First, begin by deciding what your song will be about. It's best to start off by writing about something simple like a legendary creature before you work on more elaborate topics. So pick a random legendary creature - for example, a dragon, and begin by getting down dragon-related song ideas.
Now, you're going to wrap a story around this topic. A good progressive rock song always tells an interesting story or describes an event in important detail to display the significance of it. So, rather than just describing things, figure out the location of the story, think up necessary characters, decide the time period of the story, and decide where you're going to take it and how it will end. Write down as many ideas as you can and then choose the most suitable ones.
Now you've thought of a story, start writing!
For the first two to three verses, set the scene by describing what is happening, making sure you suck the listener into this song's world. Introduce the character(s) and the goal that needs to be accomplished. Remember, there has to be some sort of goal in the story. At least one character must want something for things to happen.
If the song has a chorus, it's good to not include the chorus too much - only at points where it is required. Never rely on the chorus to flesh out a song, because this is lazy. Your song's chorus should be more to-the-point than descriptive.
Now continue your story, implementing as many of the ideas that you decided to try as you can. Make sure it's adventurous, and if you want it can of course be nonsensical too. Quirky things are allowed to happen in progressive, so add them where you can.
Once you've written a few verses, add in a twist. Send the story in a completely different direction so you can bring in lots of new ideas. If you're writing about a dragon, maybe you can reveal in the song that the dragon's actually misunderstood and means no harm. Or maybe the dragon isn't a dragon at all - maybe it's a figment of one's imagination. Try out different twists until one sticks.
Remember to make your song poetic. Using a thesaurus, pick out as many interesting descriptive words as you can. Use these to your advantage to transform a good line in a song into an even better line. For example, instead of the line "The dragon breathed fire." you could instead have "Hellish blasts of inferno were launched from the dragon's throat."
But also remember to not overdo it as well. Don't cram so many descriptive and unusual words into one sentence that it sounds silly.
But don't stop at creative words. Oh, no, there's a lot more to experiment with in progressive rock lyrics. Experiment with the number of lines in a verse, from small, two-line verses to long and epic ones. Decide which lines you want to rhyme and which you don't want to. Chop and change each of the verses so each of them are of sizes relative to the point in the song's story. You can even convert one or some of the song's lines into quotes said by the song's characters if you wish!
Make sure the song has some sort of meaning. Maybe there's a lesson to be learnt in this song? Maybe there's a secret that the listener has to uncover from it? Maybe your song can have multiple hidden meanings? For beginners adding in a hidden meaning to a song (and making sure it isn't obvious) can be quite difficult, but one thing you can do is create an artificial meaning from your lyrics. Evaluate what you have written and see if there's anything you can get out of it, and if there isn't, alter some of the lyrics with the meaning you may have come up with.
Once the lyrics are finished, you can give your song a title. A lot of progressive rock bands enjoy giving their songs titles that are not mentioned anywhere in the song, or titles mentioned only once or twice in the song. Few progressive rock songs have a title mentioned frequently within the piece, but this doesn't mean you don't have to.
Add finishing touches. Sign your surname under the song for example. Add the song's length (make it up - for example, 9:17), and if you want to you can decide where in your song that the lengthy guitar and keyboard solos come in and such. Unless you're not typing it, format your song in a font and colour that reflects what it is about, to give it a fancy look.
And there you have it, a set of lyrics to a progressive rock song that you've wrote and are quite rightly yours!
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