Thanks, Judy. A couple of extraneous (and probably irrelevant) thoughts:

Country music is known for its rhyming. But what if you've got a word nothing rhymes with? I ran into that with "Duct Tape." The solution was to make the rhymes *internal* instead (trick picked up from Avril Lavigne), and just have every couplet end with "duct tape." Worked.

I took care of the cliche problem by writing a song that was entirely cliches. ("Twenty-four Seven" was also a love song, and a waltz--if you're going to do cliches, you might as well go all the way.) Now they don't bother me any more.

And the hook can really go anywhere that it fits. I've occasionally made it the first line of the first verse, just because. Challenge is if you don't have a chorus. In the Southern Pigfish folk-rocker "For Their Own Ends," which has seven verses, no chorus, the hook (which is not the title) is in the last line of each verse. In "When I Jump Off the Cliff I'll Think of You," which has nine verses, no chorus, the hook happens only four times, but still was memorable.

Joe

www.soundclick.com/joewrabek
www.soundclick.com/deathgrass
www.soundclick.com/wrabeksworksinprogress
The Writer's Blog: http://nakedspacehamsters.blogspot.com