Writing Exercise: What pattern is your wallpaper?

51  Writing Exercise:  What pattern is your wallpaper?

 

“Imagine that the world your character occupies is wallpaper,” said my writing instructor.  “Now, imagine what would happen if you broke that pattern.”  This was the exercise given by one of those life-changing profs so long ago—a man who entered into my little world when I was doing the normal, routine coursework of an undergrad well on his way to becoming a medical student:  Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics.

wallpaper

I never thought that I would ever become a writer.  David changed all that.  And this exercise—the one I will share with you today—was one of those amazing tasks that rocked my world.   It will allow you to think of several interrelated strands in a character’s arc:  past, future, present.

The wallpaper is an apt metaphor of humdrum regularity.  Every character has a routine—an arrangement, a pattern.  To be a good writer, it is important to understand that pattern.  I, for instance, wake up every morning and do five minutes of calisthenics.  I brew an extremely potent pot of coffee.  Then, I write for 3 hours.  I jog.  And finally, I eat lunch.  I know:  I’m boring.  I am ashamed that I am so boring.  This is my sad, monotonous pattern.

You, too, have a routine.  In fact, if you were being watched by a private dick—the sort that might appear in the kind of Detective story I’m currently writing—than you would see how absolutely predictable you are.  This routine is the story in stasis; it is the pattern that needs to be established in small details.  It doesn’t have to established before the action; it can be established after it.  But wherever it shows up, it has to be there.  And now that we have established the primacy of the wallpaper,  you must understand one key fact:  the wallpaper, it’s most definitely not the story itself.

PrivateEye

This is probably the biggest problem for writers who are stuck at page two—they are writing the wallpaper.  The wallpaper is the anti-story.  And this is where many writers who can’t find a plot leave their narratives:  in the world of endless repetition.

To create the story, you must ask yourself how the wallpaper must be violated.  How can you introduce interesting variation?  This is the element that makes the story compelling and motivates the plot.  It can be as simple as a phone call; I could be interrupted in my writing by an urgent ring, informing me that my cat has been run over and this will send me on a quest for revenge.  Someone could knock on the door; it is a man, a bully, who demands that I stop playing my loud music and this will devolve into a Tarantino-esque shooting spree.  A fire alarm could go off in my building; I meet a beautiful woman, half naked outside the complex, and offer her my jacket…

pulp-fiction

So, here is the exercise:  figure out what your character’s routine is—that little ant-life that he is drudging through.  It doesn’t have to be as boring as mine—a writer’s sad, solitary, keyboard existence; it can be the life of a gigolo.  But even a gigolo’s life has wallpaper.  Figure out the wallpaper and you are well on your way to violating it.  Violate it and you have a plot.

2 thoughts on “Writing Exercise: What pattern is your wallpaper?

  1. Khanh – What an interesting idea for character development. What is your protagonist’s routine, and how do the events of the story affect it? I love it! And it’s definitely something one can do for one’s own novel, as a writing prompt, or even, as your professor did, with students. Oh, and you’re not the only one who starts the day with a potent pot of coffee…

    • Margot, I’m glad you like it. We so often focus on the extraordinary in fiction, but it is the boring stuff–that which precedes the remarkable–that makes for the notable.

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