Layering
One of the things that makes writing difficult for a lot of folks is the notion that they have to do everything at once, on the first try. They’re sure their first draft has to look pretty much like an actual story – maybe it needs some tweaking, but everything’s more-or-less there: the plot, the dialog, the action, the setting, the characterization. They kind of know that they can put some of it in during the revision stage, but they don’t really understand what that means, much less how to do it.
I suspect that this is partly a problem left over from pre-word-processing days. When you had to type or handwrite every page, and adding a paragraph of description meant retyping not only the page with the new paragraph, but the entire rest of the chapter (if not right away, then at least when you got to the point of typing up a submission-ready copy), it was a whole lot easier and more practical to get as much down on the first pass as you possibly could, no matter how you’d really prefer to work. I still have vivid memories of the days when “cut and paste” meant actual scissors and glue or Scotch tape, and of the “page” that ended up being three feet long (folded carefully so that it would stack with the rest of the typed ms.) because I really, really didn’t want to take the time to retype all that stuff. And I only did one book that way before I got a word processor.
The thing is, I know quite a few writers whose first drafts are rather…minimalistic. Several of them start with screenplay-like drafts that sum up all the action scenes as “They fight. George wins.” and all the settings as “Hotel bedroom” or “in car, driving” or “hiding in woods; dark.” I didn’t understand how this could possibly work until one of them, about fifteen years back, introduced me to the concept of layering.
Layering is a writing technique that is slow and mechanical, and it will drive you crazy if you don’t have the discipline to keep going back over and over and over your work until everything you want to have in it is in it. Every so often, though, it’s just the thing, even for those of us who don’t normally work this way. And it’s easiest to explain by example.
Basically, you start with one specific thing: dialog works for most folks, but description or setting or action or narrative summary can do just as well. You write that part of the scene, and only that part. When you’re satisfied with it, you go back to the beginning and add a second layer: what people were thinking while they spoke, for instance (if you started with dialog), or what they were saying while they did things (if you started with action). Then you add a third layer, and so on. So the first draft would look something like this:
He: “What are you doing here?”
She: “Isn’t it obvious?”
He: “Not to me.”
Draft two would put in tone of voice and names:
“What are you doing here?” James demanded.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Helen said sarcastically.
“Not to me,” James said.
Draft three put in the characters’ actions while they talked:
“What are you doing here?” James demanded, glancing around the half-empty warehouse. He shuddered.
Helen shrugged and looked down. “Isn’t it obvious?” she said sarcastically.
“Not to me,” James said, refusing to follow her gaze.
Draft four put in more description of the place and the things in it, like so:
“What are you doing here?” James demanded, glancing around the half-empty warehouse. A pile of soggy cardboard boxes in one corner had split open, spilling moldy, unidentifiable contents across the filthy floor. The whole place smelled musty and disused, and he was sure he had heard a rat squeak. He shuddered.
Helen shrugged and looked down. The digital timer on the half-finished bomb at her feet clicked over another minute. “Isn’t it obvious?” she said sarcastically.
“Not to me,” James said, refusing to follow her gaze.
Draft five put in what the POV character was thinking about what was going on:
“What are you doing here?” James demanded, glancing around the half-empty warehouse. A pile of soggy cardboard boxes in one corner had split open, spilling moldy, unidentifiable contents across the filthy floor. The whole place smelled musty and disused, and he was sure he had heard a rat squeak. He shuddered. It was, he thought, the last place in the world he would have expected to find his wife’s elegant, high-society friend, but here she was. And what’s that thing she’s standing by? It’s not … it can’t be … oh, god.
Helen shrugged and looked down. The digital timer on the half-finished bomb at her feet clicked over another minute. “Isn’t it obvious?” she said sarcastically.
“Not to me,” James said, refusing to follow her gaze. She could, he supposed, have been dismantling the bomb. She could even, perhaps, be unaware of what it was. He refused to think about how much trouble he and Carol were in if Helen had actually been … no, he was not going to think about that.
And so on. Note that there is nothing special about the order in which I layered stuff on to this example. You could start with the dialog, and layer in the characters’ thoughts first, and then put in their physical actions or the description, and so on. And one could also break it down even more finely – physical description 1: visual; physical description 2: smells; physical description 3: sounds; characters’ direct thoughts; characters’ indirect thoughts; etc. It depends on how your mind works.
