It is great to have characters think for themselves. This is how I make sure mine can.
Fodder ratings are a system I came up with to measure how suitable a song is for parodying. The exact fodder rating of a song is based primarily on how well it fit under the overall Pirates of the Caribbean-based theme of my parodies (see here), but may also reflect whether I would recommend parodying it in general. Each song I have parodied has its own page explaining how it fares on these two fronts.
Much will be explained on those song pages, as well as on this page as I run through what each level of the scale means. However, two things should be pointed out first:
There is a reason I keep my song and parody pages separate. Fodder ratings, it must be clear, evaluate how much the song gave me that I could work with. They have nothing to do with how good the parodies are. I just say all the parodies on my site are of acceptable (hopefully good) quality and leave it at that, lest I call attention to any inferiority of one parody to another.
Of the fodder ratings, only 0-fodder and 1-fodder are meant to be absolute. So long as a song is at least 2 fodder, it can fall anywhere from 2 to 5 depending on how well suited it is to what the parodist wants to do. The easiest songs are described as having a range of 3-5 fodder depending on how much they press a given parodist’s buttons, as they simply are not enough trouble to rate a 2. More difficult songs may be described as unlikely to be anyone’s 5 fodder, or likely to be either 5 or 2 fodder. This is discussed on the individual song pages under the general suitability assessment.
0-fodder is an instrumental, which is impossible to parody for obvious reasons. This, of course, is completely self-explanatory. Therefore, it need not be discussed anywhere else on the site.
1-fodder is a song that has lyrics and so technically can be parodied, but is so inflexible, either due to not having enough words to tell a story on its own or using too many hard-to-rhyme words with very specific meanings, that I have deemed it impossible to make a very good parody of. Thankfully, such songs are rare, generally only appearing on soundtracks or concept albums. When I rate a song 1 fodder, it means I specifically avoided parodying it, and highly recommend that you do the same. There are many good reasons not to bother, and the fact that you would have to go out of your way to find something this unsuitable ranks right up there.
2-fodder is borderline, the lowest I might parody. It often applies to songs about fairly specific things from certain parts of the world or that are modern (or at least did not exist until after the 18th century). It can also apply to a song that just lacks sufficient content to tell a proper story.
2-fodder songs have similar problems to the 1-fodder, though obviously not as severe. Another thing these two low categories have in common is unconventional tendencies, which means 2-fodder songs are not very common either. Over the years I have catalogued few 2-fodder songs and parodied even fewer of them, partly due to their inherent issues but also because there are not that many of them to begin with.
3-fodder songs are ones that have their ups and downs. This generally means one of two things:
4-fodder songs are ones that work reasonably well, though often in a way subtle enough that it takes some explaining. This may apply to something that is the direct opposite of what you want to write about, such as a love song appearing to a parodist who has a bad relationship in mind, or otherwise is like the reverse side of a coin where your chosen topic is one side.
5-fodder is a song that suits its parodist perfectly. In my experience this means a song that, if you did not know better, you might think was originally based on the thing my parody made it about. As such, my 5-fodder list consists mainly of songs that could be used to describe something out of Pirates of the Caribbean just the way they are.
However, it would be wrong to refer to 5-fodder songs as songs you cannot go wrong with. One need only find the places where the 5-fodder songs
and songs parodied multiple times
categories overlap to know better. You can also tell from my stories about why your readers should not try to predict you, as two of those bloopers involved 5-fodder songs. The general theme might have been known ahead of time, but using the songs to their full potential involved requirements of knowledge about who the correct characters to write about were, which my readers failed to fulfill.
It is something unique I have developed in myself, and you know such things just happen. I am aware that fodder ratings are not for everyone. For example, considering the commercial song parodist Weird Al does not have a common theme for all his parodies like I do, it seems likely his creative process is very different from mine.
This is not to say fodder ratings should be ignored, however. Before I came up with fodder ratings, I employed characters as the viewpoints of my parodying, who basically thought how suitable a song was for parodying was in direct proportion to how much I liked it - two things that really have no correlation in practice, beyond that you have to find a song at least tolerable to enjoy parodying it.
This very incorrect notion led them to not give songs I just tolerated a chance, insisting it had to be something I more actively liked. Then there was my dislike of pipe organs, which made them come up with the whole music war
premise, deciding that for such an instrument to appear in a rock song was enemy action and they needed to parody the song as soon as they could to salvage it, which made no sense - if I have a complaint about the music, how is changing the lyrics supposed to help? It was only a matter of time before a 5-fodder music war
killed them off.
Let us learn from this. What you should focus on developing is something of your own.