Complexity that works is built up out of modules that work perfectly, layered one over the other.
Oh, 'Pandaemonium', by Chris Brookmyre! Just fabulous - such a layered, beautifully structured, engaging, intelligent book. I love all Chris's stuff, but this was remarkable.
Sometimes people are layered like that. There's something totally different underneath than what's on the surface. But sometimes, there's a third, even deeper level, and that one is the same as the top surface one. Like with pie.
I kind of build a novel the way marine polyps build a coral reef, it's millions and millions of little precarious bodies stacked on one another. And in my case, that's thousands of minutes I go through to get from one scene to the next and build it that way.
Froth at the top, dregs at bottom, but the middle excellent.
I think of it as the lasagna approach to writing because I'm always adding layers. I'll sometimes do it layer by layer, with dialogue, attribution, action, objects in the scene, setting... It can be sometimes that delineated.
I build a book the way coral reefs are built: millions of little calcareous skeletons piling up one atop another, though in my case the skeletons are drafts.
But I began then to think of time as having a shape, something you could see, like a series of liquid transparencies, one laid on top of another.
In my case, vertical food was less about standing things up than layering things: more an attempt to gain texture by weaving things together.
Lyall had spent centuries nibbling about the great layered cake that was polite society while Lord Akeldama acted the part of the frosting on its top.
