Theatre and musical-theatre lyric writing (剧场与音乐剧唱词). How a song becomes an action instead of a pause, how to make the words sound like the character rather than the lyricist, and what Sondheim's three principles - Content Dictates Form, Less Is More, God Is in the Details, all in the service of clarity - actually change in a draft. Covers character diction by vocabulary, syntax, schooling and period; first-person versus narrator; the price of repetition and the function of perfect rhyme on a stage; the seam between song and dialogue; Sondheim's catalogue of his own faults; and a transfer table for which rules a pop lyric should also obey. Use when writing a song for a ch…
