I've audited the Berklee Intro to Songwriting course a couple of times. Instructor is Pat Pattison. I have no idea if he has any hits or not. I do know I enjoyed the class and feel like I have more tools for writing lyrics after taking the class a couple of times. Tools that I have used and received nice comments from listeners.

Pat uses a concept he calls 'The Boxes', where the thought process is that you want to construct the song in 3 or so 'boxes' of increasing size from an idea perspective, with the 1st box being a somewhat small, maybe slightly vague idea.

The 2nd box idea should be expanded from the first, so that the first box fits inside of the 2nd one.

The 3rd box is the big payoff idea, that encapsulates both the first two boxes.

You don't want to start off with that 3rd box, otherwise you give your listener nothing but smaller ideas as you progress through the song.

I've used this technique the past couple years in the February Album Writing Month challenge, where the challenge is to write 14 songs in the month of February.

Last year, using that 'boxes' technique, I wrote what I think was one of my best songs, from a lyrics perspective. I had the idea of the song after hearing a reading of an excerpt of one of C.S. Lewis' books.

The song is called 'Tin Soldier'. You can have a listen to it here - see if you think it follows The Boxes kind of a flow. Since this was one of 14 songs in the month, I lived with some of the vocal inconsistencies in level over the length of the song.

A gentleman from the UK composed most of the music. First time someone wrote music to my lyrics upon request.

https://soundcloud.com/rockstar_not/scott-lake-and-fort-elmfield-tin-soldier

My Songs, photos, writing,etc.
My Sound Cloud