The Amazing "Breadcrumb Technique"

The Amazing "Breadcrumb Technique"
by Morgan Cryar

I want to share with you a sophisticated technique to use in your songwriting that I've never seen in any songwriting book. This songwriting tip is so powerful that it can place a listener behind bars, locking them into your song until the very end. I'm going to show it to you right here in this email, but first let me ask you something important.

Do you really pay attention when you play your songs for other people? Do you ever see and take note of their reactions?

I ask because watching others' feedback is like a hidden gold-mine while you are building your abilities as a songwriter. If your song is connecting and keeping people in its grip, you will have done your job. But the ONLY way to know if it's connecting is by paying close attention to the response it gets whenever the song is played.

Ok, back to my sophisticated technique. Guess what? I have already used it on you earlier in this very email. Look back at the last sentence of paragraph 1 above. Go ahead...

I built up a tiny bit of tension (using a promise), then I held it, along with your attention, by putting off its resolution. I call this "dropping breadcrumbs," because it gives people a trail of reasons to keep paying attention.

Rather than just spill the beans, I dropped a clue and kept moving...knowing you would follow. You can do this in your songwriting and it's very powerful. There are several different ways to "drop breadcrumbs." 

I did it again in paragraph #2, by asking a simple question. The mind is a sucker for questions. In fact, I've heard it said that ALL knowledge is made up of answers to questions. 

 

Ideally, you'd want every line of your song to end with a breadcrumb for the listener...a tiny promise that it will be worth the listener's while to keep going one more step, one more line.

Let me show you some examples of "dropping breadcrumbs" in songwriting. First, I'll show you a passage that uses "breadcrumbs." Read each line then pause...to simulate the wait-time of actually listening to a song.  
Try to read each line and NOT read the next one. If you are not curious enough at the end of each line to keep going, then that line has failed to drop a breadcrumb.

*After the "breadcrumbs version," I'll show you the same passage before it was re-written and see if you can see the difference. Remember, read one line at a time slowly.

With breadcrumbs:

 

Down the road I see a girl throwing flowers
Kneeling in a muddy wedding dress
And while her make-up runs
She melts there in the sun
And the man escapes who left her in this mess

 

 

Now let's see what it was like without breadcrumbs:

Down the road I see a girl with a wedding bouquet
He left her at the altar and he went away
Her runaway fiancé's nowhere near
And now she has to face all of her fear

Without those breadcrumbs, each line ends with very little or no unreleased tension. A statement is made, information is given, but nothing compels you to have to know what comes next. 

Let's look at one more example...read with a pause after each line. 

With breadcrumbs:

 You got a strange way of watching me
Shudder to think what you could do
But that's a "hungry salesman" look
And I won't be buyin' from you

The goal was to make each line force you to keep going. I don't know if I succeeded. Here it is before the rewrite...without breadcrumbs:

You got a way of looking at me
And I can see it in your eyes
You're insecure and desperate
Under your thin disguise

Ok, that's it for this email. If you don't have Strong Songwriting yet, you will find it chocked full of secrets like this on every page. Check that out here!

Keep writing,

Morgan Cryar

Strong SongWriting
849 Forest Acres Dr.
Nashville, TN
37220
US