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How Layering Your Novel Brings Order out of Chaos

July 31, 2017 in Novel Structure with 22 Comments

I’ve been writing novels and teaching novel structure for many years, but I’ve shied away from going into detailing what scenes should come where in a novel.

Why? Because there are countless books and blog posts that cover story structure, and a lot of great ones too, so, I figured, why should I add my two cents to the mix?

But the longer I thought about it, the more I realized I have some unique approaches and twists to the age-old question: “How do I write a great novel?”

By layering scenes—that’s how.

I searched through titles and descriptions of dozens of writing craft books specific to structuring novels, and it hit me. None of these books talk about layering. Continue Reading…

Why Layering Your Novel Is the Method for Success

July 24, 2017 in Novel Structure with 2 Comments

Last year I spent some months talking about layering scenes. As time goes on, I see how few writers—especially aspiring novelists—have any clue how to organize their scenes. They brainstorm their scene ideas once they’ve settled on a premise of sorts, and then they just start writing from scene one.

The result is usually disastrous.

While we read books from page 1 to the end, that is not the best way to lay out a novel. In fact, it’s probably the worst way.

Novels need to be built like houses. You don’t build a house by framing up a door, sticking the door in the doorway, then entering into . . . nothing. You don’t build in a linear direction, from front to back. And even though you do build vertically, from the ground up, there’s the issue of framework.

You have to build off your concrete slab or perimeter foundation first with a framework. If you’re building a house, that framework will consist of wood studs and posts hammered together according to your blueprint. Walls are built with studs at specific spacing, and the spaces for doors and windows are framed in with headers and supporting studs on the sides and where the sills will go. Continue Reading…

Brilliant or Boring? How Do Your Characters Measure Up?

July 20, 2017 in Novel Structure with 3 Comments

When critiquing manuscripts, I often wonder how much time writers spend thinking about the personality types of their characters. Because so many characters are either stereotyped, shallow, or boring.

I’ve written a lot about characters and explained that ordinary people are boring. While we want to populate our stories with believable characters, we should avoid ordinary and boring—at least with our protagonist. You might have a minor character who is irritatingly boring to your protagonist, and that character might have a great role in the story.

But you don’t want to bore your readers with flat, uninteresting characters. I hope you can see the difference.

What’s “Larger Than Life”?

You may have heard that fiction writers should create characters who are “larger than life.” That’s a bit puzzling because in life there are all types. How is one “larger” than another? And you don’t want to go to the extremes of hyperbole or exaggeration with all your characters. If you do so, your novel will be a parody of life, not a slice of life (though, if you are aiming for parody and great humor, that’s fine). Continue Reading…