Robert Caro is one of the greatest non-fiction writers of our time, or any time. His biography of Robert Moses, The Power Broker, will be read as long as people live in cities (and read), and his magisterial 5 volume – the 5th volume is almost done – biography of Lyndon Johnson is in a league of its own as a peak of in-depth research and commanding style. He’s a great storyteller and a hero of mine.

Caro’s books are from 700 to over 1,000 pages each… so keeping narrative focus through hundreds of pages is essential; it would be easy for the reader to lose the thread. How does he do it?

Recently I heard him talk about how he manages this focus. Before he begins writing each of these epics, he spends (literally) weeks – and his writing schedule is 7 days a week – boiling down the book he’s about to write to one paragraph. To its essence. Then he sticks that paragraph on the wall right in front of him, over his desk, to be referred to when needed through the coming months and years.

Then, later on, when he’s waylaid by some part of, say, Lyndon Johnson’s early life, stuck in the weeds of his own (and his wife’s) prodigious research, he looks up at the paragraph and tells himself, I either have to make this work as part of that main focus… or it has to go.

That’s how he’s able to write 800 page biographies that flow like one story; ‘like a novel’, as they say.

In a way, other than the length and depth of Caro’s enterprise, there’s nothing unusual about this – it’s just good writing. We songwriters toil in fields that are almost the opposite of Caro’s. Our songs take 3 or 4 minutes to digest… not dozens of hours. But the writing principals are the same.

Stay focused on what’s most important, cut what’s not essential.

So what is our ‘paragraph on the wall’? I’d suggest that more often than not it’s the Chorus (especially the Title) in a Verse/Chorus song, or the Title line in an AABA or related form. This includes not just the lyrics of those focal points but, of at least equal importance, the music as well.

When I feel I’m getting lost, losing the thread, that’s what I look to; the question I ask. Is this supporting the Title and/or Chorus? Is it leading to or strengthening the main idea of the song, both in words and in music?

When in doubt, I look to the Chorus, to the Title. That’s my ‘paragraph on the wall’.

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