Wallpaper

Judging by the response to last week's post, in which I asked for your competition news and provided the usual three links to free writing competitions, that subject is no longer of interest to my readers, so I'm dropping it for now. Instead Wednesday word of the week is back!

Wallpaper is, of course, paper sold to stick on walls to make them look pretty, or cover cracks, or both. Oddly I haven't got a single photo of wallpaper. Here's some fancy panelling (at Bolsover castle). It's a wall covering and made from the same stuff as paper ...

Wallpaper can also mean an unobtrusive background, often background noise.

I don't recall every coming across wallpaper as a writing term until it appeared in a lovely review of Firestarter last week. (Ooops, I seem to have 'accidentally' included a more recent one too!)

In this context wallpaper means background, setting or location. It can form an important part of the story, or just be there to stop the reader feeling the action happening in a void.

What kind of wallpaper do you like?

Conflagration

A conflagration is a great and destructive fire. It feels like there should be more to it than that, but apparently there isn't.

I quite like setting fire to things, but only in a small and controlled manner. Not it the manner of a conflagration nor as happens in my novel Firestarter.