Whatcha Writin'??

I'm intrigued by your little synopsis. Keep us posted.

Mine is sort of a steampunk adventure affair. Skypirates. Same crew I wrote about last year, but while last year they were just sort of tangling with the navy, this year they've been properly caught and are in a bind.

Truth is, I just wanted to write their respective histories. My girl actually helped me come up with that plotline to tie it all together - while the captain is being held before his execution (oh no!) and the crew is plotting his daring rescue, everyone gets a chance to reminisce on how they got there and what they've been through.

"When the hero develops this sort of arrogance, it always ends dreadfully. Look at Icarus. Fellow with the wings, have you read that one?"
"I think so."
"That is precisely where we find ourselves now."

Hello fellow Rochestarians...

I have to admit, I love seeing a bunch of writers get together to discuss all these evil plot bunnies that have been haunting us since December of 2008. I am utterly astounded at the variations of plots, characters, and climaxes I've seen since joining.

As far as my novel goes it's a mystery/suspense/action/adventure piece. Sorry for all the genres, it's impossible to categorize a novel into one simple genre. It's very noir and is about a female assassin whose ex-husband has been kidnapped. Both the assassin and her ex have been banging around in my head for about a year now, and it'll be nice to put them on paper. Maybe they'll finally leave me alone?

There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein. ~Walter Wellesley "Red" Smith

Do No Evil - Coming to a bookstore near you

Steampunk makes the world go 'round. I would never be able to write such an epic. Can't wait to see how they manage in their predicament!!

And I love noir!!! Was it a good break-up or is miss assassin not a fan of her ex?

~*Defy Gravity*~

I wouldn't attempt such an intricate plot like yours until I've fasted from writing for about a year to make it good enough. I've never been good expanding my mind in such a way. I admit, I'm a bit envious. :)

Epic? Thanks for the compliment but hardly. Although the characters are quite enjoyable to voice. They were best friends previous to their marriage, and they both have a ton of secrets that haven't been resolved...so the break-up was very, very bad. But they still have this banter and sarcasm that just lights up the page (or so I hope). She'll feel obligated by emotion to help him, however, which is interesting because she reacts mainly on instinct and logic.

So, tell me about your MC(s)?

There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein. ~Walter Wellesley "Red" Smith

Do No Evil - Coming to a bookstore near you

Ah, the couples with sarcasm and banter were always my favorites. I have a thing for dysfunctional relationships, I guess.

Well, my first narrator isn't completely fleshed-out yet. He starts as a naive, idealistic business student who then learns he's a duke and starts investing heavily in medicine and experimental science, all as he grows gradually more disillusioned with the world. He's a big history buff, which is important, and he has a strong sense of responsibility.
The other is a brainchild I've had for awhile, a stubborn, short-tempered girl with piercings, tattoos, and a jackal soul. (it's a little complex, I'll explain that later) And she and her father were both raised/employed by narrator number one, but eventually branch off and start a band of mercenaries/gravediggers/bounty hunters/dog walkers...basically doing odd jobs for cash.

~*Defy Gravity*~

Wow...everyone's ideas seem awesome. Really awesome. So yeah...my plotline already has cliche parts in it. Trying to get rid of those XD. But ANYWAYS.

My story's about four young adults (tech. one of them is only 17 but still) that come from all walks of life and problems. When a freak accident throws them all together. The leader is a pagan/wiccan and can do magic of a sorts. ^^ But it has a lot of questions about Fate/Destiny vs Luck/Coincidence. They come together as a group, each one changing the others' views on life and how they can change/save the world. Im hoping to write my most epic battle scene ever. I already have the ending planned out. But I wont spoil that.

I always seem to be able to get point A and point B down...just the stuff inbetween is annoying. XD

Write from the Heart...that way you can never be ashamed.

These ideas are so diverse and creative. Love it!

Mine is one that's been in my head for years. About a "strangly likeable" man who's gotten himself into a bit of trouble and wants to withdraw from the world. he happens upon a crawl space in a brownstone apt. building that has access to apts. through ventilation ducts. Story is about him living vicariously through apt. dwellers and draws together several short stories I've toyed with over the years.

Unfortunately, there have been one or two stories in news over past few years of people who have secretly made themselves at home in others residences so it no longer feels like such an original idea. But also tying in some events from my own life and nanowrimo will be in the story as well.

Have no idea what genre it is unless I can classify it as "creepy fiction".

Steampunk is <3. I'm very excited to see a fellow RIT student, let alone someone writing a steampunk novel! Please let us all know how it goes.

I've attempted fantasty/alternate world stories in the past and am aiming for something more mundane this time around. I got the idea while watching my professor who bores me to death. My novel will be about a middle-aged female professor who leads a dreary, empty life. It will address her past and continue into the awful things that keep happening to her. I haven't decided if I want it to end out well or not. We'll see how sadistic I feel, I guess.

Going to have sci-fi elements, which is pretty much all I write. It popped into my head while listening to the radio. Wanted Dead Or Alive by Bon Jovi came on and I just had this mental image of a man riding a motorcycle into a desert town with a guitar strapped to his back. As I thought about it, he developed into a government-controlled assassin, at their beck and call because they have his wife and child. He does the job in the town, returns to the capital to try and get his family, but while in the city, he discovers that the government had killed his family long before. He also discovers the man he killed was a popular man with the general public and with some more digging, discovers the man was also financing a small rebellion. He returns to the town and tries to join up with the rebellion.

The depressing bit is I have no idea what the heck to write about...Okay, technically I have this book that I started, about 10 pages into it, about a year ago, but I haven't picked it up in almost a year... I'm trying to decide if I should restart that story all over again, or do something totally fresh....

Here's the idea, maybe you guys can help me decide!! Basically it's about two friends who grew up together (cliched, I know), and when they graduated from high school (or college?) they had this enormous fight.... OR they could not be friends at all in the first place, and just hate each other.... and basically what happens is, years and years later, the gal comes back to New York City to care for her dying father, he's dying of cancer, and he has been off in med school, and met a woman who ends up being his wife, and she ends up dying from cancer, so he gets totally grief-struck and his boss tells him to go back to his roots, to find himself again, so they BOTH end up going back to the same city, the city where they grew up, at the same time... and the scene that started it all is this: They are both, at the very same time, looking at their old high school (college?) yearbook, her in her old room in the attic at her parent's apartment, and him in the public library, where he used to have haunts... anyway, the basic idea is that they hated each other... but then they simultaneously open the yearbook and go, "hey...I remember him/her.. Wonder where she is now..." and they don't actually know it, but they're in the same city!!! He's a doctor who cares for cancer patients, and guess what, her dad is a cancer patient... and he's her dad's new doctor...but...here's the trick.. they've been apart for so long that they don't recognize each other anymore... maybe her name changed, or his did, or his name's real common or something, but they don't recognize each other, and they at first don't like each other, but they grow close, because his wife died, much like her father is dying... so they become friends, but then something happens to make it "click" that they are the other person from their past.. .I was going to have them end up in a park that she had brought him to when they were friends, but that doesn't work anymore if they hated each other.. so maybe it'd be something that they both knew/shared... something.. i have to figure that part out... but yeah..

The other option would be to start totally fresh.. I'm a huge fan of Sue Grafton's, Nicholas Sparks, James Patterson and Jasper Fforde's books, so I was thinking of going for some kind of strong woman detective character, like Kinsey Millhone or Lindsay Boxer, but I'm afraid of falling into the pattern of being typecast.....

hmm I wonder if I could get this strong woman character fleshed out in a character in The Yearbook (that's the story I outlined above) ... like, maybe an observer... a mutual friend, but one that knew they hated each other.. or some kind of narrative scheme?? Hmmmmmmmmm I'd be open to your thoughts!

That sounds incredibly complex and I am now dying to read it.

~*Defy Gravity*~

I'd suggest having their names changed...maybe she should have been or be married (as women usually change their last name) and he disliked his family so he had his last name changed to be disassociated with them? Either that or her father has a shady past, so she changed her last name so she wouldn't be haunted by his skeletons. That way she could feel even more guilty that he has cancer?

I love the idea of the story, and I think you should run with it.

There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein. ~Walter Wellesley "Red" Smith

Do No Evil - Coming to a bookstore near you

I like the idea of the third person who knows them both. Adds a nice layer to your story.

I've been knocking around an idea for nearly 2 years now, and I think it's time it hit the paper. I'm really not sure how to classify it, but maybe fantasy/horror/??? Anyway, it's about a 20-something woman who looks a bit creepy, and has had trouble making friends all her life. It's no wonder, really, since anyone/thing she gets close to dies. Then there's this rich chick, same age, who just found out her hubby cheated on her and is leaving her. She was rich through him, so now she has nothing. These two women meet in some fashion, and the rest of the story is how their lives go on from that point. I have little in the area of plot laid out at this point, but I think that's a good thing. I can't wait to see how it all turns out!

So, I'm the person who had the idea for the yearbook story... I think I've now switched gears... I was reading "no plot? no problem!" and became steadily more guilty about having already created this world before, especially when reading those testimonials about how people ended up unable to write because they had such a perfect idea illustrated in their minds for years and years, that they were unable to live up to the story.... I didn't want that to happen to me... And then I looked at the rough draft that I started, but never completed, over a year ago, and, curious, checked how many words it was-- 5,236. When I told my boyfriend this, he said "Yeah, I think you've already technically written that... you should start something new." It was then that I wrote my Magna Carta I list, the one about the things I like to read in books, and I looked at the list, which went as follows:

Strong female characters
A mystery to solve
Quirky, witty inside jokes and humor
Books within books (bookstore, librarians, writers)
Sappy romance
Introspectiveness
Reunions
Emotional, motivational stories

So, I began thinking about this... and with some goading from the boyfriend, I came up with a brand new unique idea... One that I'd like to share with you all today! A lot of it is still in need of consideration, but the basic bare bones of it is this:

A woman, a little older than I am (in her 30's I think.. .I'm 25) owns a cute little (but not too little, at least 2 rooms- you'll see why in a second) bookstore...this bookstore is the light of her life, she lives for her regulars, and she is relatively successful, and it just makes her happy. Well, one day, she walks around the shop running inventory, and she is stunned to realize that an entire shelfful of books is.............GONE. Yes, completely gone. the shelf is still there, bare, the dust outlining where the books used to be. She then embarks on an impossible journey to find them.... Why this happens, how it happens, I'm not sure.. I'm thinking perhaps a ghost story of some kind, having it be an old bookstore she bought from someone, or perhaps have a thing going with the whole mystical bookstore in the middle of nowhere, portaling her books there, or something... Or maybe there really was an actual theft? But she has an alarm system, why didn't it go off? And what kind of thief would make it away with dozens upon dozens of books? Also, why would a person steal books in the first place... especially of this variety? (Not sure what kind of books they were yet, but wagering that they're some kind of really old book that nobody would really be interested in...

I'm not sure where exactly this will take me, but it sounds exciting, with a small spin of mystery and fantasy tied into it as well! Any thoughts, ideas, would be greatly appreciated !!!

I love it!
Perhaps they could be outdated reference books?

~*Defy Gravity*~

danicarice, I say go for the new idea. Sounds interesting, sort of Joss Whedon-esque (if you like his style; if not, ignore that comment).

Everyone's ideas sound intriguing and so different from one another! Let's try to update each other as to plot, etc., though I know we may be too busy to care in the next few weeks.

As for my work, I'm lit fic. Character-driven, dark secrets, descriptive, and emotional. Two main characters this year, one tells the story. I'm trying something new in that vein. My second character is going to be nearly as prevalent as the narrator, but her POV is expressed through my seemingly omniscient speaker (though whether that's true...). We'll see if it works. Check out my novel info on my page for a synopsis, if you are so inclined.

I'm using a different technique in terms of planning as well. The Snowflake Technique--has anyone tried this before? Again, I'll find out if it's effective for me.

I'm worried about finishing this year. But, your word counts and comments will keep me going, I'm certain.

"I tried to pass for nothing, but my dreams gave me away." --C. Oberst

Can you explain a little more about the Snowflake technique? I always love learning new and original ideas for methodology. I've heard about mindmapping and am considering re-reading my article on it again, to see if I can come up with some more strong character development for the second storyline... Especially plotwise too, i need to figure out exactly where the story is going to go... whether I want it to take a kind of fantastical spin, or if I want to keep it grounded and realistic... I love the show Ghost Whisperer so I'm tempted to add a little bit of a ghost tale in there too... I'm just not sure which tack to take at this point...

Here's a link:

http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/art/snowflake.php

I don't use it very often--my ideas snowball too easily for me to take the time for it, and I do most of the process in my head anyway--but it can be pretty effective. It involves determining individual story threads, and then tying them all together.

As for ideas: I'm working on a strange one I came up with about a month and a half ago. It involves pretty new scientific concepts, and a view of reality )and its effect of the human mind) that can only be called rather strange. I've got a number of MC's, but only one constant--the rest fade in and out, making extremely important revelations before disappearing. A girl in a singular world stumbles across a way out of it, finds out what humanity left behind--and why they chose to forget it. It's complicated and hard to explain without adding any seemingly irrelevant details.

Mine should be good, cheesy fun :) I'm not sure when it'll take place, where, or if I'll even flesh out much of their surroundings. For the most part, I just enjoy writing about interactions between characters and the emotions woven throughout. It's basically about a group of villains, the working and romantic relationships (or conflicts - especially conflicts!) between them, and the jobs they pull. There'll be a fair amount of mature text involved, but nothing particularly vulgar - except for wanton bloodshed and violence, most likely.

I have names of characters, but no backgrounds. I have a city named with no established points of interests. I have a loose idea of what my novel will be about. I also have a totally blank expression on my face, and about 19 hours to come up with something. This should be great fun!

Go unorganized procrastinators!!!

~Melissa

Hey, danicarie--

Sorry this reply took a while; it's been a very busy week. Anyway, I am going to post the Snowflake Method info from the site on which I found it (www.advancedfictionwriting.com). It's a lot of info so I apologize, but I hope it's helpful.

Happy Nov. 1st everyone!

Info begins here:
"Writing a novel is easy. Writing a good novel is hard. That's just life. If it were easy, we'd all be writing best-selling, prize-winning fiction.

Frankly, there are a thousand different people out there who can tell you how to write a novel. There are a thousand different methods. The best one for you is the one that works for you.

In this article, I'd like to share with you what works for me. I've published six novels and won about a dozen awards for my writing. I teach the craft of writing fiction at writing conferences all the time. One of my most popular lectures is this one: How to write a novel using what I call the "Snowflake Method."

This page is the most popular one on my web site, and gets hundreds of page views per day, so you can guess that a lot of people find it useful. But you may not, and that's fine by me. Look it over, decide what might work for you, and ignore the rest! If it makes you puke, I won't be insulted. Different writers are different. If my methods get you rolling, I'll be happy. I'll make the best case I can for my way of organizing things, but you are the final judge of what works best for you. Have fun . . . write your novel!

The Importance of Design
Good fiction doesn't just happen, it is designed. You can do the design work before or after you write your novel. I've done it both ways and I strongly believe that doing it first is quicker and leads to a better result. Design is hard work, so it's important to find a guiding principle early on. This article will give you a powerful metaphor to guide your design.

Our fundamental question is this: How do you design a novel?

For a number of years, I was a software architect designing large software projects. I write novels the same way I write software, using the "snowflake metaphor". OK, what's the snowflake metaphor? Before you go further, take a look at this cool web site.

At the top of the page, you'll see a cute pattern known as a snowflake fractal. Don't tell anyone, but this is an important mathematical object that's been widely studied. For our purposes, it's just a cool sketch of a snowflake. If you scroll down that same web page a little, you'll see a box with a large triangle in it and arrows underneath. If you press the right-arrow button repeatedly, you'll see the steps used to create the snowflake. It doesn't look much like a snowflake at first, but after a few steps, it starts looking more and more like one, until it's done.

The first few steps look like this:

I claim that that's how you design a novel -- you start small, then build stuff up until it looks like a story. Part of this is creative work, and I can't teach you how to do that. Not here, anyway. But part of the work is just managing your creativity -- getting it organized into a well-structured novel. That's what I'd like to teach you here.

If you're like most people, you spend a long time thinking about your novel before you ever start writing. You may do some research. You daydream about how the story's going to work. You brainstorm. You start hearing the voices of different characters. You think about what the book's about -- the Deep Theme. This is an essential part of every book which I call "composting". It's an informal process and every writer does it differently. I'm going to assume that you know how to compost your story ideas and that you have already got a novel well-composted in your mind and that you're ready to sit down and start writing that novel.

The Ten Steps of Design
But before you start writing, you need to get organized. You need to put all those wonderful ideas down on paper in a form you can use. Why? Because your memory is fallible, and your creativity has probably left a lot of holes in your story -- holes you need to fill in before you start writing your novel. You need a design document. And you need to produce it using a process that doesn't kill your desire to actually write the story. Here is my ten-step process for writing a design document. I use this process for writing my novels, and I hope it will help you.

Step 1) Take an hour and write a one-sentence summary of your novel. Something like this: "A rogue physicist travels back in time to kill the apostle Paul." (This is the summary for my first novel, Transgression.) The sentence will serve you forever as a ten-second selling tool. This is the big picture, the analog of that big starting triangle in the snowflake picture.

When you later write your book proposal, this sentence should appear very early in the proposal. It's the hook that will sell your book to your editor, to your committee, to the sales force, to bookstore owners, and ultimately to readers. So make the best one you can!

Some hints on what makes a good sentence:

Shorter is better. Try for fewer than 15 words.
No character names, please! Better to say "a handicapped trapeze artist" than "Jane Doe".
Tie together the big picture and the personal picture. Which character has the most to lose in this story? Now tell me what he or she wants to win.
Read the one-line blurbs on the New York Times Bestseller list to learn how to do this. Writing a one-sentence description is an art form.
Step 2) Take another hour and expand that sentence to a full paragraph describing the story setup, major disasters, and ending of the novel. This is the analog of the second stage of the snowflake. I like to structure a story as "three disasters plus an ending". Each of the disasters takes a quarter of the book to develop and the ending takes the final quarter. I don't know if this is the ideal structure, it's just my personal taste.

If you believe in the Three-Act structure, then the first disaster corresponds to the end of Act 1. The second disaster is the mid-point of Act 2. The third disaster is the end of Act 2, and forces Act 3 which wraps things up. It is OK to have the first disaster be caused by external circumstances, but I think that the second and third disasters should be caused by the protagonist's attempts to "fix things". Things just get worse and worse.

You can also use this paragraph in your proposal. Ideally, your paragraph will have about five sentences. One sentence to give me the backdrop and story setup. Then one sentence each for your three disasters. Then one more sentence to tell the ending. If this sounds suspiciously like back-cover copy, it's because . . . that's what it is and that's where it's going to appear someday.

Step 3) The above gives you a high-level view of your novel. Now you need something similar for the storylines of each of your characters. Characters are the most important part of any novel, and the time you invest in designing them up front will pay off ten-fold when you start writing. For each of your major characters, take an hour and write a one-page summary sheet that tells:

The character's name
A one-sentence summary of the character's storyline
The character's motivation (what does he/she want abstractly?)
The character's goal (what does he/she want concretely?)
The character's conflict (what prevents him/her from reaching this goal?)
The character's epiphany (what will he/she learn, how will he/she change?
A one-paragraph summary of the character's storyline
An important point: You may find that you need to go back and revise your one-sentence summary and/or your one-paragraph summary. Go ahead! This is good--it means your characters are teaching you things about your story. It's always okay at any stage of the design process to go back and revise earlier stages. In fact, it's not just okay--it's inevitable. And it's good. Any revisions you make now are revisions you won't need to make later on to a clunky 400 page manuscript.

Another important point: It doesn't have to be perfect. The purpose of each step in the design process is to advance you to the next step. Keep your forward momentum! You can always come back later and fix it when you understand the story better. You will do this too, unless you're a lot smarter than I am.

Step 4) By this stage, you should have a good idea of the large-scale structure of your novel, and you have only spent a day or two. Well, truthfully, you may have spent as much as a week, but it doesn't matter. If the story is broken, you know it now, rather than after investing 500 hours in a rambling first draft. So now just keep growing the story. Take several hours and expand each sentence of your summary paragraph into a full paragraph. All but the last paragraph should end in a disaster. The final paragraph should tell how the book ends.

This is a lot of fun, and at the end of the exercise, you have a pretty decent one-page skeleton of your novel. It's okay if you can't get it all onto one single-spaced page. What matters is that you are growing the ideas that will go into your story. You are expanding the conflict. You should now have a synopsis suitable for a proposal, although there is a better alternative for proposals . . .

Step 5) Take a day or two and write up a one-page description of each major character and a half-page description of the other important characters. These "character synopses" should tell the story from the point of view of each character. As always, feel free to cycle back to the earlier steps and make revisions as you learn cool stuff about your characters. I usually enjoy this step the most and lately, I have been putting the resulting "character synopses" into my proposals instead of a plot-based synopsis. Editors love character synopses, because editors love character-based fiction.

Step 6) By now, you have a solid story and several story-threads, one for each character. Now take a week and expand the one-page plot synopsis of the novel to a four-page synopsis. Basically, you will again be expanding each paragraph from step (4) into a full page. This is a lot of fun, because you are figuring out the high-level logic of the story and making strategic decisions. Here, you will definitely want to cycle back and fix things in the earlier steps as you gain insight into the story and new ideas whack you in the face.

Step 7) Take another week and expand your character descriptions into full-fledged character charts detailing everything there is to know about each character. The standard stuff such as birthdate, description, history, motivation, goal, etc. Most importantly, how will this character change by the end of the novel? This is an expansion of your work in step (3), and it will teach you a lot about your characters. You will probably go back and revise steps (1-6) as your characters become "real" to you and begin making petulant demands on the story. This is good -- great fiction is character-driven. Take as much time as you need to do this, because you're just saving time downstream. When you have finished this process, (and it may take a full month of solid effort to get here), you are ready to write a proposal and sell this novel. Do so.

Step 8) You may or may not take a hiatus here, waiting for the book to sell. At some point, you've got to actually write the novel. Before you do that, there are a couple of things you can do to make that traumatic first draft easier. The first thing to do is to take that four-page synopsis and make a list of all the scenes that you'll need to turn the story into a novel. And the easiest way to make that list is . . . with a spreadsheet.

For some reason, this is scary to a lot of writers. Oh the horror. Deal with it. You learned to use a word-processor. Spreadsheets are easier. You need to make a list of scenes, and spreadsheets were invented for making lists. If you need some tutoring, buy a book. There are a thousand out there, and one of them will work for you. It should take you less than a day to learn the itty bit you need. It'll be the most valuable day you ever spent. Do it.

Make a spreadsheet detailing the scenes that emerge from your four-page plot outline. Make just one line for each scene. In one column, list the POV character. In another (wide) column, tell what happens. If you want to get fancy, add more columns that tell you how many pages you expect to write for the scene. A spreadsheet is ideal, because you can see the whole storyline at a glance, and it's easy to move scenes around to reorder things.

My spreadsheets usually wind up being over 100 lines long, one line for each scene of the novel. As I develop the story, I make new versions of my story spreadsheet. This is incredibly valuable for analyzing a story. It can take a week to make a good spreadsheet. When you are done, you can add a new column for chapter numbers and assign a chapter to each scene.

Step 9) (Optional. I don't do this step anymore.) Switch back to your word processor and begin writing a narrative description of the story. Take each line of the spreadsheet and expand it to a multi-paragraph description of the scene. Put in any cool lines of dialogue you think of, and sketch out the essential conflict of that scene. If there's no conflict, you'll know it here and you should either add conflict or scrub the scene.

I used to write either one or two pages per chapter, and I started each chapter on a new page. Then I just printed it all out and put it in a loose-leaf notebook, so I could easily swap chapters around later or revise chapters without messing up the others. This process usually took me a week and the end result was a massive 50-page printed document that I would revise in red ink as I wrote the first draft. All my good ideas when I wake up in the morning got hand-written in the margins of this document. This, by the way, is a rather painless way of writing that dreaded detailed synopsis that all writers seem to hate. But it's actually fun to develop, if you have done steps (1) through (8) first. When I did this step, I never showed this synopsis to anyone, least of all to an editor -- it was for me alone. I liked to think of it as the prototype first draft. Imagine writing a first draft in a week! Yes, you can do it and it's well worth the time. But I'll be honest, I don't feel like I need this step anymore, so I don't do it now.

Step 10) At this point, just sit down and start pounding out the real first draft of the novel. You will be astounded at how fast the story flies out of your fingers at this stage. I have seen writers triple their writing speed overnight, while producing better quality first drafts than they usually produce on a third draft.

You might think that all the creativity is chewed out of the story by this time. Well, no, not unless you overdid your analysis when you wrote your Snowflake. This is supposed to be the fun part, because there are many small-scale logic problems to work out here. How does Hero get out of that tree surrounded by alligators and rescue Heroine who's in the burning rowboat? This is the time to figure it out! But it's fun because you already know that the large-scale structure of the novel works. So you only have to solve a limited set of problems, and so you can write relatively fast.

This stage is incredibly fun and exciting. I have heard many writers complain about how hard the first draft is. Invariably, they are seat-of-the-pants writers who have no clue what's coming next. Good grief! Life is too short to write like that! There is no reason to spend 500 hours writing a wandering first draft of your novel when you can write a solid one in 150. Counting the 100 hours it takes to do the design documents, you come out way ahead in time.

(I'll note that many seat-of-the-pants writers shriek at the thought of doing a Snowflake document. That's fine. Different people are different. I suspect you know already whether the Snowflake is something that's going to work for you or not. Even if it does work for you, I'd encourage you to improvise on it. May a thousand different Snowflake methods bloom!) There is not just one solution to the problem of how to write a novel, there are many. Use the one that works for you.

About midway through a first draft, I usually take a breather and fix all the broken parts of my design documents. Yes, the design documents are not perfect! That's okay! The design documents are not fixed in concrete, they are a living set of documents that grows as you develop your novel. If you are doing your job right, at the end of the first draft you will laugh at what an amateurish piece of junk your design documents were. And you'll be thrilled at how deep your story has become.

That's All! That's the Snowflake Method. It works for me and for many of my writer friends who have tried it. I've lost track of how many people around the world who have emailed me to say that the Snowflake helped them get their novel on track. So it works for a lot of people. I hope it works for you.

Ways To Use The Snowflake
Are you struggling right now with a horrible first draft of your novel that just seems hopeless? Take an hour and summarize your story in one sentence. Does that clarify things? You've just completed step (1) of the Snowflake, and it only took an hour. Why not try the next few steps of the Snowflake and see if your story doesn't suddenly start coming to life? What have you got to lose, except a horrible first draft that you already hate?

Are you a seat-of-the-pants writer who finally finished your novel, but now you're staring at an enormous pile of manuscript that desperately needs rewriting? Take heart! Your novel's done, isn't it? You've done something many writers only dream about. Now imagine a big-shot editor bumps into you in the elevator and asks what your novel's about. In fifteen words or less, what would you say? Take your time! This is a thought game. What would you say? If you can come up with an answer in the next hour . . . you've just completed Step 1 of the Snowflake! Do you think some of the other steps might help you put some order into that manuscript? Give it a shot. What have you got to lose?

Have you just got a nightmarishly long letter from your editor detailing all the things that are wrong with your novel? Are you wondering how you can possibly make all the changes before your impossible deadline? It's never too late to do the Snowflake. How about if you take a week and drill through all the steps right now? It'll clarify things wonderfully, and then you'll have a plan for executing all those revisions. I bet you'll get it done in record time. And I bet the book will come out better than you imagined.

If the Snowflake Method works for you, I'd like to hear from you. You can reach me through the contact page on my web-site."

"I tried to pass for nothing, but my dreams gave me away." --C. Oberst

Sorry for the name misspelling, danicarice!

Epic faux pas.

Yikes.

"I tried to pass for nothing, but my dreams gave me away." --C. Oberst

Dang... I wish I had read this last week when I was trying to organize my story... :P

Looks like something that might help, definitely.... but it seems to take a lot of work for the "bang it out" format that NaNoWriMo is taking... I do have another novel in the works that I considered using for NaNoWriMo but decided against using, since I've already written 5,000+ words on it so far. I should use it on that novel once this is done, and/or use it when I don't have a lot of motivation/when that 2nd week "OMG what the hell is this" kicks in :P

EDIT: Np about the spelling, I love it when people actually DO notice their mistakes :P

I'm working on a story I thought of back in 1998, about Atlantis. Before Disney's Atlantis. I started working on it and suddenly Disney had an Atlantis. So I stopped. It's about a group of Elemental beings known as the Elem's, who lived on the island, and the rulers of Atlantis. It's a little cliche in that it's about what leads to the destruction of the island, but it's still different enough. At this point, I don't have enough to come up with a decent summary, without giving away key information. :)

-Cathie

2006: Dragon's Lineage (loss; injury to hand) http://destined.to/dragonslineage
2007: Owin: Land of Spelloyal (Loss; Hand pain)
2009: Atlantians

i love the thoughts of mysteries and suspense. I love writing then too. This time though i''m going to try writing about something that is so strange to most. Infatuation and heartbreak. You can call it romance,love, chick flick like and despair but whatever you call it i'm writing it :)

Linzey Miller <3

i wanted to write a zombie type of story that had a bit of grounding in real life. What I came up with will end up being more of a take on the Jekyll/Hyde story with some zombieish elements thrown in.

It is set in modern times and involves military research that revolves around induced states of Wendigo Psychosis. The main researcher is making serious headway on the project when his funding run out. At that point he is too invested in his work to see it stopped, so he does the only logical thing someone in that position would do, he uses himself as the test subject. After that hilarity ensues. Ok, more like bloodshed and mayhem, but you get the idea.

2005: The Lakeville Experience: Win
2006: ???? - Loss
2007: Deep Red: Win
2008: The Fair Sleeper: Loss
2009: The Wendigo Project

Oh wow, someone else in Rochester is doing post-apocalyptic Britain too? Small world lol. Did you study/work in London too?

My story is about a murderer/assassin in 2050 from the upstate NY area (the town described is actually Brockport, but it's never actually named in the story) who hides out first in Toronto and then in London when a zombie virus starts causing trouble. In London, he gets pulled into a bunch of very surreal royal intrigue, dresses in drag and hides out at a finishing school, gets involved with a bunch of anarchists living in a squat... and of course the squatters' drama ties in with the royal drama, and then there's a love story in there of course... a gay love story with a love interest based on my crush :D lol

Alas, I did not... I should be so lucky, lol. I actually over-plotted that story and set it aside to work on something lighter for Nano. I'll go back to it in December, though. Now I'm writing about the French Resistance, but my protagonist is still a Brit! :D

~*Defy Gravity*~