The stability is an essential issue for incremental drawings. To allow stable updating, means to modify graph slightly (such as adding or deleting an edge or a node) without changing the layout dramatically from previous layout. In this paper, a method for achieving stable incremental directed graph layout by using clan-based graph decomposition is described. For a given directed graph, the clan-based decomposition generates a parse tree. The parse tree, which is used for layout, is also employed in locating changes and maintaining visual stability during incremental drawing. By using the generated parse tree, each incremental update can be done very efficiently.