Layering Your Draft Part Two: Let’s Bake A Novel

Aprons are highly recommended.

Want to start at the beginning of the series? Click here!

Before I go much farther into writing-as-baking, I feel like I have to put my money where my metaphor is. I can’t tell you to run out and buy an apron until I show you how this works in a stripped-down, practical way.

If you’ll remember from the previous post, I don’t really love the idea of separating rough draft and revision. Pretty much all writing includes some of each—most writers do some revision in early drafts, and pretty much all revisions include new writing.

Instead of starting with the idea of a rough draft to bash through, let’s start with this: whatever writing gets you into the story. For some writers, this might be a first full pass that they write quickly and then use as a jumping off point, but for others it will be extensive pre-writing. Maybe a few chapters or important scenes. For others it will be writing their way into the story for as long as it takes to figure the basics out, and then starting back at the beginning. This process might stay the same, or vary from novel to novel.

I’m going to call this searching for your ingredients. You’re gathering up what you need to tell the story. When you go looking in the kitchen, you might find some things easily, while others take significantly more cupboard rummaging. You might discover that you have the ingredients to make something slightly different, which is even MORE exciting than your original idea. Or you might realize you are missing something important (no baking soda = no conflict to raise the stakes)—and you have to decide if you want to put in the time to get that missing ingredient, or if you want to adjust your plans.

Your novels will be the wordy equivalent of this. I promise.

Then you start baking.

The layers will involve different amounts of work—some full passes, some fast passes, some where you only look at the scenes affected if you’re talking about a secondary character or a subplot.

Here is a (simplified) list of layers that I’ve done on a novel:

1. Voice and setting
2. Main character
3. Plot and structure
4. Removing a story element that isn’t working
5. Missing plot details
6. Narrative tightness and pacing
7. Main character’s arc driving the story
8. Emotional climaxes got wonky–work on these
9. Smoothing out the language and narrative pace
10. Secondary character dangerously underdeveloped!
11. Working in suggestions from an edit letter
12. Timeline issues
13. Working in feedback about another secondary character
14. Yet more editorial feedback
15. Copyedits!

(If you’re feeling really ambitious you can assign a flavor to each of your layers. I definitely have a dark chocolate setting in my new novel.)

One of the best things about this method is that it responds to the needs of the manuscript and the editing process. It’s infinitely flexible. Some novels require multiple passes to work on character; others have tricky plots. Some have lots of research layers that need to be incoporated. This also allows a writer to focus on their story elements, taking time to craft them without the pressure of fixing everythingatonce.

Which, to me, sounds delicious.

-Amy Rose

PS Next time, I’ll talk about the magic of character layers.

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Want to work with Amy Rose on your novel? She critiques, content edits, and provides writing coaching for all sorts of fiction. Just click on the contact tab & fill out the easy form to get started!

Layering Your Draft, Part One: Revision is a Jerk

The word revision is a problem for me.

I understand that it works for some people. If it works for you—great. But words have power, and the word revision has always seemed like a jerk to me. It shouts (yes, revision ALWAYS shouts): You messed up your draft! Ruined it! Pretty much everything in it is WRONG! And now you have to fix it! Otherwise—” At which point revision ominously points to the closet where WIPs go to die.

Fair warning: this blog series might make you hungry.

Lots of classes, workshops, and craft books seem to be focused on the idea that you can get to a good story by telling someone everything they’re messing up. I just don’t happen to believe that.

Do we need to know what’s not working in our novels? Absolutely. But is it just a case of troubleshooting and portioning blame? I think it’s bigger than that. When we’re aware of what IS working in our stories, it helps us see them much better. Then we can build a strong foundation. Then we can figure out what we still need. Then we can keep what is unique and delicious about our story intact. It can be a process of adding. Of making better, of always improving, of stacking good on top of good.

Like a layer cake.

That’s how I like to think about drafting. Not in terms of right or wrong, of rough draft or revising. It’s all layers.

The reason I like this is because it reminds me that there’s no one way to get everything right in a single draft, whether it’s the first or the fourteenth, because that is simply not the way the craft of writing works.

Joss Whedon is famous for telling writers, “eat your cake first.” Focus on the parts of the story you love, and fill in the rest later. It’s a great way to get writing in the face of a long and daunting process. But I’m here to tell you that, if you love the story you’re working on, and if you let yourself care about each layer, it can ALL be cake. Will some of the layers be a little more exciting to create: the ambitious pistachio-honey-almond sponge layers? Yep. Will some of them be more basic: the vanilla layers? Yep. Will some of them be devlishly hard to make and stack with the others? Of course. Will some of them crumble and need to be replaced or started over? Absolutely.

But a novel can be built like this. And when it is, it turns from something painful and mysterious into a matter of showing up, rolling up our sleeves, being fine with getting covered in the ingredients and making a significant mess, and getting to work.

-Amy Rose

P.S. Next time I’ll be breaking down one of my own drafts into layers to show you how it works!

P.P.S. Also, more pictures of cake.

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Want to work with Amy Rose on your novel? She critiques, content edits, and provides writing coaching for all sorts of fiction. Just click on the contact tab & fill out the easy form to get started!