Over the past few months, I wrote a novel in a way I’ve never tried writing a novel before.
And it poured out surprisingly easily—much more so than any of the other novel projects I’ve worked on. I don’t think I’ve ever had this much fun developing a first draft. But on the flipside, it also came with a lot of unique challenges.
It’s a process I’ve been referring to as the “Russian dolls method” in my head, because it really felt like I was stacking matryoshka dolls as I went along.
I know I’m far from the first person to write a book this way, but I haven’t heard a lot of writers talk about this process in detail before. So, here are some of the things I learned from this experience, and my reflections on whether I’d try it again.
What Is the Russian Dolls Method?
This new novel started out as a short story. It was just 6,000 words long, and I shared part of it with my critique group in March, hoping I’d be able to submit it to one of my favorite magazines.
Their response was overwhelmingly: “Hannah, this isn’t supposed to be a short story.” There was too much going on—too many plot points that still needed to happen, too many character decisions that didn’t have enough space to breathe.
As always, my critique partners were right, even if they were telling me something I didn’t want to hear. So, I expanded the concept some more: first into a 12,000-word novelette, and then into a 28,000-word novella.
Even then, though, there was so much more I still wanted to flesh out. This wasn’t supposed to be a novella, either. So at last, I said goodbye to my naïve hopes of submitting this story to my favorite magazine, and I started on the process of expanding it into an 80,000-word novel.
And this might seem obvious in retrospect, but writing a novel that started its life in shorter iterations feels completely different from writing a novel from scratch.
It felt like radial growth, starting from the core premise of the story and expanding outwards, as opposed to chronological growth, starting from Chapter 1 and expanding forwards. And every step along the way—short story, novelette, novella, and finally novel—felt complete in and of itself, like a fully painted doll stacked on top of the previous version.
What Did I Love About This Process?
There were a lot of things I loved about writing a manuscript this way; I wasn’t kidding when I said it’s been one of my favorite novel-writing experiences so far. Here are the three main reasons why.
Pro #1: I Could Apply My Short Story Processes
I’m a short fiction writer, first and foremost. Long-form projects have always been more challenging for me—I’m prone to abandoning them halfway through, or underwriting them even when I finish them.
Looking back, I think applying my short story writing process to a novel manuscript was an unusually effective starting point. It let me develop the initial story in a way that felt natural to me and worry about form later.
Pro #2: I Could Grow the Story Organically
The reason why I don’t usually outline in advance is because it feels too much like I’m constructing the story, rather than letting the story unfold organically.
Growing a novel out of a novella felt really organic, even though I already knew all the major plot points and character arcs that the story needed to include. It gave me a lot of the benefits of having an outline to follow, except the outline was a living, breathing thing.
Pro #3: I Could Collect Feedback at Every Stage
I once took an entrepreneurship class in college that really leaned into the concept of “lean MVPs.” The idea is to build the simplest possible version of your minimum viable product (MVP), so you can make sure it works, instead of adding every possible detail from the get-go.
This was a little bit like the creative writing version of a lean MVP. Because I had a complete manuscript early on, I could collect feedback at every stage of the process. By the time I started turning the story into a novel, I already had initial feedback from my incredible critique partners and phenomenal literary agent, which was really useful for figuring out where to go next.
What Did I Hate About This Process?
Okay, so “hate” might be a strong word. But writing a book this way definitely wasn’t all fun and games. Here are the three biggest cons.
Con #1: I Had to Embrace Inefficiency
Let’s face it: if you already know your ultimate goal is to create one very large doll, it would be kind of silly to start by painting a bunch of small-to-medium-sized dolls first.
I think this process only made sense because I didn’t start out with the goal of making this story concept into a novel. If I’d known that goal going in, I probably would’ve picked a less circuitous route to get there.
Con #2: I Had to Kill a Lot of Darlings
Throughout this process, I had to repeatedly un-finish something that had already felt finished. And to be honest, that felt a little bit devastating every time.
It’s shockingly violent, the process of turning a novella into a novel. For the first few days, it felt like I was just smashing the bones of it apart and stretching them out with spacers. It took a long time to make the story feel whole again.
Con #3: I Had to Rethink Past Decisions
A lot of things that work in a short story don’t work well in a novel. At each step along the way, I had to question my previous decisions.
For example, the big plot twist that served as the midpoint of the short story version (around the 50% mark), ended up being the Break into Two beat in the novel version (around the 25% mark), and I had to shift all the proportions of the plot to match. If I hadn’t realized that change was necessary—and I almost didn’t—the first half of the novel version would’ve ended up feeling way too slow.
Would I Do It Again?
I’m a big proponent of the idea that there’s no “right” way to write. Every writer has a different process that works best for them.
But I’m starting to realize that it’s even more granular than that. Maybe for some writers, every book requires a different process.
So, would I write a novel this way again? Honestly, yeah, I would—but it would have to make sense for that particular project.
Have you tried writing a novel this way before? Do you think you’d love it or hate it? Let me know in the comments.
Good luck, and happy writing!
I’m Hannah Yang, and I’m a full-time author. I use my blog to share writing craft tips, my writing process, or my journey to publication. Share this article if it resonated with you, and subscribe if you want to see more!