Tag Archives: layers of the story

February 23, 2026 · 6:00 am

Exploring Depth #writing

We often talk about the story arc and its component parts and features. But to explain depth, we must put all the parts and pieces back together and examine the story as a whole.

So, what is depth, exactly? It is the component of the narrative that supports and informs the story’s arc. It is also comprised of layers.

When you look at a pond, you see the surface. It could be calm, or if a storm is brewing, it will be ruffled and moving. But it is deep and conceals many things beneath that calm surface. A narrative also comprises several layers.

Layer One is the surface layer. It is the Literal Layer; the what-you-see-is-what-you-get layer. The components of the story’s surface are:

the setting
the action
the visual/physical experience of the characters as they go about their lives.

When the reader sees something, they recognize it. Trees are trees, a bus is a bus, and we all recognize those aspects of worldbuilding. The surface layer also shows the characters’ actions in real time, so readers immediately feel they know what is going on.

The reader sees it when a figure steps from behind a tree. A gun was drawn and fired. What happened was clear and easy to understand.

Some authors play with the surface layer, choosing realism, surrealism, or a blend of the two.

Realism is serious, a depiction of what undisputedly is.
Surrealism takes what is real and warps it to convey a subtler meaning.

Layer Two: The layer below the surface is an area of unknown quantity. It is the Inferential Layer. This is the layer where inference and implication come into play, hints and allegations.

We show why the gun is drawn. Clues and hints imply reasons for the characters’ actions. The author offers ideas to explain how the shooter arrives at the point in the story where they squeeze the trigger, and the reader makes assumptions.

Authors drop clues and hints but allow the reader to draw their own conclusions.

In a murder mystery, the path to the moment the trigger was pulled is complicated. Perhaps no one knows exactly what led to it, but the author’s task is to include enough clues, hints, and allegations without an info dump.

Authors insert clues that imply something to the reader, hints that may be red herrings. One meaning is displayed on the surface, but by using hints and clues, we enclose the secrets within the narrative. The message (inference) in the story is conveyed to the reader, but only if they pick up on the clues.

The author has to do their job well because we want the reader to feel as if they have earned the information they are gaining. They must be able to deduce what you imply. A reader can only extrapolate knowledge from the information the author offers them.

Serious readers want this layer to mean something on a level that isn’t obvious. They want to experience that feeling of triumph for having caught the meaning. That surge of endorphins keeps them involved and makes them want more of your work.

This middle layer is, in my opinion, the toughest layer for an author to get a grip on.

Below and sort of intertwined with the middle layer is Layer Three, the Interpretive Layer. This layer will be shallower in Romance novels because the point of the book isn’t a deeper meaning. It’s interpersonal relationships on a surface level. However, there will still be some areas of mystery that aren’t spelled out completely because the interpersonal intrigues are the story.

Books for younger readers might also be less deep on this level because they don’t yet have the real-world experience to understand what is implied.

Layer three is comprised of:

Themes
Commentary
Message
Symbolism
Archetypes

This layer is sometimes the easiest for me to discuss because we are dealing with finite concepts. Theme is one of my favorite subjects to write about, as is symbolism. It is an aspect of the narrative I haven’t talked about lately, nor have I really discussed conveying messages. Archetype is another facet I haven’t discussed recently, and yet it is a fundamental underpinning of character building.

For the purposes of this post, commentary is the word that describes the expression of opinions or explanations about an event or situation. Perhaps you are writing a narrative that explores current real-world morals and hypocrisies. If so, this is an important aspect of your work.

I am looking forward to gaining a deeper understanding of the subtler, more abstract aspects of writing as I explore narrative depth. As always, when I come across a book or website with good information, I will share it with you.

In the meantime, a good core textbook is “Story” by Robert McKee. If you haven’t already gotten it, you might want to. It can be found second-hand at Amazon.

Another excellent and more affordable textbook for this is “Damn Fine Story” by Chuck Wendig. Chuck delivers his wisdom in pithy, witty, concise packets. If you fear potty-mouth, don’t buy it. However, if you have the courage to be challenged, this is the book for you.

Layers of the Scene: conversation #writing

WritingCraftSeries_depth-through-conversation Most of my novels and short stories begin life as exchanges of dialogue between two characters. Their conversations shed light on what each character’s role in the story might be.

We all know that dialogue must do at least one (if not all) of these four things:

It must share information the characters are only now learning.
It should show the characters’ mood and state of mind.
It must shed light on the relationship of the characters to each other.
We include props that show the world and the characters’ places in their society.

So, once I have an idea for a story, I think about the characters and ask what they need to know, either about their quest or themselves. It’s a two-stage process—the scenery and background get filled in after the dialogue has been written.

I picture the scene. Then, I write just the dialogue for several back-and-forth exchanges, getting the basic words down.

“What are you doing?”

“Oh, just drawing.”

“Drawing what?”

“You’ll laugh or find a reason to mock me for it.”

Once I know what they are talking about and have the rudimentary dialogue straight, I add basic scenery and speech tags. The dialogue grows with each layer because the scene becomes sharper in my mind.

The next morning, when his stepmother came down for coffee, John was once again working on something in his notebook.

“What are you doing?” Ann’s clipped tones cut the silence.

“Oh, just drawing.” He stood, gathering his pens. The peace he’d sought had gone earlier than he hoped.

“Drawing what?”

John’s normally open features were closed, inscrutable. “You’ll laugh or find a reason to mock me for it.” Closing his sketchbook, he attempted to leave but stopped when she put her hand on his shoulder.

“Show me. Now.” When Ann repeated her demand, he reluctantly opened the book. Page after page was covered in stylized dragons, leafy vines, and runes. “Why do you waste your time with this crap? You could be brilliant, but no! People want real art, not this drivel.”

“This is how I earn my living.”

Ann poured herself a cup of coffee, pausing only to sneer. “You don’t have a pot to—”

“It pays my mortgage. What more do you want?” John reclaimed the sketchbook. “Coming back here was a mistake. I did it because David asked me to, because Dad is ill, and because it’s Christmas.”

“Don’t talk to me about David. You encouraged my son to abandon a brilliant career in the law firm that has been in the family for four generations.”

“Stop. I encouraged my stepbrother to have faith in himself. Yes, I urged him to try out for the position of symphony concertmaster, and he got the job. He’s incredibly talented and loves what he does.” John crossed toward the dining room, aware that arguing with her would change nothing. “Enjoy your breakfast.” The kitchen door closed behind him, cutting off his stepmother’s rant.

The layers that form this scene are:

Action: She comes down for coffee. He holds a notebook, gathers pens, and stands.
Dialogue: shows long-simmering resentment between the two players and gives us a time reference—it’s Christmas.
Environment: a kitchen, closed off from the rest of the house.
The story: Ann is under severe stress in her work and at home. In this story, her closed-off kitchen is symbolic of her closed-off personality. The place that is the heart of a home is walled away. She doesn’t want to examine why she is enraged by David and John’s freedom to make their own choices.

We work with layers to create each scene. With these layers, we show the reader everything they need to know about that moment in time.

Over the course of a narrative, conversations will take place in different settings. Readers will gradually see the world through the characters’ eyes. They will visualize the world without our having to dump a floor plan or itinerary on the reader. Remember our basic conversation?

“What are you doing?”

“Oh, just drawing.”

“Drawing what?”

“You’ll laugh or find a reason to mock me for it.”

Let’s keep the names and put that dialogue and the notebook into a fantasy setting. We’ll change how the characters are related to each other and see what comes up:

Logically, Ann knew John wasn’t responsible for David’s death. Two years on, and it still colored her life. But he’d come back alive when her brother hadn’t, and a secret part of her blamed him for that. Still, her curiosity grew stronger every time she saw him with his pencils beside the campfire, drawing something in his notebook.

Ann knelt and turned the flatbread so it would cook evenly. She couldn’t ask him about the stupid notebook. Why had she volunteered to cook? It was bad enough that she was traveling alone with him. The last thing she wanted was for him to think she was open to resuming their old accord.

But curiosity, her greatest curse, got the better of her. To her horror, she heard herself ask, “What are you doing?”

“Oh, just drawing.”

“Drawing what?”

“You’ll laugh or find a reason to mock me for it.” Closing his sketchbook, John attempted to rise but stopped when she put her hand on his shoulder.

“I promise I won’t. Please? I’m just curious.”

John’s guarded expression said he doubted her. Of course, he did. She’d been cold to him since David was killed. But he opened his notebook.

Page after page was covered with portraits of all the members of their clan, including her. Each looked as full of life as if they could step off the page. Tears sprang to her eyes on seeing the many portraits of her brother, handsome and laughing. “All these drawings of David … it’s the way I want to remember him.” She met his gaze. “Thank you.”

John looked away. “I dream all night long of that day and all the things I could have done to change what happened. And then I have to draw. I don’t know why.”

Ann’s eyes burned again. She owed him an apology. But how? “Maybe you draw portraits to keep the people you love alive.” She sighed, saying what she knew was the truth. “It was an avalanche. You couldn’t have changed anything.”

We used the same words as in the previous scene for the core of the conversation and included a sketchbook. We used the same names. John is still an artist, and Ann is still under stress, in this case, grief. However, with different relationships, we have different histories. We end up with different character arcs and a different outcome.

The layers that form this scene are:

Family Camping Clipart

Action: Ann is cooking—the campfire is her kitchen. John opens a notebook.

Dialogue: shows a wary interaction between two people who know each other well but are estranged and who may be entering a different stage in their relationship.

Environment: a campsite, an open fire. It is set in the wide outdoors, yet in the darkness, it is intimate.

The core of the dialogue is the same, but the direction the conversation takes is changed because the story and the characters are different.

By beginning with the conversation and envisioning it as if it were a scene in a movie, I can flesh it out and show everything the reader needs to know. Readers are smart and don’t want to be told what to think. Their minds will supply the details of a kitchen or a campsite, depending on the props I include when I add the set dressing.

The layers of action, dialogue, and environment form the framework that supports the story. Where will the layers you add to your conversations take your stories? The possibilities are endless.

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Tagged as layers of the story, scene structure, writing, writing conversations

September 2, 2019 · 6:00 am

Structure of the Word-Pond #amwriting

Today we’re winding down my summer blogpost series, The Word-Pond. We’ve explored the myriad aspects of ‘depth,’ the wide inferential layer of Story. Depth isn’t easy to categorize, nor can we point to one aspect and say, “Get this right, and you’ve got a story with depth.”

I’ve described Story as a pond filled with words and discussed the three layers:

Surface: The Literal Layer; the what-you-see-is-what-you-get layer. Characters live, and events happen. These are reflected in the surface of the story. The ways in which we play with the surface layer are by choosing either Realism or Surrealism, or a blend of the two.

Middle: The Inferential Layer, where Inference and Implication come into play. This is an area of unknown quantity filled with cause and effect: the reasons why these lives are portrayed, and why events happened. This is where emotions muddy the waters.

Bottom: The Interpretive Layer. This level is not only foundational; it contains and shapes the story:

Themes
Commentary
Messages
Symbolism
Archetypes

The words in this pond behave like the waters of a pond in nature. While close scrutiny reveals that the waters of a pond are separated into layers by temperature, salinity, microbial life, or by the sheer weight and pressure of the volume of water, the overall structure is one large, important thing: a hole filled with water.

Without water, a pond is a depression in the ground filled with possibilities only.

In our word pond, the one large thing containing our words is “story.” So now we want to form these layers into a coherent, meaningful story. We need a container for our words, the hole in the ground for the story to flow into.

This container is the story arc.

Many people say they have a book in them, one they’d love to write. They begin, get a chapter or so into it, and lose the thread. They can’t see how to get the story from the beginning, to the crisis, to the resolution.

This is where the skills I’ve developed through my years of participating in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) has paid off. If you want to write a novel, it’s best to sit down and get that first draft out of you while the story is fresh in your mind. You’ll spend a year or more rewriting it, but if you don’t get the original ideas down while they’re fresh, you’ll lose them.

A story begins with an idea for a character. That character usually comes to me along with a problem. This is the seed from which the story grows.

I sit down and draft a story plan in four acts. First, I tell myself how I believe the story will go. This only takes half an hour and gives me finite plot points to write to. Once I have the four acts, I know where the turning points are, and what should happen at each. This ensures there is an arc to both the overall story and to the characters’ growth.

I’m going to use the original plot idea for a work in progress as my example. My WIP is a short story, 5000 words in length, but you can plot any length of story.

The story: Our Protagonist is a courier, transporting a valuable artifact. This artifact brings her to the attention of the Antagonist who intends to seize it, no matter the cost.

You must know what the surface of the Story looks like before you can explore the depths. A good way to discover what you are writing is to “think out loud.” Divide the story into four acts:

Act 1: the beginning: We show the setting, the protagonist, and the opening situation.

Setting: a village near a crossroads.
The weather is unseasonably cold.
The protagonist is carrying a jewel reputed to enable a mage to control the weather.
The protagonist must travel alone, as her partner was killed.
Unbeknownst to her, a traitor in her employer’s court has designs on the artifact. By possessing it, the Antagonist will have the power to usurp the throne.
She is wary, knowing the danger of traveling alone. She conceals the artifact by sewing it inside her shirt.

Act 2: First plot point: The inciting incident.

The Antagonist’s hired thugs capture her.
She is thrown into prison.
A fellow prisoner has overheard that her partner was murdered to ensure she would be traveling alone.
This fellow prisoner believes he has a plan to enable their escape.
The protagonist isn’t sure she should trust him but refuses to let the artifact fall into the Antagonist’s hands.

Act 3.: Mid-point: We show their dire condition and how they deal with it.

Seeing no other way, our Protagonist agrees to the Sidekick’s plan.
He is on the verge of managing an escape but needs help with one last thing.
By working together for several days, they manage to complete the escape route.
Timing the rotation of their guards is critical to the success of their plan.
Just as they are about to make their escape, the Antagonist makes a surprise visit to the dungeon and roughs up our Protagonist. He batters her physically and mentally, attempting to force her to tell him the whereabouts of the jewel, but she manages to keep her secret. When he leaves, her shirt is torn, but the jewel is still safe.

Act 4: Resolution:

They must wait for another rotation of the guards, giving the Protagonist a chance to rest. She is injured but can still do what she must.
The two make their escape but find themselves emerging near the kennels.
The Sidekick gives the watchdogs the food he had saved for their journey, distracting the dogs and allowing them to escape over the walls.
The Protagonist and the Sidekick manage to keep ahead of their pursuers and arrive back at court, where she delivers the artifact and reveals the identity of the traitor.
The Employer is grateful, and the Protagonist and her Sidekick are all set for another adventure—perhaps a novel.

You have an idea for a story. Take a moment to analyze and plan what needs to be said by what point in the story arc. This method works for me because I’m a linear thinker.

If you know the length of a book or story you intend to write, you know how many words each act should be. Once you have the map, you can get to the nitty-gritty of turning that far-fetched tale of woe into a good story.

As you write each event and connect the dots, the plot will evolve and change. You begin to explore the deeper aspects of the story. Emotions, both expressed and unexpressed, secrets withheld, truths discovered—all these details that emerge as you write will shape how the characters react to each other. In turn, these interactions will alter the shape of the larger story.

This is why we never really know how a story will go, even if we begin with a plan. The plan serves to keep us on track with length and to ensure the action doesn’t stall.

Draft a short plan for a 50,000 word manuscript. 50,000 words is the industry standard for a novel. Write 1,667 words a day that connect those events together, and in thirty days you will have written a 50,000 word first draft of your novel.

To see more of what National Novel Writing Month is all about, go to: www.nanowrimo.org

I am dragon_fangirl there. Look me up and become a writing buddy!