Garner paints scenes with sharp observational detail, sunlight catching on chipped teacups, the quiet despair in a suburban living room. Lipa delivers lyric hooks that lodge themselves in your bloodstream. They're instant and irresistible. Both are storytellers.
Writers, especially of literary fiction or serious essays, often shy away from the spectacle of pop music, wary of its sheen and gloss. And yet, the best pop artists are masters of persona, of rhythm, of emotional clarity. They know how to make three minutes feel like a lifetime, or a lifetime feel like a heartbeat.
So what can writers learn—or gently ‘steal’—from pop stars?
Economy of language: Pop lyrics are practised at being brief but resonant. A writer can take the lesson of saying more with less: a single, sharply drawn image, a precise simile, a clipped line that cuts to the quick. Think of Adele’s Hello—“Hello, it’s me.” No overwriting, just raw connection.
The power of repetition: Hit the theme again and again, until it becomes part of the reader’s rhythm. Just as a chorus embeds itself in your head, a well-placed refrain or motif in prose can echo long after the last page is turned.
Embrace rhythm and pacing: A well-timed paragraph break can function like a beat drop. Try shifting rhythm intentionally—short, snappy sentences to accelerate; long, winding ones to slow. Use structure in the service of tone.
Hook early: Pop singles need to grab listeners fast, whether it’s with a woozy synth, a bold lyric or a thumping drumbeat. Writers, too, can benefit from beginning intensely—start with a tension, a question, a striking image.
Voice matters: Pop stars are often carefully sculpted personas, from Beyoncé’s fierce authority to Harry Styles’s sly charm. As writers, developing a persona—or allowing your own voice to come through distinctively—is essential.
Emotional precision: We all know that pop can make us feel instantly, deeply—joy, heartbreak, defiance. Writers should aim not just to describe emotion, but to evoke it: to hold it close, shape it taut, and send it straight into the reader’s chest.
Learning from real writers who channel pop energy
Here are some fantastic authors whose work reminds you—sometimes consciously, often intuitively—of the energy, rhythm or clarity of great pop:
1. Sally Rooney: Her spare prose crackles with emotional voltage, hitting high tone in deceptively simple dialogue and internal rhythms. You sense a lyrical instinct at work: each line carefully weighed, each silence potent.
What to read: Normal People (2018)
2. Ocean Vuong: He writes with a musicality that feels lyrical—even his essays read like verse. His language is rich in image, light in sound, as though you’re listening, not just reading.
What to read: On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (2019)
3. Patricia Lockwood: Her experimental, internet-savvy voice blurs genres; she brings pop-culture awareness and emotional stakes in equal measure. Reading her, you feel the fizz of cultural moment plus distilled confessional power.
What to read: No One Is Talking About This (2021)
4. Hanif Abdurraqib: He weaves athletic precision with music-memoir sensibility. His essays and poetry pulse with references to songs, concerts, personal histories—like listening to someone’s mixtape made of words.
What to read: A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance (2021)
5. Jenny Offill: Her novels layer snatches of thought, news, memory into a collage that reads like lyrics scattered across a page. There’s a playful, lyrical collage-style that echoes pop’s jumps and crescendos.
What to read: Dept. of Speculation (2014)
Pop stars who have turned page-goers (and bookish)
Let’s also delight in a few pop stars who’ve gone bookish—showing that literary curiosity and celebrity can cohabit happily:
Dua Lipa: Yes, we already mentioned her voice, but she also launched a book club—inviting fans into conversations about fiction and essays. It's a lovely gesture of literary outreach from someone who could just ride the charts.
Taylor Swift: Swift has famously shared her reading lists, sometimes curated seasonal book recommendations on Tumblr or Instagram, offering her fans a window into her literary taste. Her penchant for reading has even threaded into her lyricism, giving songs a vivid, novel-like quality.
Lorde: The New Zealand singer-songwriter is known to champion poetry and indie fiction in interviews—she often name-drops literary influences and makes subtle thematic nods in her songs that suggest a reader’s mind at work.
These pop-star sidebars remind us that reading and writing aren’t cloistered arts. The walls between song and page remain delightfully porous—and ours to explore.
A final note to the writer-reader
To write like a pop star is to remember that art can be serious and fun at once. It can shimmer and sting, be deeply felt and instantly accessible. The challenge for any writer is to find that balance—crafting prose that resonates like a chorus and hits you like a hook.
So next time you’re revising, ask yourself: Is this line hooky enough? Does it pulse with rhythm? Could a shorter sentence change the beat? And above all, is the voice distinct, memorable? Bring a little pop sparkle into your writing. You just might surprise yourself—and draw readers in for more.
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