The Taylor Swift Writing Workshop

Using the pop star's lyrics to teach young girls (and everyone else) how to write better.

“Let’s talk about some of the tools Taylor Swift uses in her writing. Can anyone give me an example of a device she uses in her lyrics?” I stood at the head of a classroom, speaking to a group of sixteen little girls at a writing conference for kids where I was teaching.

Most of the hands shot up. I called on a girl with wavy brown hair and freckles. “She uses lots of details,” she said.

Bravo! Details are key to making your writing leap from the page, I said. “Can you give an example in her lyrics?”

“Like in Getaway Car,” the girl said. She smiled slyly at her friend next to her, a redhead with a high ponytail, and they broke into song.

“X marks the spot where we fell apart. He poisoned the well, I was lying to myself. I knew it from the first Old Fashioned, we were cursed. We never had a shotgun in the dark [oh!]. You were driving’ the getaway car…”

By the time the two girls got to the chorus, all sixteen of the girls were singing along, too. All of them smiling and bopping their heads to the invisible beat.

And this is what it was like to parachute into a room of elementary school children who are so passionate about Taylor Swift that even just talking about how the pop star uses writing techniques held their attention rapt.

The day started off on a high. When I arrived at the conference to check in, the organizers told me that my sessions were “sold out”. They had to turn several girls away who were very upset. “I swear some of them looked like they were going to cry,” the conference director said. At least one girl did.

I wondered if the girls realized when they signed up that the teacher would be a boring old writer wearing a gray sweater (me!), not Taylor Swift herself strutting in her spangly jumpsuit. Suddenly, I felt pressure to be a little less mom-like. Thank god I brought a speaker and could play Taylor Swift music audibly when they first shuffled into the classroom. I got extra points (a nod that equated to a fist bump) when I put on “Cruel Summer.” Even though the line about being drunk in the back of the car is highly inappropriate for 9-year-olds, we all agreed that everyone could remember crying like a baby at least once.

Which was the second tool that we studied when it came to the beauty of her writing. Taylor’s lyrics are relatable. They’re brutally honest, and they’re vulnerable. The girls raised their hands to give numerous examples of this, even the songs where she “gets revenge on people she doesn’t like,” as one child reminded me. I told them she certainly does, but we weren’t there to dive into the dark side of Taylor’s lyrics. We were going to focus only on her writing techniques.

“What are descriptive words?” A third grader with a pink t-shirt and curious eyes asked when I wrote it on the dry-erase board. We were studying the lyrics of “Enchanted,” and I had asked the girls to circle any of the parts of the song that used descriptive words. A little girl in a striped sweater had lots to say about descriptive words: “I think it’s the part where Taylor writes, ‘Your eyes whispered, "Have we met?".'Cross the room your silhouette.’”

Oh yes, I exclaimed. Because I do love that line. Your eyes whispered, and then she tells us what his eyes were saying. Also, instead of saying he walked toward her, she describes his silhouette crossing the room. “It’s very evocative imagery,” I said. “Anyone else?”

A girl put down her pale pink Stanley and raised her hand. “Walls of insincerity, shifting eyes and vacancy.”

Exactly. I might have been beaming. I was kind of proud of how easy it was for them to see what was good about Taylor’s writing.

“Do you see how she’s showing us how she feels?” I said. “Taylor could just say, ‘I feel so nervous at this party.’ She doesn’t. She shows us the shifting eyes and makes us imagine the walls that people put up.”

Later, we talked about how writers use metaphors, and the girls were fascinated as I went through Taylor examples. I put on the song “Cardigan,” and we jumped into a discussion about how Taylor isn’t just talking about an old sweater in this song. She’s talking about herself. “And when I felt like I was an old cardigan. Under someone's bed. You put me on and said I was your favorite.”

Other techniques we explored: Repetition. How writers use word repetition and rhythm to drive home a point. Do you know that Taylor Swift repeats the phrase “Are We Out of the Woods?” thirty-eight times in the song “Are We Out of the Woods?” We discussed why. Again, I told them, Taylor isn’t telling us that she’s uncertain where the relationship is going. She’s showing us her insecurity by repeating the line over and over.

The discussion about “The Last Great American Dynasty” was particularly fun, since it was neat to show the kids how you can tell an entire story, set a scene and develop a character in one song. The beginning of the song offers an opening image, just like novelists like myself do when we write a novel. You can picture the character clearly when Taylor writes: “Rebekah rode up on the afternoon train. It was sunny. Her saltbox house on the coast took her mind off St. Louis. Bill was the heir to the Standard Oil name and money.”

During the last ten minutes of class, I asked the girls to use what we learned about good writing to compose their own lyrics. “One or two lines that are really honest or use descriptive details. Maybe you want to attempt to use your own metaphor or tell a story.” The girls opened their notebooks, scribbling away. I put on Folklore since it’s probably Taylor’s best album to write to.

One fourth grader with pretty glasses raised her hand, volunteering to read her lyrics: “When I saw him, my heart bounced like a basketball.”

I thought that was a great use of metaphor, and the girl grinned. Another child, this one with a rainbow on her shirt, raised her hand, and I nodded her to read. The girl read from her page: “She put on makeup but it didn’t fix her.”

“Oh, wow.” I clapped. “That’s really good. Because she’s not just talking about makeup anymore, is she?”

In the end, I told them that Taylor Swift was just like them once: a little girl with a notebook writing in her bedroom. She used words to express herself, to share her feelings and work through whatever was floating around in her head. I encouraged them to do the same.

“Writing definitely wasn’t easy for her either. These words didn’t come out beautiful the first time she wrote them. There were cross-outs and revisions and lots of do-overs. She’s not perfect. She just kept practicing.”

Ultimately, that is the lesson that all writers need to learn from Taylor. Writing is work, and no matter how many songs (or in my case, books) you’ve written, it’s never easy. But it is always rewarding.

Everyone has a favorite line from a Taylor Swift song. Type it in the comments section! The girls would be proud!