On Pattern in Writing
Is there Such a Thing?
I have been puzzling over this for years. And I think I’ve gone as far as I can by myself.
I need your help.
This is a question for you.
Everyone knows what a patterned fabric looks like. Patterned cloth or hide seems to be a universal human product. But is there an equivalent in writing?
(In prose, not poetry.)
About a decade ago, I wrote something which seemed a way to approach the question.
Stripes were an obviously doable pattern in writing. So I decided to write a stripy piece of prose, although it turned into a weird kind of political poem.
I did my best to make each line the exact same length, though I think a change of font has skewed this slightly.
After this, I felt a bit stumped.
From what I can see, thinking back over all I’ve read, there are stripy books. There are novels where the back and forth between two narrators makes a pattern. I did something like this in King Death, flipping between different approaches to solving a murder and different kinds of minimalist prose.
But the question for you is — Are there any other kinds of patterning in prose?
Poetry, yes. Seems fairly obvious that rhyming couplets create another kind of stripes.
What about more sophisticated patterning?
Is it something you’re conscious of in your own writing?
What are the patterns in Virginia Woolf? Toni Morrison? László Krasznahorkai?
I use rhythm, which produces a kind of pattern. I also use mirroring (I don't know if that's the correct term, or if there is a term) where I reproduce an earlier scene with slight differences. Even different characters or setting, but the same thing happening, dressed different. For example, in the book I'm currently writing is a scene with the protagonist at the psychiatrist. Later in the story, the protagonist visits a Clairvoyant and the scene is mirrored with the psychiatrist scene. Very similar things are said.
I also use repeated words, sentences, situations, etc. All these things make a pattern of the overall piece. I m not sure if readers notice it, or if it works subliminal.
I sometimes write a whole scene so that the first letter of every sentence, when written out, spells a spell, some mystic intention. But I doubt anyone notices.
Have you read George Saunders on Chekhov’s story ‘The Darling’? It’s one of the chapters in A Swim in the Pond in the Rain. Saunders says ‘The Darling’ is a perfect example of a pattern story, in other words, a story where certain elements repeat but never in exactly the same way. He makes a chart. It’s very interesting.