Nov 16 2008
Novel Ideas: Layering Your Scenes
I’ve been plugging away at my novel, and I can now confidently say that I’m about one quarter finished.
My end product will ( out of necessity) be a lot longer than the 50000 words required of NaNoWriMo contestants, so I’m not using that as my measurement scale. The best part of looking at what I’ve written already is knowing I’ve hardly even hit the tip of the iceberg.
One trick I’ve found useful in my writing is to layer my scenes. I’ll write a scene fairly quickly—just the bare bones—then leave it and move onto something else. The next time I sit down to write, I’ll return to that scene, re-read it, then add a second layer. This process is repeated several times until I’m happy with it.
I don’t delete parts of the scene, even if I’m sure I’ll take them out later. My goal is simply to get down as much as possible for my first draft. The major editing won’t take place until I’m confident I have enough material to adequately carry my storyline.
I’m curious to know how others go about the novel-writing process.
- Do you spend a lot of time perfecting one passage before moving on?
- Do you write your story chronologically from beginning to end?
- Is there a special method you use, or are you spontaneous with your writing?
If you have a certain strategy that works for you, tell us about it.
Thanks for your comment on my blog. I use layering, too - not because I do it naturally, but because it was suggested to me. I tend to write too bare-bones and forget my reader can’t see the scene. One of my Romance writing friends told me to go back over each scene and check that I’ve engaged all five of the reader’s senses at some point or another. I think Romance goes “over the top” sometimes and I rarely manage more than four senses, but it gives me a good starting point.
I write out of sequence - which means I write all my key scenes first (the bare-bones thing again), somewhat the way a movie jumps from scene to scene. Then I go back and fill in the minor scenes.
Marisa:
I agree it’s so easy to forget your reader isn’t necessarily seeing what you see if you haven’t really stopped to analyze what you’ve written. Sometimes I have this picture in my mind of how a scene looks, but someone else might think it makes no sense because I’ve left out key components.