You Can’t Quote That by Andy Scheer

Page 174 stopped me cold. Unless the novelist wanted legal trouble, something had to change.

In editing the novel, I’d already checked the copyright and permissions page. I saw the usual boilerplate acknowledging use by permission from several Scripture versions. But nothing about song lyrics.

Ideally, the author would have two choices. But this project was on a tight deadline. So page 174 had to change.

A character had just turned on her car radio, and it scanned to an oldies station. Suddenly she was back with her boyfriend in 1965 at their senior prom, hearing their favorite song.

A natural segue for a brief flashback. With one problem: the author quoted the song’s entire chorus.

Enter the copyright police. While lawyers struggle to define exactly how much of a copyrighted work an author can freely cite, printing the full chorus of a recent song (and 1964 is still considered recent) is clearly too much. Opinions vary about whether quoting even a line is kosher. But mentioning the title is safe.

I confirmed the author had neither the time nor the inclination to track down the song’s copyright holder. So now, readers will be told that Grace smiled when the radio played “Chapel of Love” by the Dixie Cups. The next paragraph will say they had expected that soon, they would go to a chapel and get married. And a paragraph later, the sweetheart will paraphrase a line of lyrics about loving until the end of time.

In the story, the former sweetheart had done four years in prison. I wouldn’t want the author to share a similar fate.

More Lyrical Phrases by Andy Scheer

If you want to write powerfully but don't feel up to poetry, draw your inspiration from some well-crafted lyrics.

Last week I wrote how the opening line of W. C. Handy's “St. Louis Blues” made me wish that more writers would craft evocative phrases. But such figures of speech aren't limited to those who sing the blues. Even cowboys can be powerful wordsmiths.

A few years back I heard a concert by music historians Mark Gardner and Rex Rideout of songs that genuine cowboys would have sung in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Among the most memorable was a 1911 song by James Grafton Rogers called “The Santa Fe Trail.”

The singer is searching for a girl he glimpsed on a wagon train. Specifically:

A tow-headed gal on a pony,

A-janglin' for old Santa Fe.

Need more specifics?

I seen her ride down the arroyos,

Way back in the Arkansas sand,
With a smile like an acre of sunflowers ...

And how she did ride:

She straddled the pinto so airy,
And rode like she carried the mail ...

And those eyes:

And her eyes near set fire to the prairie,
'Long side of the Santa Fe Trail.

I hope he found her. But I wish he had written more.

Fresh Expressions by Andy Scheer

“My man's got a heart like a rock cast in the sea ...”

The opening line from W. C. Handy's “St. Louis Blues” grabbed me last week as a watched an installment of the Ken Burns film Jazz. Whether those words are sung by Bessie Smith, Billie Holliday, or Ella Fitzgerald, they grab me every time. I'm not quite sure what they mean, but they carry an emotional punch.

Last week I was editing a lengthy nonfiction book by a writer who never met a cliché he didn't like. Page after page I encountered worn-out figures of speech.

Not having the assignment to rewrite the book, I could only apply Sol Stein's advice that “one plus one equals one-half.” So when the cliché pared two terms (above and beyond) I picked one. While the resulting expression wasn't fresh, at least it was no longer stale.

Listening to W. C. Handy's lyrics reminded me how much more effectively we can communicate when we make the effort to craft an original word picture.

A later line in “St. Louis Blues” says, “I love that man like a schoolboy loves his pie.” Nothing exotic, but certainly evocative. Perhaps even on the same wavelength with Jesus' parables, drawing on a distinctive but common experience.

Would that more writers craft phrases that make daisies seem stale.