Tender, Flaky Layers

I spent most of Sunday at a friend's house learning to make croissants. We used an old recipe from Julia Childs that required a ton of butter and plenty of muscle for rolling. To be done properly, you really need more than a day. Luckily, my friend had dough already prepared at different stages for us so that we could maximize our time.

Croissants are finicky. You spend a lot of time chilling, rolling and folding the dough over the butter, working it in so that you wind up with the buttery layers that make them so distinctive. In fact, by the time you end up cutting the dough into the crescent shape, you've rolled and folded 55 layers of dough.

55.

So of course this made me think of writing. We're supposed to have many layers in our stories: tender, flaky layers that draw readers in and give our story depth. Sometimes it's hard to know if we've given the story enough chilling time, if we've stretched and folded the characters to their breaking point. But for today, I challenge you to try and discover a new layer for your story, something that will hook your reader and make the story uniquely yours. You might not end up with fifty-five layers of depth, but it might not be a bad idea to try.