Another point is section length. Tunes will tend to run on the short side if you have verses and choruses back to back with only 8 measures each. So one or both of them should be 16 measures.
F.Y.I. A vast majority of western music is built in blocks of 2,4,8 or 16 measures. Also, you can contrast phrase lengths not only between sections but within sections as well.
If the first phrase is 8 measures long then the second phrase could be 4 measures long or you could have two 4 measure phrases for balance at another even 8.
Other possibilities include a four measure phrase followed by two 2 measure phrases etc...
So, go get your notebook. Make some schemes for the song form, decide how long each section will be and which key, then how long each phrase will be and write in the starting and ending pitches of each verse and chorus.
Don't agonize over these decisions. Just plop them in. If you catch yourself spending too much time on this process go get some dice and let them decide.
Then decide the starting and ending notes for the phrases within each section for the positions that are still left undecided. That would be the ending of the first phrase and the beginning of the second phrase.
Isn't planning for variety fun? This is the method that I have used a lot and recommend to beginners. Not everyone needs to do it. They have heard and played so much music that the right moves come out unconsciously.
Much of the time it falls nearly exactly like I'm talking about here.
Another consideration is that the chorus should most often reach a higher note than the verse.
Your tunes are starting to take shape and have ceased being an amorphous impossible anything and everything.
We can also talk about melodic shape. If one phrase rises and falls and the next one rises and falls, even if it uses different notes and uses a higher pitch, they still have the same overall shape and that can be boring. Not really if it happens in only one song but if it happens in every song then it WILL be boring without a doubt.
Although many good melodies have both an upper and a lower curve it's possible to write effective melodies that primarily rise or primarily fall or are primarily a flat line, even a single note.
In your notebook plug in some melodic shapes for each phrase in your big plans. Again don't agonize too much. Just dump them in.
You can always change stuff later that's not working or that could work better and you'll have a baseline with which to evaluate them.
I make charts for all this stuff to help me keep track of what strategies I've already used.
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