Writing “A Girl Called Tiny”

When people ask me about writing musicals, I always start with Grace.

I know I’ve been spoiled when it comes to our co-writing partnership. I work with the wonderful and talented Grace Siplon St. Lawrence (@beingofgrace), adding music to her stories. She’s my friend, a fellow middle school teacher, co-founder of Blue Box Theater, and a self-published author.

We worked together on our first project, “The Crow’s Walk”, which is a one-act play that she dreamed up while she was at the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh. She stopped at a bar called The Last Drop, which was the preferred drinking site prior to public executions, and it inspired her to write a musical about an executioner and the condemned sharing songs and a talk during their last hour over drinks. We toured the two person show in early 2025 around local bars in the Triangle.

In that project, we established a powerful workflow, which we have replicated in our work together on “Tiny”. She outlines the show, plotting the places where a song is likely to interject and gives me a possible title and a few lines of her vision. We work together to determine whose voice is singing, the character’s motives, and the main urge that made them burst into song in the first place.

With the plot outline in hand, I set out to write the music and lyrics. Usually I spend a bit of time pre-writing thoughts in my notebook, dibs and dabs devoid of the constraints of music. That helps me shape the direction and heart of the song before I head into the actual world of music which runs on the engines of melody, rhythm, and rhyme.

People always ask the question: “Which comes first for you as a songwriter– the music or the lyrics?” The answer is “the shower”.

Almost all of my song ideas are born either on a walk or in the shower, after some first draft ideation in my notebook. Usually a melodic riff will catch me and I’ll have to get out of the shower and record the snippet on my phone before the muse retracts its offerings and my brain toilet accidentally flushes the idea away.

Next, I hum my melody into a pitch detector app on my phone to see what key I’m in and head to the piano. (If I am magically in the key of G, I can head to the guitar– because I’m just a baby campfire guitarist– but that hardly ever happens, so the piano is my main guy.)

As the song birth happens, I’ll record pieces of the song and upload it into our shared Google Drive for Grace to listen to and give feedback. Am I headed in the right direction? Does it feel like it serves the story with its tone, cadence, messaging?

She always reacts to the songs in a way that makes me want to keep going. And if ever she gives a fix-it-up critique, I know that she’s ALWAYS right. I’m not saying that with any sarcasm or self-defacing affect– she is always right. And I love her for it. It makes my job so much easier to know that I can trust her opinions and guidance.

After the songs are written, she weaves in dialogue and the plot, connecting the tunes to bridge our story together.

Twenty songs later, we now have a two-act show for nine actors. Auditions will happen in spring-ish of 2026 and the show will be on several stages by the end of summer 2026.

I’m so proud of what we’ve made and I can’t wait to see how it evolves between now and when you get to see it!

Want to listen to the demos? Listen here--> Tiny Songwriter Demos