By Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig
I had a question on Twitter last weekend from mystery writer K.B. Owen. She was interested in finding out more about how I draft a story in layers.
The layering of my drafts started out as an almost procrastination. There are parts of stories that I’m not as fond of writing as others. I especially dislike writing descriptions of characters and settings and found that I’d put off working on my book sometimes because I didn’t want to write it. As a work-around, I decided that I would add all description in a separate draft and in one “layer” as I was working on my second draft.
After using this technique for a while, I found it was very helpful for a variety of different things. For one, it helped me weave my subplots through the main plot in a more thoughtful way.Continue reading