When your story needs more

how to add layers

Last week was the inaugural week of Fail Better Club, where I invited paying subscribers to send me their not-quite-working manuscripts. It was an inspiring week of talking about what makes a story “work” and the various ways the manuscripts could move to that place. It was like hunting together for magic keys.

One thing that was really interesting was how many of the manuscripts had essentially the same issue: not enough going on. This is so common! You get your story down, build the scaffolding of what happens, give your character a voice, but somehow it's not quite enough. And then, either through an internal knowing, or some external feedback, you realize that your story needs more layers.

Story through layers. A front door, a screen door, and the neighbor’s cat( Baby Girl) who seemed to be contemplating our flag.

Here are possible fixes:¹

• What is the heart of your story? Is it friendship, neighbors, identity, tenacity, failure? There are thousands of possible answers. If you are someone who tends to come up with fun characters and then write about them Doing Stuff, this might be the layer you need.

• What does your character want? This is another one that might show up in a character-first manuscript, where you have your awesome character existing and doing things, but it all seems formless and sort of random. Maybe you’ve got a book about a snail who fancies herself a chef and is trying to make the world’s most awesome sandwich. Fine. But…why? Now listen, I’m as big a fan of a story-for-fun book as anyone. I love them! But if you’re thinking there needs to be more to your book, then there probably needs to be more. So maybe the snail is trying to get noticed because she wants a friend, or maybe she wants to win a sandwich contest, or maybe her friend has a broken wing and our snail knows her friend is a lover of sandwiches, so she’s going to bring her one. The book will be deeper and richer if there’s a reason for all of it.

• Does your story need a narrative thread? This can be an equation of heart + character want = plotline. Or it can be some rebel-mode narrative thread like “blue things.” It’s your book! It’s a plot arc or a character arc or a theme or something that carries your reader from the front cover to the back endpapers. So maybe you have that snail chef, and in your draft she is making many different dishes, and you realize that she is going to deliver food in special baskets anonymously to all her neighbors. Cool! So you then start thinking about how she can make food specific to each neighbor. Like maybe she makes cute little cookies with roses on them for the kitten down the lane who has a rose garden. (And all of that can be shown only in the illustrations, but as you’re revising, you have it in mind.²) Or maybe you want to arrange it so the food and the baskets get bigger and more ridiculous as the book goes on. Now you’ve got a thread and a plan.

• If your book had an audiobook, who would be the ideal narrator? This might help if your book came out plot-first and your characters need to have a bit more going on. Another version of this is just thinking who would voice your main character. No one even needs to know this! Did any of you throw Snappsy the Alligator aside in disgust because obviously the author was imagining Kelsey Grammer as the voice of the chicken narrator? Did you have trouble following along in Help Wanted: One Rooster because you were so distracted by the combination of Ron Swanson, Leslie Knope, Maria Bamford, Michael Palin, and Jeff Bridges? Probably not.³

• The previous bullet hinted at this important layer-adding tool: Which Parks & Rec character is your character? Or choose another television show that has well-developed drastically-different characters who have pushed their absurdity to the edge of reality.⁴ Revise accordingly to get the voice right.

• What is your main character feeling about the events of the book? Are they sad? Excited? Scared? They should have emotions! It’s super common to get the story down and then feel a flatness that results from not yet weaving in emotions.

• Finally, can you add other stories underneath your main story? So many of the best picture books have layers of story. Children are smart enough to appreciate the nuance of these layers, and they are a fast-track to making your book one that will beg to be read multiple times. Why is our snail chef so obsessed with bringing food to all her neighbors? Maybe she just moved in and she wants to thank them for helping her carry in her books. Maybe she had a grouchy day yesterday and wants to apologize. Maybe each of her friends helped her recently in different and specific ways and she’s spending the day repaying them. Maybe the town picnic is coming up and our snail is super controlling and doesn’t think anyone else will be able to make decent food, so she’s making it all for them. Any of these could be a quiet extra thread that hums along in the background, revealed on the last pages. (Want a published example of this? Go read Fraidyzoo by Thyra Heder.)

You don’t need to add all these things, and many of them won’t be explicitly stated in the book. Rather, you’ll revise with an eye toward whether each beat of the book is aligned with or contradicting the layer you’re adding. It’s not “‘This is a book about friendship!’ said Lars,” but rather, as the kids say, vibes. 

I’ll be offering Fail Better Club again in a few months. Next up in paying subscriber benefits is the Short Story Project, coming soon, which is an opportunity to play around with writing and stories without putting pressure on yourself or the words.

Thoughts and Links

• I’m obligated to casually remind you that my next book, Chester Barkingham Saves the Country, will be out September 17. If you want a signed, personalized copy, pre-order from Print: A Bookstore.

• What a magical world, where a random google alert sends me to a video of a storyteller in a suit and no shoes, standing in a living room, reciting Snappsy the Alligator (Did Not Ask to Be in This Book) by heart, with a slight tangent about Spirit Airlines. A wonder, truly.

• I also very much enjoyed all the voices Miss Fairy does in her Rick the Rock of Room 214 readaloud.

• While I’m sharing videos of people reading my books out loud, I’d be remiss in not re-linking to one of my career highs, this video of David Harbour from Stranger Things reading Snappsy.

• If you’re in the United States: are you registered to vote? Have you checked to make sure your registration is valid? You can register, check your registration, and more at Vote.org.

• “You ever feel that you had a profound experience, a potentially life-altering experience, but then you overshare it, you share it on social media, and — poof, it’s gone? Dispersal. Like clouds that never rain. It dispersed before it ever gathered.” I recently found The Emerald Podcast, and the episode On Clouds and Cosmic Law is incredible. (That is the only sentence about social media, I think, but it made me gasp, especially coming after 45 minutes of intense cloud talk.)

• I thought Decameron on Netflix was super fun. I saw somewhere that someone said it accurately depicts how the pandemic felt, in that it starts off as a terrifying and fun party time, and quickly descends into unhinged chaos. Also: THE OUTFITS. THE HATS. And please more Tony Hale in roles like these.

Books I read recently and loved

Disclosure: book links in this newsletter are affiliate links to Bookshop.org, a site which supports independent bookshops.

• You all need to go get a copy of We Are Definitely Human by X. Fang, especially if you’re a picture book writer. It’s such a master class in story, heart, and humor, told in a lovely, hilarious, and unexpected way. Also the shocking pink endpapers are amazing.

• Just What to Do by Kyle Lukoff and illustrated by Hana Tahboub is the perfect book to have on your shelf for when a young reader (or an old reader!) isn’t sure how to help their friend through a difficult time.

• The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley is of the genre of book that speaks directly to my childhood dream of having Laura Ingalls (or, well, Melissa Gilbert probably) time travel to 1970s suburban New Jersey so I could show her around. When I got it out of the library, the librarian said, “Everyone is reading this book right now!” Do we all have explain-the-modern-world-to-people-of-yore fantasies?

• A child is born, gets a fax machine out of the garbage, realizes she’s an alien when her home planet starts faxing her. Do you need more than that? No. Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino was unlike anything I’ve read before.

• An IT change to her work computer accidentally allows Jolene to see the emails and internal messages of everyone else at work. Turns out they are in fact talking about her! Another winning premise in this one, I Hope This Finds You Well by Natalie Sue, and a lot of fun.

1. I’m going to focus on picture books in these fixes, but they could be applied to any fiction. Picture books are what I know best.

2. You can also steal my habit of putting in a massive amount of illustration notes in early drafts, for yourself, to remember the plan, and then deleting all or almost all of them before you submit it anywhere.

3. If you read Help Wanted: One Rooster and five-stars-loved it, would you consider writing a review? I would be so grateful. Some sample review text: “The best rooster interviewing picture book I’ve ever read!” or “I am the coffee-brewing chicken!” or “I want to redecorate my house in the color palette of this book!” or “The space blob is my favorite” or “My kid loves this book more than all the others.”

4. The Good Place and The White Lotus come to mind.