Writing the Chorus: Lessons from Song

Just as a songwriter returns to a chorus, authors and poets rely on repeated images, phrases, and structures to build meaning and guide the reader through a work. The refrain in music shapes the emotional architecture of the piece. For authors looking to master the literary refrain, understanding how the chorus works in music provides a useful metaphor.

A chorus, at its core, is a moment of return. It grounds the listener, providing both comfort and anticipation. In the same way, a writer can employ refrains to bring a reader back to an anchoring idea or emotional state. Consider Toni Morrison’s Beloved, where the phrase “124 was spiteful” opens and returns throughout the text. Like a chorus, it creates rhythm and mood, reminding us that the house itself carries memory. The same words feel heavier, darker, and more urgent as the narrative evolves. Much like a song’s chorus that gains force when heard in the wake of a new verse, Morrison’s refrain transforms through context, building momentum as the story progresses.

For poets, the parallel is even clearer. The villanelle, for example, is defined by refrains. In Dylan Thomas’s “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night,” the repeated lines—“Do not go gentle into that good night” and “Rage, rage against the dying of the light”—become increasingly urgent. The feeling of the refrains shifts as the reader carries more meaning into each repetition. The reader’s ear, like a listener’s, begins to anticipate the return.

Repetition, when used deliberately, can unify sprawling narratives. In Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, the cyclical return of names, phrases, and events echoes the novel’s meditation on time and memory. Echoes of past moments return like recurring motifs in a symphony. The technique ensures that even in a vast, multi-generational tale, the reader never loses the thread. The novel’s refrains remind us that history, like melody, repeats.

For authors developing their craft, this lesson carries practical implications. Writing coaches often see repetition as one of the hardest techniques for new writers to use effectively. Left unchecked, repetition can flatten prose, creating monotony. Like a poorly written chorus, it can feel predictable and overbearing. The art lies in making repetition evolve—each recurrence must gain something from its placement. A skilled writing coach helps an author identify places in the manuscript where an image or phrase can serve as a refrain, but they’ll also guide them in modulating its return. Just as a chorus might be sung with different instrumentation, key, or volume as the song progresses, a refrain in literature must shift in tone and context.

Ernest Hemingway’s restrained prose relies on repetition to create rhythm. His phrases recur with subtle variation, creating the cadences of lived speech. In A Farewell to Arms, “The world breaks everyone” is echoed and reshaped into “The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.” The return transforms the idea from observation into philosophy. For a developing author, it is often a writing coach who can point out where these subtle shifts add something and where they may need refinement. Without an outside perspective, writers often either overuse repetition or shy away from it entirely, not realizing that the technique is as much about restraint as emphasis.

A songwriter knows that a chorus will fall flat if it is too similar to the verse or if it lacks the emotional lift that makes return satisfying. In writing, the same is true. A refrain must stand out from the surrounding text while still harmonizing with it. A coach can help an author step back from their own work and hear the “song” of their prose, pointing out where the refrain can better punctuate the narrative.

In a song, the chorus is the part an audience can join in on. It is the shared language of performance. In literature, refrains can create a sense of ritual for the reader, a way of pulling them into participation. Think of Homer’s epics, where epithets like “rosy-fingered dawn” and “swift-footed Achilles” recur. These phrases, easy to remember and expect, acted almost like choruses for an oral tradition, inviting listeners to anticipate and engage. For a novelist today, a refrain can carry that same sense of shared rhythm to create a bond with the reader. 

In memoir and personal narrative, refrains can echo the rhythms of memory itself. Joan Didion, in The Year of Magical Thinking, repeats phrases and sentences as though she is circling them, returning again and again in an attempt to understand. The effect is both musical and psychological, capturing the way grief loops and loops. A coach working with memoirists often draws attention to such moments, helping writers embrace the way repetition can honor the patterns of thought, memory, and emotion without seeming accidental or careless.

Just as the chorus is what stays in your head long after the song ends, a well-crafted refrain lingers in the reader’s mind. Writers who neglect this tool often produce prose that, while technically sound, fails to stick. This is why many accomplished writers seek guidance in coaching relationships to cultivate an ear for rhythm. A coach helps an author think musically, to listen for echoes in their own work, and to understand when a phrase has the strength to bear the weight of repetition.

Music and literature share a kinship in how they move us. Both rely on rhythm, structure, and return. Both build meaning through patterns. And both know the power of a phrase that is worth hearing again and again. With the guidance of a writing coach, repetition can be one of the most effective ways to give prose a pulse and to leave a reader humming long after the book is closed.