The Lockdown Creative Writing Challenge: story is written in layers

Christopher Mlalazi

We hope you have been finding these creative writing tips useful so far. As I previously mentioned, you don’t have to crack your head over them, just take in what you think is useful to your situation, and the rest — just leave it lying on the page right there where you are reading it just like left over food from a good meal.

I think before we go far I need to mention this also, as it is important too. What I am doing here is not an English language workshop, but rather, it is a creative writing one, and to a certain extent the two are vastly dissimilar just like light and day.

In a nutshell, we are trying to teach you to use languages creatively, and how you learn that language is for the writer to find out for themselves, but along the course of this workshop we will give some hints here and there where we will talk about the importance of reading and listening, but for now, let us jump right ahead into today’s topic.

Along the journey of teaching myself how to write, I eventually discovered that I write in what I term as layers.

Have you ever seen a painter going about their job of painting a wall?

The painter begins with applying an undercoat, or primer, in the painting world language. It is highly important to them that they have that first layer of paint, over which they will then apply the top coat, which will provide the finished product.

In creative writing the same applies too at some point in time of your working over your story, and I will further break down this strategy, which I think is highly important too.

There are various ways that you can apply this strategy in your story writing quest, and below I will further explain.

So you have made countless revisions of your story, and you have stepped back to assess it and try to pinpoint weaknesses, or strengths within its body.

This is another higher level of revision, quite different from the other ones where you were just trying to simply move your story from introduction to resolution.

This is now where the strategy of layering should kick in.Now is the time to break down the story into linear components of narration, dialogue, and poetic flavour.

What do I mean by this?

Is your narration logical, the way you move the story through the body from your point A to B?

Consider this as layer number one.

If you think it’s logical, then proceed on to layer two, which requires another revision.

Is the dialogue between your characters catchy and convincing? Is the way your characters converse with each other believable? Remember that you are writing fiction, but are the words coming from the mouths of your characters sounding like they are not fiction?

The best way to develop your dialogue is by reading, watching, or even writing plays. In theater, the characters are always speaking, and that is the way they convey the story to their audience, and are you able to also do that in some parts of your story where it is necessary convincingly?

If so, proceed on to layer three, and this also requires a separate revision.

Now before you go further, imagine in your mind’s eye layering different kinds of coloured soil inside a clear bottle.

Layer three is the poetic flavour, but these layers don’t necessarily have to follow this ordering.

At some point, the story you write must also come across as poetic, that is what adds that crucial aesthetic flavour that readers thirst for, which is also the feel-good factor.

What this requires is for the writer to have some knowledge of poetry, and this also means reading, writing, or listening to poetry, and then try to apply that in your story, but also without seeming to.

You don’t have to write poetry all over your story, but you can make an attempt to drip it in here or there — just be subtle, and don’t overload your beautiful story construction as that might disturb the delicate balance. And so this is our layering, where you lay out the various components of your story over each other, until at the end they merge and appear as one body.

There are many other layers that you can lay over your story, like for example, if you want to elicit good old laughter from your audience, you can decide to draw inspiration from comedians, and then plug that into the pot of your story too and stir the stew skillfully.

Today’s workshop comes to an end here, and in the next installment we will discuss something else that is a vital cog in the development of the story, but this time I won’t pre-empt what it is, but rather, catch you on this page!

Please stay safe, and stay writing!