This last week was a weird one. My novella, Krackle’s Last Movie, was officially published with an amazing small press, Split/Lip Press. What this meant was I found myself in a zoom Craft Talk with the Writer’s Center, which I’d stressed about for a week and wrote out four pages of notes for myself. Because I don’t trust myself to know my own work or process just off the top of my head.
Probably the most truthful thing that came out of it was something I hadn’t written down. They asked at what point in the writing process do I start thinking about “craft”. Is it always part of the process or does it come in later?
And my answer was that I’m always aware of it. But I’ve had to turn off the judgement. Let there be ugly sentences and misshapen scenes. And then when I go back…I look at craft in layers.
I do a layer of character. A layer of detail. A layer of structure. The big layers first, which usually means structural stuff – moving scenes around, etc. Then character arcs. Then details. And on and on. I know for myself, if I look at everything I need to do, I freeze up and can’t move forward. Same if I don’t let go of the judgement when first writing — I freeze up and nothing gets written.
I don’t think this is revolutionary. But as the talk went on, I found myself returning to the idea of layers. Every scene is layered. Every detail that’s chosen has layers. Structure has layers. You drill down multiple layers within every moment of a piece of writing (or insert other important thing here.)
I felt like some kind of echo chamber of my own making, every time I said the word “layer.” But I don’t think I’d ever articulated it like that before. When you’re forced to articulate what you do…you suddenly become aware of the hidden mechanisms that have been built below the surface.
There’s probably a metaphor in there somewhere for the times we’re in.
In any case, if you’re overwhelmed right, whether that’s in your writing or with the world at large, try piecing out the layers of a thing rather than hitting everything all at once.
This meme is maybe the best way to summarize it:
