Creative Writing
4 Writing Ideas Inspired by Whitney Houston
How will I know?
The inspiration for this writing exercise comes from the song “How Will I Know,” which was first recorded (but alas not written) by the great Whitney Houston in 1984. If you’d like to refresh your memory, check out the lyrics here.
In some ways, the song (in Whitney’s version) is an upbeat dance hit like many others. But it’s a little different, too, because of the uniqueness of the relationship between the narrator who’s telling the story and the “you” that she’s addressing in the song.
Tell me, is it really love?
“How Will I Know” is a love song, but instead of being addressed to the object of the narrator’s affections, the narrator is talking to a wise friend (or relative or other significant person), asking for advice. In fact, in the music video, we see Whitney gesture toward an image of Aretha Franklin, a respected mentor of hers.
In the beginning of the song, Whitney sings about liking a guy and having a lot of feelings for him, but not being sure if it’s love or not. “He’s the one I dream of,” she sings, and describes how altered she feels when he even looks at her.
Instead of continuing to describe him, she asks, “When I wake from dreaming, tell me, is it really love?” It’s not the guy who can tell her what she needs to know — she’s talking to someone else about her feelings.
She uses “he” to talk about the guy, but “you” to talk to her wise friend. This perspective gets clearer when she asks the question of the song’s title, “How will I know if he really loves me?” and ultimately ends the chorus by explaining: “I’m asking you what you know about these things.”
One last note: if you track the pronouns through the lyrics, it does get a little confusing with the use of “we,” which could be read as the narrator and the guy, or the narrator and the wise friend. For me as a reader/listener, the elision or interconnection of the relationships in the narrator’s thoughts just adds to the dreaminess of the song.
Writing exercise
The writing prompt is simply to write a poem or prose piece that borrows one or more narrative techniques from the song. Think about the ideas of describing a relationship from the outside and asking someone else for advice, and how the song stands apart from the usual voice in a love song — or love poem or love letter, etc — that speaks directly to the beloved.
Here are few specific ideas you could explore….
- Write from the voice of someone speaking as “I” and addressing “you,” but where “you” is a secondary person in the story. Your (autobiographical or fictional) narrator could talk to “you” about a relationship with someone else, or maybe tell them a story that happened when they weren’t there, or what else…?
- Write a poem or prose piece in which you request advice. This could be advice about a particular situation, or life advice in general. Who would you ask advice of, if you could ask anyone? What would you ask: advice on one situation, or do you have a lot of questions that need answering?
- Write a piece where you’re discussing something or someone with another person, such that the reader has the feeling of overhearing part of a conversation. It doesn’t have to be like #1 where “you” is a secondary character, and it doesn’t have to involve advice like in #2. What other situations could you write about where the reader only hears one voice but gets the gist of a conversation — or maybe self-talk about an intended conversation that the narrator would like to have?
- Write something where you repeat a question, or maybe a series of questions. We hear “How will I know?” quite a few times in the song, and honestly it always makes me ask myself how we figure out when we’re in love and whether it’s good for us and so on. You could even explore a form that uses repetition like a villanelle or triolet to repeat a question throughout your piece.
Most importantly!
I hope you have fun with this, and the most fun I can suggest would be to watch the music video for “How Will I Know” and let the love, dreams, questions, and need for advice blend together into four minutes of happiness.
