A lyric's job is to make a listener feel something specific, and specificity is what does the work — a concrete image lands where an abstract statement of feeling slides past unnoticed. Show the feeling through a detail a listener can picture; naming the feeling directly is the fallback for when the image isn't there yet, not the goal.

Concrete imagery over abstraction

Replace abstract emotion words ("I'm so sad," "I feel free") with a specific, sensory image that implies the feeling — "her coat still hangs by the door" carries grief further than the word "grief" ever will.
Use imagery grounded in one of the five senses whenever possible — a listener can picture "gasoline and rain on the windshield" instantly; they can't picture "nostalgia."
Avoid stock imagery that's appeared in thousands of songs already (stars, fire, rain as pure metaphor with no specific grounding) unless it's anchored to a detail specific enough to feel earned again — "rain" is generic; "rain that wouldn't stop the night you left" is specific.
One well-chosen concrete detail beats three generic ones stacked together — resist the urge to pile up imagery; let one image do its job and move the line forward.

Hook repetition

Identify the single line or phrase meant to be the hook before writing the rest of the song, and build the chorus to return to it — a song without a clear, repeatable hook line rarely sticks with a listener after one play.
Repeat the hook line exactly, or with one deliberate variation late in the song (a changed word that recontextualizes it given what's happened in the bridge) — don't rewrite it fresh every chorus, which forfeits the recognition repetition is supposed to build.
Keep the hook short enough to remember and sing back after one listen — a hook that's a full complex sentence rarely becomes the part people actually hum.

Verse / chorus / bridge jobs

Verses carry the story and specific detail — new information each verse, moving the narrative or imagery forward. A verse that just restates the chorus's idea in different words is wasted real estate.
The chorus carries the song's core emotional statement and the hook — it should make sense and hit hard even heard in isolation, without the verses' context.
The bridge's job is to shift perspective, escalate stakes, or introduce a turn the verses and chorus haven't shown yet — melodically and lyrically distinct from what came before. A bridge that just repeats verse content in a different melody isn't doing its structural job.
Don't let a verse outstay its welcome relative to the chorus — if the verse says more than it needs to before the payoff, tighten it; the chorus is the destination the verse should be building toward.

Rhyme without forcing

Let near-rhyme (slant rhyme, assonance — "home" and "alone," "heart" and "far") stand in for exact rhyme whenever exact rhyme would force an unnatural word choice or word order. Natural language delivered with a slight rhyme beats stilted language forced into a perfect one.
Never invert normal word order or insert a word solely to make a rhyme land ("the sky so blue, it's true, it's true") — if a line only works with padding or awkward syntax, revise the line, don't just accept the compromise for the sake of the rhyme scheme.
Vary rhyme scheme by section (verse might rhyme ABAB, chorus AABB) to keep sections feeling distinct rather than locking the whole song into one repetitive pattern.

Prosody: stress against the beat

Place naturally stressed syllables (the syllable that would carry emphasis if the line were spoken aloud) on strong beats of the bar, and unstressed syllables on weak beats — a lyric that fights the natural stress of its own words against the rhythm sounds awkward no matter how good the words are on the page.
Read every line aloud against the intended rhythm before finalizing it — a line that reads fine silently on paper often reveals an awkward stress collision the moment it's spoken or sung to tempo.
Match syllable count and stress pattern between corresponding lines across verses (verse 1 line 1 should scan the same way as verse 2 line 1) so the melody can repeat cleanly without the lyric forcing a rephrase of the tune.

Show the feeling, don't name it

Before finalizing a line that names an emotion directly, try replacing it with an action, an image, or a piece of dialogue that implies the same emotion instead — a character doing something (packing a bag at 3am) shows more than a character stating how they feel about leaving.
Reserve directly naming an emotion for the rare moment it should land as a plain, unadorned admission precisely because the rest of the song has been showing rather than telling — the technique loses power if every line does it.

Song Lyrics Rules