Melanie McDonald at 2014-01-19 16:36:49:

The idea of levels or layers of storytelling is so appealing - and it seems to me there's a sort of spiral movement involved in this kind of storytelling process, too - the writer can work up and down, higher and deeper, to "look for the animals" (what a wonderful concept!) at each layer or level of the story, and then spiral back up and down again, to see how those new findings at each level will resonate at the other levels of the story in turn, and help reveal even more meaning - there's a circle and a grace to such a storytelling process, isn't there? (Or at least when the writing's going well; when it's not, it's more like Dante's Circles of Hell.) And the imperative that you pointed out, that writers must try to do even better work than those who came before, makes me think there's a certain similarity between writers and athletes, since athletes also must keep trying to perform beyond the attainments of their predecessors; men's figure skating is the first example that comes to mind, since now that a few quad jumps have been landed successfully in competition, the whole field must rise to that level of achievement. Thank you again, Scott, for leading this discussion - so much to take in and process.