In its simplest form, the basic rule of songwriting is to keep your listeners interested all the way through your song. The trick is to hook them from the beginning with a strong opening line, then keep them with you the rest of the way.

In most songs, you’ll repeat a line (refrain) or a section (chorus) two or three times. The danger here is that once your listeners have heard something once, it will be less interesting to them the second and third time—like telling the same person the same joke three times in a row. Once you’ve heard it, it doesn’t give you anything more the second or third time.

Thus your job as a songwriter is to make your repetition interesting and productive so that the same words deliver more each time. To overcome this challenge, it might be helpful to think about a song as a stack of boxes that are connected to each other, with each box getting progressively larger. Think of each one gaining more weight, with the last being the heaviest of the lot.

The first box begins the flow of ideas, introducing us to the song’s world.