Archive of Our Own ^beta

Okay, hello everyone, it's teacher Archer here to teach you about how I write filk parodies. So I'm going to try to talk out my thought process. With this new filk that I'm starting called Unsink My Ship, done to the tune of Toni Braxton's Unbreak, my Heart, I'm going to try and mix the sort of, you know, general advice with specific examples, because that's how I learned best. And I think that's how things come across the clearest. But also, because this is not finished at the beginning, I'm not entirely sure how it's going to go down... So this filk might be bad haha, is what I'm saying. But it's okay. I don't know how this is going to turn out. But I think it's going to be fun. And I hope that I'm able to express this in a way where it's not so intimidating to people.

So I am using OneNote. In order to do my filks. It's up to you, obviously, what word processor that you would like to use. But I like one note, just because I can have what is eventually going to be the whole thing, separate from loose notes. If I think about something that maybe doesn't fit quite right, or if I just have something that I know I want it to be in the vicinity of, then I can sort of write it down, and then just kind of toss it to the side, which is a little bit harder if you're going with something that isn't as as flexible as OneNote is. But obviously, that's just what I do.

There are two ways that I translate the original lyrics to the new fannish lyrics, you can have them side by side, which I probably will be doing for this one. Or another thing I do is I just have the original lyrics. And I put them all in italics. And then when I am replacing it, I just replace it with whatever line I want it to do. And then that one is not in italics, that gives me a sort of visual cue of how much of the song that I have changed. I usually only do this with songs that I know pretty well. So I know that when the original lyrics are gone, I'm still going to know what the melody is, and it's not going to trip me up too much.

But of course, there's also the option to not have the original lyrics anywhere and just kind of let the melody flow to you however you feel like it. There's no rules. We're just having fun here. Yeah, whatever works for you works for you. And that's great.

You probably already know this, but I'm just going to say in case you don't: try and find your lyrics on AZlyrics.com. Just because a lot of websites other than AZ lyrics, if you try to copy/paste, it is really confusing, like it'll paste it wrong. Or some sites don't let you copy/paste the lyrics at all. AZ lyrics has been around since, you know, the beginning of the internet, It is a nothing site, it is just bare lyrics and it's super easy to work with.

So let's start with the beginning. So we already know what my concept is by the title "Unsink my Ship". And when I thought of those, I wrote down kind of the first few lines to go with what the chorus is. I usually like to start with the chorus because that's sort of what the core is. But also I want to think about "is this song going to change?" Because that is something that can be really fun, is if every verse kind of focuses on something different. It also just makes it easier to write when you're coming from a lot of different sources rather than one specific source. So with unsink my ship, I'm thinking that maybe I start out talking about whatever show or movie that I am invested in. And then maybe talk about what happened that sank the ship. And maybe at first I'm trying to say unsink my ship to like the creators, or the canon, to be like 'you guys are in charge, you need to change this stuff'. And then maybe later, I turn and I change it on to fanfic and talking to fandom and asking how they can unsink my ship. So that's kind of where my thought process is now.

Okay, so now that we've talked through that, the concept is going to kind of start with the canon and go to the Fanon. Now, that leads me to think Okay, so this first verse and chorus pair are going to be about the canon. And then the second verse and chorus pair are going to be about fanon. And then, and then you know, the end, the verses are a little bit shorter, and they don't really have any new lyrics in the original. And so I'll try and figure out if I want to, or how I want to, deal with the melody there, and probably will not think too much about the original. I know that there's like a long break where there's just instrumental and some like vocalizing, which is really cool when you're like a professional singer. But since I'm doing this just for fun, I probably won't vocalize. And I might, you know, either just let the music run, or I'll cut the music out, or I'll put in a part where it's like just talking, you know, talking about whatever, you know, fic I've read, or how things have hurt me in the past or something. I like using that, whatever breaks there are in. It's fun to try and incorporate that into continuing the story that the song is telling.

I'm going to start with the first verse, because I know that there is going to be a little bit of a difference between the first chorus and the second chorus because of what I said earlier about who it's directed to. So I'm thinking, I'm going to start with the first verse so we can sort of establish the scene of where we are. And I might skip around while I'm thinking about these things, you know, I usually don't start with the first verse, the first verse is usually the last thing I do, because it's easier to jump in at the chorus, and then move through there and then come back to the first verse when you know where it ends up. But with this, I'm going to try and start with the first verse, because it is a sort of linear story, that I'm sort of setting up as someone who went to canon expecting something and then was betrayed, and then goes someplace else for it. So I'm going to sit and think about this for a minute, and then I'll come back and tell you what I thought of it, how I changed things.

Okay, so I'm back. And I've got the first few lines of the first verse. So what I wanted to say is Unbreak my Heart does a very cool thing, in that it changes the beat within the verse. Sometimes you'll hear a song, oftentimes, with pop songs, the verse will have its own internal beat, and then the chorus will switch up that beat. But a cool thing that unsynch my heart does- just combined those two -- that unbreak my heart does is it has the two couplets at the beginning, where you have them rhyming in a really obvious way, and then it switches it up to be like, so it starts out with you know, like,
Don't leave me and all this pain.
Don't leave me out in the rain,
Bum Bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bom, bom, bom, bom, bom.
And then it switches up "I need your arms" bum "to hold me now" bum "the night's are so unkind" and so it switches it up. So you think that you understand the flow, and then it kind of does something that's similar, but just a little bit different to like, keep your attention. And I like this, because it is implying forward motion. And so with that forward motion in the music, it makes it easier to be like, Okay, so this is how we're going to do a change in the story that we're doing. So, you know, I've started with watching the TV and being upset. And now the music is sort of giving me permission to not dwell on what that show is, and instead to move on, because we're about to get to the chorus soon. Move on to what I'm going to do about feeling upset about this. So now I have

I don't believe what I've seen / betrayed by my TV screen,
I thought it was obvious that these two are meant to be

and now we'll change to something else that will pull me to maybe direct it to the director or the writers or something a little bit more specific to be like: this is the person who I'm going to be singing the chorus to. I'm very excited about this. I don't think that I had thought about that in the song before. So I'm glad that I can explain that to you so that you can maybe Listen to this. If there's something in the instrumental that can kind of push you forward in this, whatever filk that you're trying to get to, that might lead you down an interesting path or give you a sort of excuse to do something that you maybe weren't sure how to do in a song. So I'm going to figure out how that transition is gonna go.

Okay, so earlier, I was like, I'm going to talk about the writer or director. I didn't really specify, and I decided to kind of add that to what, like that thought process to the lyrics. So the next section, it's almost like a bridge at the end of the verse, but it's not. So it goes,

who can I blame for this heartbreak?
The network or producer, writer, director, please somebody Stop it.

Which leads into the chorus really well, I think,

Un-sink my ship
Say you made a mistake

Okay, and, and so this part I was thinking specifically about when something happens in one episode, and you're like, Okay, but next episode, it'll be okay. Because they'll come up with something that is like, Oh, we tricked you. You thought it was this thing, but it's actually something else. So it goes,

Next episode, you'll come back with an explanation that totally makes sense.

And then I don't quite have the last two lines. It's "uncry these tears" in the original. So I'm thinking of another thing to like, do but undo is maybe something like un write this something? Sometimes it's the shorter sections that are harder than the longer sections because then with a longer section, it's like this whole chunk kind of flows all together. And this is just a little one that I need to get to that repeat of unsink my ship. So I'm thinking of, of something like that something that you can undo, in a way that would make this appealing to me. So like unwrite, this scene that says something is something and then unsink my ship? Okay, let's go.

Okay, so before I had the first verse say, I thought it was obvious that these two are meant to be, but because of the meter, it seemed to emphasize the word two which felt a little uncomfortable for me, because ships aren't always two people. So I've changed it to I thought it was obvious that they have such chemistry, there might still be things like in the song that are like pairings or other things that might imply two people. But that just, you know, that particular line was a reading weird to me. So I changed that. And I change lines all the time, oftentimes, just put in a line that is really simple, or, you know, I'll sing whatever line the original has, and then just change it just because you know, it's easier to change something once it's there. Because then you already have the beat, and you kind of understand how it sounds. And then the more you write, you can kind of get a better feel of what direction you're going in. And then it makes it easier to go back and change things, which is also something that works in any kind of writing, not just songwriting, write things that are wrong, and then you can fix them later.

Okay, so I'm having a little bit of trouble with the chorus that's to fandom, so I'm just going to skip it. And I will say that in the original, obviously, if you've heard the original, the chorus does not change every time. The chorus is the same as it is in most pop songs. The chorus does not change every time. But that's just the thing that I personally like to do in songwriting, I think it's feels more musical-- not more musical, like music obviously is music, but more like it is within a narrative musical. And that's just kind of the thing that I have found myself drawn to when writing songs. I've written songs for like years. So that's just kind of one of my quirks is I really like if there's a way that I can take the chorus and change it. For instance, in Hamilton's Wait For It. The chorus there changes slightly every time. I wrote a filk for that and then it changed slightly every time which worked really Well for me, because that's something that I would do anyway. This is a pop song, not a song from a musical. So obviously, it does not change. That's just something that I like to do, obviously, do whatever feels good to you to do. There's tons of filks that I love that has the same chorus. And it makes it super easy to sing along to and super memorable and super fun. This is a thing that I like personally, it makes writing the song a little bit more challenging, and a little bit more fun to me, because... I like a challenge- I don't- Well, apparently I do, because I keep making things hard for myself.

So after the fandom chorus, there is the instrumental part that I mentioned earlier that I have decided that I am going to talk over and just do like a sentence about how disappointed I am in the show. Which is a nice way to add just like a little bit of extra humor into this. And I also talked to a friend of mine about this. And they mentioned, like the frustration that comes with shows, they mentioned the 'flames on the side of my face' meme/clip from Clue. So I think I'm going to add that to it. I think it's a lot of fun, when you get to the end with these things that repeat each other, to add in new lines that are just like, how many references can I throw into this thing? You know, like, how many memes how many fandom things can I throw into this, um, it's not like it's a comedy, where there are like jokes with a punch line. It's just things... I want people to like snort and be like, Whoa, I know what that is, you know.

So it adds a little bit to the kind of lighthearted fandom feeling to it to add some more of those things. And there's a lot of parts at the end where it just is like repeating those same words. And it makes it easy to make it be those words, but like slightly different. So it's referencing something else.

And I'm almost done, except for the fact that I'm not at all almost done, because there are large chunks that I don't have hhaha. It's fine.

Okay, so I think I'm done with these lyrics. And I can't think of anything else to say about how I write filk. It's really something that you know, you get better at by doing, it's something that is fun to just try and make yourself laugh, you know, it's not a lot of pressure. It's just kind of being silly. And I really enjoy it for myself, and I really enjoy it from other people and it is something that I hope more people do. If you are listening to this and you have any idea or inclination at all to make some sort of fandom song, or fandom poetry, or like any sort of maybe non traditional fan work, I would super encourage you to do that because it is a lot of fun and it's a really- really fulfilling to sort of stretch your creative muscles so to speak.

Oh! And I remember at the beginning I said that I wasn't sure how this was going to go because I didn't know how the song was going to turn out.

I think the song turned out pretty good. if I do say so myself. So may I present to you Unsink my ship. lada da da da lyrics to the filk are on its own page