How to display a duet in lyrics?

You are writing a novel, and @Galastel's second example explains how you may use conventional dialogue tags to label the different speakers of different parts of song lyrics.

In poetry, commonly the dialogue tags become part of the poem. Here is the beginning and end of a poem by Robert Bringhurst as an example, with the dialogue tags emphasized by me:

These poems, these poems,
these poems, she said, are poems
with no love in them. [...]
[...]
These poems, she said....
                                           You are, he said,
beautiful.
                That is not love, she said rightly.

posted over 4 years ago

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System‭

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I've seen this done several different ways.

• Chorus in bold (typical in printed lyrics to be sung from if everyone, including the lead, sings that part together)

It was in nineteen hundred and twenty nine
Run come see
I remember that day pretty well
Nineteen hundred and twenty nine
Run come see, Jerusalem

• Chorus in parentheses (typical if the lead does NOT join in the chorus and/or overlaps with it).

It was in nineteen hundred and twenty nine (Run come see, run come see)
I remember that day pretty well

• Singers in separate columns (this makes a nicer presentation for a book, where you're primarily just reading the lyrics, but you want to give a sense of what is being sung together.)

LEAD CHORUS It was in nineteen hundred and twenty nine
Run come see
I remember that day pretty well Run come see It was in nineteen hundred and twenty nine

                                  Run come see, Jerusalem

• In the style of a script

Lead: It was in nineteen hundred and twenty nine
Chorus: Run come see, run come see
Lead (overlaps chorus): I remember that day pretty well. Nineteen hundred and twenty nine
Both: Run come see, Jerusalem

Given that there's no one standard method, you can use the one that is best fitted to your needs.

For reference: Run Come See, Jerusalem

posted over 4 years ago

CC BY-SA 3.0

Chris Sunami‭

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This is how Tolkien solves a similar problem in The Lord of the Rings:

ENT.
When Spring unfolds the beechen leaf, and sap is in the bough;
When light is on the wild-wood stream, and wind is on the brow;
When stride is long, and breath is deep, and keen the mountain-air,
Come back to me! Come back to me, and say my land is fair!

ENTWIFE.
When Spring is come to garth and field, and corn is in the blade;
When blossom like a shining snow is on the orchard laid;
When shower and Sun upon the Earth with fragrance fill the air,
I’ll linger here, and will not come, because my land is fair.

ENT.
When Summer lies upon the world, and in a noon of gold
Beneath the roof of sleeping leaves the dreams of trees unfold;
When woodland halls are green and cool, and wind is in the West,
Come back to me! Come back to me, and say my land is best!

ENTWIFE.
When Summer warms the hanging fruit and burns the berry brown;
When straw is gold, and ear is white, and harvest comes to town;
When honey spills, and apple swells, though wind be in the West,
I’ll linger here beneath the Sun, because my land is best!
_{J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, Book III, chapter 4 - Treebeard}

I am fairly sure that in another book I've seen something along the line of:

Alpha sang [...] then Bravo took over [...] and they finished together [...]

In the second variant the interruptions draw a bit more attention to themselves, but at the same time they make better sense in terms of the narration: if you imagine the story being "told", you wouldn't expect tags as in the first example.

The reason you haven't found this in any style manual is that if you're writing a novel (or a short story - doesn't matter), this is really up to you. There is no one single convention. There are multiple solutions that can be employed. Depending on what fits the overall style and voice of your story better, you can pick one approach or the other.

posted over 4 years ago

CC BY-SA 4.0

Galastel‭

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