Rogets Thesaurus Secret Power

Rogets Thesaurus is a powerful tool and word list builder. Dr Peter Mark Roget first published in 1852 with the revolutionary idea of grouping words together according to ideas. That way you can find a word by searching another word concept or thought.

People refer to it just as Rogets. Many misspell it as theasarus, thesauris or thesorous.

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Doesn't matter, just try this amazing writing tool to make your writing stand out above what other writers are writing. This not only works for songwriting but any kind of creative writing.

The downside is, it's big and heavy and some might think you look like a nerd carrying it around. Don't be afraid, take one for a test drive and you'll be surprised how you can use it.

Plus when you start cranking out lyrics that you never before could have thought of, they’ll all wonder what happened.

I learned this technique from Wayne Chase’s book How Music Really Works chapter 10.14.3. I have only seen this method written about by one other person.

You really should buy his book for a full explanation, with pictures of how to do this. The first song I wrote using this method got awards in two songwriting contests in 2007. Check it out on my Song Of The Year webpage


Basically you divide up Rogets Thesaurus by its fifteen category sections. Use mini post-its or tabs. Then build a table of words with headings of three types of nouns, and one each for verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. That gives you six headings in all. Wayne suggests you break down the nouns into characters, places and things.

Then you pick one word from each category and put it under the each heading. However pick three verbs from each category. You should end up with six headings with fifteen words in each one except verbs which will have forty five words.

The secret is in picking powerful positive and negative words that have a lot of emotional meaning. Not just to you but your potential listeners.

Then you make up phrase lists by mixing the words you have listed. Make them random and use any combination. You should look for unique combinations. Don’t sensor yourself. Just go wild in a creative frenzy. There’s lots of time to edit later

You should end up with 100-200 phrases courtesy of Rogets Thesaurus. Then the work continues. Take the phrases and make each one into a sentence. Study the list for a while and wait for a song idea that uses six or eight of the sentences. Write a song which includes your six or eight power sentences.

When you do this do not write in the passive voice. Frame all you material as action statements, quotes or questions. This is what listeners find most interesting and stimulating emotionally.

You can reuse your list for more songs, just delete the words you have used and put in new ones from Rogets Thesaurus. You can do this over and over again and never be short of unique interesting and emotionally powerful lyrics.

This system is the opposite of writing to a title, which is a common Nashville technique for writing. Try everything to come up with a great song. I’m not saying don’t write to a title. Just write as much as you can but always make your material unique and fresh.

This system does that. I try to use different techniques to shake myself up so I can produce new types of lyrics and music. You owe it to yourself to break out of old habits and see if you come up with something special. You will never lose your old system. You will just have more tools

If you want to take a song writing course from Wayne Chase, there is one near Vancouver BC at REO Rafting. You get a five day songwriting course at a whitewater river rafting camp. Its breath taking and an amazing learning experience. I highly recommend it. Check it out.