Name that Song…Just Don’t Use the Lyrics

By Judy Penz Sheluk

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Yes, I know, Stephen King makes it look so easy with his habit of using song lyrics in his novels. But here’s a head’s up: He’s a world-renowned bestselling author, so most songwriters are going to be more than okay with granting permission. They get recognition from a very recognizable name, and he gets to use their words: a win-win. Besides, he’s got money, and plenty of it, if he needs to come up with some cash. Odds are if you’re reading this, you’re not a world-renowned, bestselling author, and you’re not filthy rich. I know I’m not.

Which brings me to the point of this article. Can you, as an author, quote song lyrics in your novel or short story? The short answer is “No.” Song lyrics are copyrighted, and quoting any copyrighted material requires permission. Just flip to the copyright page of any novel on your bookshelf to find an example of a statement saying just that.

Of course, there is something called the “fair use” clause. For an 85,000-word novel, quoting a sentence or two likely falls under “fair use.” For music, however, where the entire piece is a few verses long, the prevailing wisdom is that you will absolutely need permission from the songwriter, record label, and who-knows-who-else, to quote as little as a single line. Even attribution of the lyric and copyright to the songwriter/artist is not enough. And we live in an increasingly litigious society.

Of course, there are exceptions. If a song is in the public domain, then copyright law no longer applies. Here’s a handy dandy list of songs in the public domain: https://www.pdinfo.com/public-domain-music-list.php. 

Another exception would be when a common expression is used in lyrics. For example, if a song included the lyric, “People like him are a dime a dozen,” and you wrote something like, “Chad was like that song, SONG TITLE, where people like him were a dime a dozen,” you should be okay, because that’s a common expression, and not something unique to the writer. You can also reference, by name, any song title without fear of reprisal. That’s because titles, whether a book, movie, or song, cannot be copyrighted.

It’s also acceptable to imply a song lyric. I'll use my story, ‘Goulaigans,’ which appears in the anthology Heartbreaks & Half-truths, as an example. The story is set in a much-fictionalized Goulais River, a small town in northern Ontario on the shores of Lake Superior. Here’s a snippet of the dialogue (and if you’re unfamiliar, or just want a reminder, here’s a link to Lightfoot’s song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PH0K6ojmGZA).

Laura’s body washed up on shore three days later, about a mile from the old Donaldson place.

“Whatever happened to Superior not giving up its dead?” Tucker asked me. We were sitting in my cabin, sipping on twelve-year-old whiskey. Now that Laura was gone, we could be friends again. Or at least pretend to be.

My mind replayed the lyrics to the Gordon Lightfoot song, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. It was a favorite on the radio up here, seeing how the Fitzgerald sank in 1975, not ten miles from Whitefish Bay.

“I think that’s only in November,” I said. “It’s August…there was no fella with a beard, was there?”

And on that note (clever, don’t you think, the musical reference?), I’ll sign off.

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About the author: A former journalist and magazine editor, Judy Penz Sheluk is the bestselling author of two mystery series: The Glass Dolphin Mysteries and Marketville Mysteries. Her short crime fiction appears in several collections, including the Superior Shores Anthologies, which she also edited.

Judy has also written two how-to guides to publishing. Finding Your Path to Publication: A Step-by-Step Guide was the Winner of the 2024 Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Award for Best Nonfiction. The follow-up to that book, Self-publishing: The Ins & Outs of Going Indie, provides an insider’s insight into the world of self-publishing. 

Judy is a member of Sisters in Crime, International Thriller Writers, the Short Mystery Fiction Society, and Crime Writers of Canada, where she served on the Board of Directors, most recently as Chair. 

The Writer’s Playbook | A Ripe Kumquat

By Steven Harms

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“Fumble at the thirty-two-yard line! Rod Smith jumped on that ball like it was a ripe kumquat!”

That line was uttered during a radio broadcast of a Detroit Lions home football game. And I’d bet my life savings that “kumquat” hadn’t been used in an NFL broadcast prior and would never be again. The Lions radio color announcer, Jim Brandstatter, made that rather pointed reference to a Lions defensive player recovering the fumbled ball. The idea of a kumquat on a football field conjures up a comedic image. A fumbled football is sort of one itself: as the ball bounces around, players scramble to get it; sometimes they accidentally kick it or refumble it as they frantically try to hold on. In the context of a fumbled football, using a kumquat simile was perfect.

Why did he say it that way? Well, he and I had a weekly challenge when I was working for the Lions. Each week during the season I would give him a word that he had to weave into the broadcast. I wrote it out on a small piece of paper about an hour before kickoff, entered the broadcast booth, and subtly handed it to him. It was our “thing.” If he was able to insert the “word of the game” into the broadcast each week during the season, I owed him lunch. If he missed one game, he owed me the same. As the weeks wore on, I had to get more creative if I wanted to win, and I thought I had him trapped with “kumquat.” The fumble happened in the fourth quarter, no less, of that game. Jim told me afterward he was on the verge of losing but for that fumble.

The point is, using a kumquat as a descriptive simile worked. In fact, it worked very well. Reimagine the utterance if it was a ripe apple, green bean, onion, or ear of corn. Not quite the same for some reason, is it? Or worse, if he stated “like a ripe egg” or “like a noisy kumquat.”

Bad similes are story killers and can take an author’s credentials down a few notches on the reader’s scale. They undermine a reader’s engagement with the story and implant in them a negative distraction that may carry throughout the rest of the book. 

However, a well-written simile can evoke just the right emotion. As a creative tool, it paints a picture that resonates in readers’ minds—good or bad—but it clicks. Similes can be quite powerful if written well and deployed at the perfect intersectional moment. 

A few rules to follow in writing similes (and there may be others):

KEEP THEM LOGICAL

The simile must be logical in comparison with the moment described, and it must have an immediate connection for the reader. If the reader needs to pause to think through the comparison because it doesn’t compute, don’t use it.

USE THEM SPARINGLY

Overuse of anything is generally not an effective strategy. I’ll relate it back to sports. If a football team always runs to the left on first down, the maneuver becomes boring and predictable and unsuccessful. 

STAY WITHIN COMMON KNOWLEDGE

A simile that uses unique or uncommon elements in the comparison can destroy the moment because the reader can’t grasp what it is you’re trying to say. If Jim Brandstatter had said “Rod Smith jumped on that ball like it was a timorous mangosteen!” (a real fruit from Southeast Asia), he may have been fired the next morning, or at least ridiculed for a full week.

STAY CLEAR OF SIMILARITY

When you’re deciding on a simile, ensure the two components of your comparison are different enough to drive home the point. As an example, a sentence that reads “She ran up the hill like an athlete in training” doesn’t give the reader much clarity on what that character was doing, since athletes do run up hills as part of their training regimen. There’s not a lot of separation. Conversely, “She ran up the hill like a wounded deer” creates an image of a frantic person, hobbled by fear as she’s trying to get somewhere fast and out of sight.

Whenever similes are deployed, read them to yourself to see if they’re effective. As an example, one of my characters in The Counsel of the Cunning voices his feeling that what he and his assistant detective are experiencing during their hunt for a missing person isn’t adding up. He amplifies this and says, “it’s like a duck in robin’s nest.” The point being that while a duck and a robin are both birds, their distinctions are profound, and a duck would never, nor could ever, be in a robin’s nest. He instinctively knows something is “just off,” and he uses this simile to make the point. He’s saying a bird in a nest is right, but the type of bird is wrong, or the nest should be in the water and not in a tree. In other words, their hunt is going in a direction that gives him pause, that makes him think something’s amiss, but he can’t quite put a finger on it.

Similes are a great tool to propel a story or a moment or a character description. But they are a unique tool and need to be done with precision if used. Don’t shy away from using them as writers, but be tactical in placing them and intuitive in writing them.