.

4.  Convey Emotion by Broad Strokes

When a man rushes through the corridors of a doomed liner he does not stop to say, “The ship has struck an iceberg—­or has been torpedoed—­and is sinking, you’d better get dressed quickly and get on deck and jump into the boats.”  He hasn’t time.  He cries, “The ship’s sinking!  To the boats!”

This is precisely the way the song-writer conveys his effect.  He not only cuts out the “thes” and the “ands” and the “ofs” and “its” and “perhapses”—­he shaves his very thoughts down—­as the lyrics printed in these chapters so plainly show—­until even logic of construction seems engulfed by the flood of emotion.  Pare down your sentences until you convey the dramatic meaning of your deep emotion, not by a logical sequence of sentences, but by revealing flashes.

5.  Put Your Punch in Clear Words Near the End

And now you must centre all your thoughts on your punch lines.  Punch lines, as we saw, are sometimes the entire point of a song—­they are what makes a “popular” lyric get over the footlights when a performer sings the song and they are the big factor—­together with the music punches—­that make a song popular.  However lyrical you have been in the beginning of your chorus, you must now summon all your lyrical ability to your aid to write these, the fate-deciding lines.

But note that emotion, however condensed the words may be that express it, must not be so condensed that it is incoherent.  You must make your punch lines as clear in words as though you were drawing a diagram to explain a problem in geometry.  The effect you must secure is that of revealing clearness.

Be very careful not to anticipate your punch lines.  For instance, if Mr. Gilbert had used “All day I sigh, all night I cry,” before “I’d sigh for, I’d cry for, sweet dreams forever” in his “My Little Dream Girl,” the whole effect would have been lost.  As your punch lines must be the most attractive lines, keep them new and fresh, by excluding from the rest of your song anything like them.