Friday, January 7, 2011

Skipping Around the Snowflake Method (*first two posts in tumblr*)

As it snows outside my window! *queue rim shot*

So I came to the quick conclusion that there’s a reason I haven’t used the Snowflake Method of Writing before. It’s kind of tedious. Actually, not kind of. It’s pretty darn tedious. I wrote out the opening of this story at least three times. Maybe I need to just space it out, but I’m latching to every moment I have of my vacation to catch up with my MSWord futon.

I love how helpful steps one and two were. Step three, however, is characterization, and that’s something I have to develop on my own. I can’t have that kind of structure hampering my characters. They like what they like and they do what they do. If I overthink it, I’ll try to put somewhere in the narrative what item they would pull from their burning house when it’s entirely unnecessary.

Actually, there is a scene with…well, never mind. I moved on to what’s proving to be incredibly helpful as well.

Step Four: Expand each sentence of your summary paragraph from step two into a full paragraph. All but the last paragraph should end in a disaster. The final paragraph should tell how the book ends.

I read this again after doing step two and I laughed out loud. (Oh. Sorry, young people. I meant to say I lol’d.)

Turning each sentence into its own paragraph would give me my full draft right there! Okay, a slight exaggeration, but it’s proving to be quite lengthy. The LTWF blogger said it would be a one page synopsis. Yeah, no. This will be three pages minimum.

However, a concise and well structured plot is the hardest part, but the most obvious. You have to know where you and your characters are heading even if you don’t plot it out entirely before writing. Me? I need to know almost exactly where I’m going. Things will change throughout, of course, but I need a basic guideline. Usually this is in the form of bulleted typed notes under chapter heads. Now it’s a Word document with full sentences…and I’m kind of liking that better. Actually, not kind of. It looks so pretty with its punctuation marks and proper grammar.

Next is…

Step Five: Write a one-page synopsis of the story from the point of view of each major character.

Um…we’ll see.

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