Read a book on writing essays. It's exactly the fucking same technique I use. I only realized this recantly after I learned how I write songs best for me independantly.Then I read a book on writing essays and all the same stuff applys. For example:
Prewriting - You can plan out the general structure here if you want but more importantly come up with tons of random shit, anything you can think of and write it down. I use Powertab to do this I'm sure any computer notation software would be fine. It doesn't matter if it sucks or not or if it sticks together just write a lot of it.
Looking that over: wait a couple minutes and then go back and look at what you came up with does it suck? probably. but some of it's probably pretty good. if you found one thing that you kept doing over and over again it's not gonna be boring, it's going to be your unifying theme. A rhymic device maybe, a key signiture, an instrumention or technique... blah blah blah
Orginzation: Okay, so now you have some good parts and crappy parts and you know what they are, so Seperate them. Take out all the good parts and see what if you have enough, you probably don't but that's okay right now. Do any of them look like an intro, chorus, bridge? Make an outline of song structure and put the pieces in and see if they fit and what's missing.
Free writing again: Somethings probalby missing. Free write again and go through the same process only look for that spesific kind of idea once you're orginzing.
Cleaning up: So now you have sections (paragraphs) now you have to connect them. You can use dovetails, (using the same kind of idea, or music motif at the end of the first phrase and the start of the second phrase) or keep a drum beat the same or something, so that the "train of thought" or flow of the song works.
So that's when I normally have my first draft. Then I normally throw some varations in the sections add a solo (as I normally don't have one worked out by then) probably with some refrence to another section in the back up parts,
Revising: Play it for an honest a couple friend and ask which sections are their favorites and least favorites. Cut their least favorites, they're just going to be trouble and are probably something you're attached to because you like, but don't belong in this song. So remember them for later. After that just listen to your song over a lot and if you hear anything that you think should be changed, change it. Anything that sticks out too much unintentionally, smooth over and all that jazz. I suppose you could go over the grammer in the lyrics at this point if you have them.
Anyway I don't know if that's helpful to anyone but that's what I do. If it helped you I suggest you pick up a book on writing essays. It's pretty easy translate to musical terms and there's been a lot more writing on how to do it well then writin on say, Progressive death metal songs. It's just lucky that the same techniques can apply. Hope I helped someone.
River Dragon!
